Imagine a world where people don’t have to budget around gas prices, where the environment is not affected daily by harmful smog output from fossil fuel emissions, and where nations no longer need an excuse to go to war for oil.
Surely we can imagine that world transpiring sometime in the future. The world can see this future with the advancement of the battery electric vehicle, also known as General Motor’s EV1, which relies singularly on battery power.
The EV1, first released in California in 1997 to a few lucky lessees, had the proven ability to reach 80 mph, and is theorized reach a whopping 190 mph with fine tuning. It went from 0-60 mph in just eight seconds and was equipped with all of the standard luxuries of the time, including anti-lock brakes, power doors and windows and keyless entry. Plus, consumers reported the drive in an EV1 to be virtually silent, the only noise coming from the tires on the road. But the greatest advantage was that its driver did not have to use expensive, polluting gas to power it.
The EV1 was nothing short of a God-send, an answer to several serious problems that previously seemed to be without alternative. First, it reduced, and probably could have eventually eliminated, the United Statess’ dependence upon foreign oil, lessening tensions between us and other lands-particularly the Middle East, where tidings are not so great in the first place. Second, it allowed for consumers to save quite a bit of money. The cost of electricity, quoted in 1997, was half the price of gas. Today, it is somewhere between one third to one quarter the price of gas. The batteries required for the EV1 are not cheap, but they do not require changing very often and would be less costly than the price of filling a gas tank every week.
Most importantly, the battery powered electric car would not endanger the environment. The only emissions an EV1 releases are from its tires, and these were being released anyway by gas powered vehicles. The only other question about the electric vehicle’s safety to the environment regards disposal of the batteries, but this threat is considered insignificant compared to the harm that gasoline does to the environment.
But in 2002, GM suddenly pulled the plug on the EV1 project, collecting and destroying most of the 1,000 batter-powered vehicles it had released. It cited “insignificant support” from consumers as its reason for doing so, despite positive responses from lessees and a list of would-be buyers. This effectively killed the first, real, promising alternative to oil. The future of the environment, which seemed to finally have a glimmer of hope, was put on hold.
Global warming and air quality experts everywhere were shocked and appalled at GM’s rash decision.
Today, GM relies heavily upon production and sales of gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles and runs huge marketing campaigns for its Hummer series. Though the Hummer is undoubtedly popular, it is also arguably the worst vehicle for the world’s environment.
Weighing in at a massive 8,500 lbs and getting just 13 mpg, the Hummer 2, or H2, has an accruement of 3.4 metric tons of carbon emissions per year-twice that of a typical sedan.
GM still claims to consider nature a priority and insists that one of its goals is to improve its fuel economy. Its website, www.gm.com, even has a section labeled “environment,” which opens to a page with a Saturn perched upon a spread of forestry. “GM is dedicated to protecting human health, natural resources, and the global environment,” the site says, and explains what GM is doing to achieve these goals. One solution is its new hybrid line of vehicles that run partially on fossil fuel and partially on electricity. The hybrid, which has a non-specific release date for sometime in 2007, runs on battery power with a fuel-tank as a back-up for when the batteries are low.
But could this hybrid simply be an attempt to bandage the wound GM gave itself by pulling the plug on its EV1 project, sparking world-wide controversy and the production of the 2006 movie “Who Killed the Electric Vehicle?” A hybrid that uses electricity as well as gas could be a settlement.
The film features interviews with several celebrities and well-known politicians including Mel Gibson and Ralph Nader, as well as Chelsea Sexton and Wally Rippel, experts who led to the development of the electric vehicle released by GM in 1997. It speculates that auto and oil companies, as well as the Bush Administration, schemed to rid the country of a technology that would eventually make the demand for fossil fuels virtually nil.
Members of the Bush Administration, including Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney Andrew Card and the president, himself, have been (or still are) associated with major oil and auto conglomerates and are therefore inherently prone to financial damage by a mass production of electric cars. While GM spokesman Dave Barthmuss blames simple lack of consumer demand for the derailment of the EV1 project, the film suggests that the both the oil and auto industries were afraid of losing money in a different way. Oil companies would lose trillions in the future, and auto companies were afraid of the loss of money that downtime during production of the vehicles would bring.
Besides, since the introduction of the automobile, auto and oil have gone hand in hand; is it speculation to assume that they are intertwined and therefore rely upon the success of one another?
Though the Bush Administration does not claim to have had a part in the destruction of the EV1, it is linked to it almost directly. Part of why GM released its energy efficient, environment friendly car in the first place was as a response to the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) mandate regulating vehicle emissions. The Zero-emissions Vehicle Mandate (ZEV) was implemented in 1990. It stated that by 1998, 2 percent of vehicles sold were required to be emission-free. In 2001, ZEV was modified to allow hybrid vehicles to count toward this requirement, and in 2003, after being sued by GM, CARB dropped the requirement altogether.
Soon after, the EV1 project was cancelled and the vehicles were destroyed.
It is obvious that GM put business incentive ahead of the future of our planet. Consumerism has its inherent evils, namely, that the yield of the almighty dollar will come before just about anything. This is something that our consumerist society has not only come to accept, but has come to expect. Whether it is the truth or not, GM claims that continuing production of EV1 would result in a loss of money, despite obvious demand and support from projects like the Clinton Administration’s $1.25 billion Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles which compensated for much of the production and marketing cost of the EV1.
Some may say that the withdrawal of a company for an uncertain enterprise is justified, but can any means that directly go against the future of our planet be justified?
Pollution from fossil fuel causes damage to the ozone-layer, reduces air and water quality, and threatens the ability of future generations to survive in our environment unprotected. It ought to be law that if the technology to avoid this exists, it be put to use. Instead, the people who claim to care for us the most-major companies, the government-are keeping this from becoming a reality. A compromise has been suggested-though has yet to be put on the market-by GM. But it is just that: a compromise, and possibly nothing more than an effort to compete with Toyota, the world’s leader in hybrid vehicles.
How long will it be before GM’s hybrid is recalled?
Jessica Flier is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences.
