<VV> FW: Why GM Went Broke

[Sethracer at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/29/2009 6:06:26 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
starfire11 at sbcglobal.net writes:

From: Don Waldrop
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 1:54 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Why GM Went Broke

To be Fair - Keeping the EV1 on the street would have "broken" GM a lot 
sooner.
If you want another view on the EV1 - This from a GM manager: (Talking about 
the Volt)
 
ABG: Now I personally love this design and I think it's a really cool looking 
car and have some exciting engineering there. But given what happened, with 
the history of the EV1 there's going to be a lot of skeptics out there who 
think "Oh no, another concept vehicle, they're never going to build this thing!" 
Now, how would you respond to those people? The people who went out and watched 
_Who Killed the Electric Car_ 
(http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/06/22/exclusive-qanda-with-chelsea-sexton-about-the-ev1-why-the-priu/) .

DB: Well, all I can tell them is we built a great electric car when we built 
the EV1. We built it and it was a great car. We have our chairman and CEO 
saying that we are committed to building the Chevy Volt and the E-Flex system. 
It's necessary for our long-term future in this business. The issues facing us in 
2007 are vastly different than we faced in the mid '90s when the EV1 was 
available. There are many other reasons that we came to our decision to end 
production and marketing of the EV1 that we are cognizant of so that as we build the 
Chevy Volt and E-Flex system, that we address those, that we have the vehicle 
that will appeal to more than 800 people, that may have a range. You may 
never ever, ever have to fill up this vehicle on gasoline. Because the internal 
combustion engine is basically a generator that charges the batteries. You may 
never have to do anything but plug this baby in to your wall. You can seat more 
than two people. It's got a nice trunk area where you can fit a lot of your 
soccer equipment and this will not force you to make as many tradeoffs in your 
transportation lifestyle that a small number of very enthusiastic, and 
passionate and loyal people were willing to do with the EV1 but a mass market never 
evolved. So those that are questioning our commitment to build this just 
realize that we've done this before, we've done this in the past. We've learned from 
that program and we intend to put it into this program so that it can be a 
long-term vital option for us.

ABG: I think a big part of the skepticism comes from the fact that when the 
EV1 program ended, you took those cars, you didn't let the people keep the cars 
or buy the cars outright. I think that's a big reason behind that.

DB: There was a reason that we did not allow those vehicles that came off 
lease expiration not to be purchased. We did not have the parts that we could 
keep those vehicles serviced and maintained in a safe manner. We were not 
building a gasoline version of the EV1 where we were continuing to make parts. There 
were 2,000 unique parts on the EV1. One of them controlled the brakes. If that 
part failed, it was a serious danger to the driver and to those around them. 
Our parts suppliers left GM because we couldn't order parts from them and have 
enough volume to make it vital for them to move forward with us. So we had to 
cannibalize parts from other EV1s to keep those other cars going. We may not 
have this problem with the Chevy Volt and the E-Flex because we'll be building 
an entire volume. We couldn't allow a person to keep a vehicle that we didn't 
have the confidence would be safe. It was a huge safety issue. So that's why 
as the vehicles came off lease we put them in museums, we gave them to 
colleges and we sent them to our engineers in New York for cold weather testing and, 
yeah, we crushed and recycled the rest of them.

ABG: I know some of them did go to universities, such as the University of 
Wisconsin, Madison.

DB: That's one and there's one at the Smithsonian, there's one in the 
Peterson Automotive Museum. There's also one in the Henry Ford Museum. Many 
universities across the country got them. So we still have some that are being used to 
test lithium-ion batteries that are in the hands of our engineers.

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