PDF Download The Car That Could: The Inside Story of GM's Revolutionary Electric Vehicle, by Michael Shnayerson

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The Car That Could: The Inside Story of GM's Revolutionary Electric Vehicle, by Michael Shnayerson

PDF Download The Car That Could: The Inside Story of GM's Revolutionary Electric Vehicle, by Michael Shnayerson

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Amazon.com Review

The story of General Motors' first mass-produced electric car, the EV1 (at first, unfortunately, named the Impact). This project was decades in gestation, the early dreams of pollution and noise-free vehicles taking a long time to progress beyond visionary prototypes. This was partly because of opposition to the concept from oil companies and the automotive industry. Eventually a combination of government prodding and technological advances in battery design made it possible. Schnayerson describes the supportive role of GM chairman Robert Stempel and the tenacity of a group of true-believing engineers who kept the idea alive after Stempel was ousted.

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From Publishers Weekly

Hailed as the first practical electric passenger car, General Motors' Impact faces an uncertain future, with doubts about whether a market will materialize for a high-priced auto with significantly limited range and few recharging options. The sleek, small, battery-powered aluminum prototype, which runs silently with no engine or tailpipe, owes its existence to ex-GM chairman Roger Smith, who on Earth Day 1990 publicly declared that GM would mass-produce an electric vehicle (EV). He then resigned. When his successor, Robert Stempel, was replaced in 1992, the Impact development team of engineers was significantly downsized, and the project seemed dead. Secret talks initiated by the Impact team with Ford and Chrysler to consider an EV consortium led instead to GM's renewed commitment to the project, which was kept under wraps. Shnayerson, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, recreates a remarkable, inspiring saga of glitches, unexpected setbacks, power struggles and ingenuity, and in doing so he tells how GM, once stagnant, resistant to technological change and battered by foreign rivals, staged a comeback. Photos. Author tour. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product details

Hardcover: 295 pages

Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (August 27, 1996)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 067942105X

ISBN-13: 978-0679421054

Product Dimensions:

6.5 x 1.2 x 9.8 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.7 out of 5 stars

20 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#1,318,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

The author gives a very detailed account of the life of the GM electric vehicle known as EV1. Unfortunately, the book was written before the author would have been able to discuss the controversial death of the EV1. In the book you will see why government has no business trying to dictate what businesses do. You will also see why government shouldn't try to force inventions. On the flip side, you will see how the oil companies fought the electric car concept through their government lobbyists and you will see how GM was also complicit in the killing of the EV1. Finally, the book gives an inside look at the bureaucracy and turmoil within GM's many fiefdoms which might help to explain why they needed a government bailout some 10 years later just to survive.

This was a great book detailing the creation of the EV1 - if you're interested in the vehicle and want to know about its creation, this book takes you there through to initial production.Lots of details and nuggets of things you won't find anywhere else, I'll give a small example here. The book was published in 1996 before the drama of the electric vehicles in CA occurred (for the most part) - so it doesn't deal with any of that. You can see the seeds of future GM executive decisions regarding the EV1 mentioned in the book though. By the time the EV1 was getting close to production, former CEO Roger Smith, who made the vehicle happen (it appeared no other high level GM executives wanted the car to happen) was gone and the executive support for the very public vehicle (with the big investment) was gone - i.e. it would be wound down quietly. When it came time to fund the production line tooling GM execs decided to only fund development type tooling, which is made of resin (not steel), and only lasts a short amount of time - before the first EV1 rolled off the line it was already doomed to a very small production run.A stunning vehicle though, one can only ponder what would have happened had the GM execs at the time viewed it as mid to long term investment in the future, had made real production line tooling, actually made and sold alot of the cars (to get their costs down) and continued their (and the NiMH battery) development - a different future indeed.To know what happens after the development of the EV1 you can watch the fantastic movie Who Killed the Electric Car?. One of the benefits of that movie is that you can watch and hear the EV1 driving (the EV1's had a great sound that was the result, I've been told, of its inverter) - since GM destroyed the EV1's later its one of the only ways you'll ever be able to do this.GM of course never sold the EV1's, they only leased them and then when the legal requirement in CA for zero emissions vehicles was dropped GM destroyed them as they came off lease. GM execs then sold the patents to the battery technology (NiMH) to an oil company (Texaco which was bought by Chevron) for a ridiculously small amount of money (a little over $1 million dollars - way, way less than market value) - ensuring no future EV's using that battery technology NiMH would be made (licensed production of large format NiMH batts (needed for EV's) require the approval of Chevron's board - you can't make this stuff up). Those patents expire in 2014 and 2015 for the most part and NiMH batteries are still significantly cheaper per kWH than the Li batteries that are being used today (and the NiMH can be much more durable than Li if used properly) - such a tragic story.The apparently schizophrenic behavior of GM leadership with the EV1 program (going all out for the vehicle, investing huge amounts of money and making it happen, then just before the first one rolls down the line going the other way, lobbying to eliminate the requirement for their existence in CA and eventually destroying the EV1's as they came off lease (with people publicly begging GM to buy them) - is actually easier to understand when viewed from a perspective of feifdoms at the executive level with CEO as ultimate King. GM, unlike most other auto makers, sometimes pushes radical ideas forward through to fruition and that's because their CEO's do this occasionally. But when that CEO leaves, the support of that program is gone and the remaining executives often saw whatever the program was as a threat to their budgets or a waste and the program would die of neglect or worse (as in the case of the EV1). This happened with the EV1, Saturn and other programs in GM's history.Currently GM created a great technology for the Chevy Volt plug-in technology (pushed forward by the CEO, Rick Wagoner, who presided over the destruction of the EV1 - which he said was his greatest mistake - but Wagoner has been gone from GM for a while and the follow on vehicles using the Volt technology have been canceled and delayed...fortunately Wagoner was around long enough to see the Volt into production and the existing CEO wants to sell as many as possible to reduce the costs, but what happens from here on out at GM is hazy with rumblings of GM's past behavior in the shadows (i.e. dropping support for new programs after the CEO that made them happen is gone).The EV1 story is a tragic story of epic proportions and this book lays out the fantastic development of the vehicle (during which it had full support from the company which later changed) in great detail that you won't find anywhere else. An excellent read, highly recommended.

Shnayerson tells the story up to when the GM Impact was introduced. The film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" got me interested in electric cars. The GM Impact (EV1) was the most successful modern electric car, but it disappeared into the crushers shortly after its introduction.His story is that of a dedicated crew inside GM working against budget cuts and management changes to make the car. It is a good read.A shortcoming is that there are so many major characters-- A new one on each page in some chapters. One is Ken Baker, who runs through the whole narrative, as do Roger Smith (yes, that Roger) and Robert Stempel, one a former GM Chairman.Another major character doesn't appear until chapter 20: Stan Ovshinsky. The 12 pages describe his career and the Ovonic 12-volt NiMH battery, and the test on the track at Mesa, Arizona, where his batteries powered the test Impact EV 201 miles on a single charge.All of these 100+ GM execs and engineers were heart-and-soul dedicated to making the EV succeed. One cannot read this book and feel that GM was against the electric car. Shnayerson is an outsider, and was in no way a mouthpiece for GM or an industry apologist. When he tells of GM execs moving their families to Lansing or to Troy so they can work more on the Impact, you get a strong feeling that GM wanted this car to happen. GM sunk a few billion dollars in it.I could have done with fewer pages of office drama and a new character on every other page, all of whom "exuded midwestern charm," and less about whether so-and-so was "on the fast track to a senior vice-presidency."I would have preferred line drawings of new assemblies, for example, regenerative brakes-- a first by GM. I wanted more technical details! Cut a couple dozen pages of drama and give us line drawings! For example, in one of the few technical discussions; Setting a standard for EV chargers, page 223, after 3 years and $10 million, GM accepted Hughes's inductive 240 volt charger. Ford stayed with the basic prong-and-socket conductive charger. I wanted a line drawing of each, a photo of each, a short description of each.Shnayerson gives an objective account of politics, noting the reelection of California Governor Pete Wilson in 1994, and Republicans unseating Democrat governors, and Republicans making huge gains in Congress in Nov 1994-- as a factor in reducing the auto industry's motivation to push the EV. That political revolution is missing in explaining the death of the EV in California in "Who Killed the Electric Car?" where the government villians are made out to be Bush, Cheney, and Rice. Shnayerson suggests that a Republican sweep in 1994 may have been the bigger factor, with a repudiation of 25 years of environmental legislation.We humans may be incapable of analyzing economic factors, but we always emphasize political factors. This mental shortcoming has to do with the Availability Bias, from cognitive psychology: We overestimate factors easy to imagine or remember (like political figures we don't like) and ignore factors difficult to imagine or remember (like anything to do with economics). So when GM cuts funding in 1992 for the Impact, everyone, like director Chris Paine of "Who Killed the Electric Car?" screams out that there is a giant conspiracy by bad guys in Oil, but few recognize that when a company has a loss of a billion dollars, they need to cut back somewhere.Shnayerson spends only a few pages on Japanese electric cars: All four major Japanese carmakers had cars to show at the Anaheim California December 1994-- EV Symposium 12. Mazda had an EV Miata. In France, residents were paying for the privilege of test driving 50 Peugeot-Citroen ZX and 105 model prototypes. If Big Oil, Autos, and the U.S. Gov killed the GM EV, who killed the French and Japanese EVs? Which brings up the Big Red Cars in Southern California.Did Standard Oil and GM and B. F. Goodrich destroy Henry Huntington's Pacific Electric, the world's best electric car system, with its more than 1000 miles of standard gauge track? Or rather than a giant conspiracy, is the fault in the hands of my mother and father and thousands like them who destroyed the Pacific Electric-- they purchased a shiny new 1949 Nash, instead of spending that money on tickets to ride the Red Cars. We blame the "greedy" oil companies, but we don't think about tens of thousands of Southern Californians ready to buy that status symbol, their own auto, after years of rationing during and after World War II.

Excellent reading for those interested in the trials and tribulations of the EV 1 GM electric car. Internal corporate strife, oil companies, electric utilities companies, battery companies all played important roles in the conflicted development of the magnificent EV 1 electric car, ultimately leading to the Corporate crushing of the leased EV 1's. After reading the book, I would suggest viewing the DVD, "Who Killed the Electric Car" and then you will have a better picture of what happened. The book makes one wonder about the benefits provided to the American people by the very large corporations. The book also makes it clear that the genius of the American worker still exists but is vulnerable to the power of the corporation and can be effectively crushed. All Americans should read this book as we enter a time expensive energy resources.

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