Technology and Design
The decades before the release of the Impact and the EV1 had seen little in the way of development on the electric car front. The Henney Kilowatt, which ended production in 1961, was the last time a feasible production electric car of any sort had been released; GM's own Electrovair and Electrovette of 1966 and 1976, respectively, never reached production, amounting to little more than conceptual electric conversion kits for the automaker's popular gasoline models. Technical and production costs difficulties were blamed.
In contrast to these cars, the EV1 was designed from the ground up to be an electric vehicle. It was not a conversion of an existing vehicle, nor did it share a drivetrain with another GM model, which contributed to its high development and production costs. The EV1 program was initially administered by a GM engineer named Kenneth Baker, who had been the lead on the Electrovette program in the 1970s.
Read more about this topic: General Motors EV1
Famous quotes containing the words technology and/or design:
“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“The reason American cars don’t sell anymore is that they have forgotten how to design the American Dream. What does it matter if you buy a car today or six months from now, because cars are not beautiful. That’s why the American auto industry is in trouble: no design, no desire.”
—Karl Lagerfeld (b. 1938)