Who Killed The Electric Car?

[f5fstop]

As being part of the EV1 service team, there were many things that killed the EV1, but primarily....
No range, even with the later NiMH batteries, and driving like you had an atomic trigger under the accelerator pedal, the max range was 150 miles.
Recharge from dead to full was four hours, but that was only with the stationary 240V charger, the 120V charger in the trunk took up to 18 hours.
Two, no one wanted to set up an infrastruture for any electric vehicles.

The lease on any EV1 included the 240V charger, that was installed at your house, so if you commuted 30 or 40 miles a day, it was ok. Taking it cross-country was not a real option.

We had two EV1s in the engineering center in TN, and we drove them quite a bit. Then again, we had four 240V chargers back at the engineering center for a "quick" 4-hour charge.

One thing nice, no one ever stole one....