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50 years ago, GM was the major industrial giant of the Western world. GM built this mighty business one customer at a time, made money one dollar at a time, and prospered in market share. GM now must offers strong incentives of up to $8817 to entice buyers of its slower-moving giant gas vehicles. Yet on the other hand, GM is turning away avid buyers who offer cash, who wish to purchase GM EV1 Electric cars with no incentive payments at all. These would-be buyers are on the 19th day of a 24/7 vigil to ask GM to please take their money. Recently, GM made another of the string of bad decisions that is leading it into decline, and which seem impossible to explain, to pay money to scrap the EV1 car, and to refuse willing cash buyers. But the EV1 is more than a car, it's a path to national salvation. It's one of the two key enabling technologies for energy independence, the other being distributed solar rooftop electric systems. The EV1 uses about one-tenth the energy used by a gasoline car, on average, to go the same distance. The EV1's energy source comes from electric, fed by natural gas; but it uses so little energy that it can be powered from even a small solar system. The best thing is that each EV1 completely avoids the use of gasoline and oil, and needs no tune ups, smog checks, oil changes, etc. The EV1 is a clean car, cleaner by orders of magnitude than gas cars, especially if the entire "well to wheel" cost of producing gasoline is considered. When GM developed the EV1, it led the industry in energy efficient cars. The oil industry, understandably, fought bitterly against cars like the EV1, which can be plugged in and charged up with cheap, unused electric power, diminishing our dependence on foreign oil imports and lowering the demand for gas for all the other, standard gas cars on the road. Standard Oil's best interest has been keeping the demand for gas, and its price, high. There are currently 77 EV1 at the General Motors Training facility in Burbank, California. A group of EV drivers and would-be EV drivers from all over would like the chance to purchase this GM product, for all-cash USA money. These buyers offer formally to purchase the Gen II NiMH EV1s for the residual value of $24,761.60 each that GM assigned to a NiMH battery-equipped vehicle in the original GMAC lease. In association with this offer, we jointly and severally release General Motors of all warranty, parts, and service obligations, and release General Motors of all liability associated with the vehicle, which will not be registered as a GM vehicle on the streets of the USA. We will sign a non-disclosure agreement concerning all technical information related to the EV1. GM seems to have little to gain by killing the EV1. But this is an issue concerning our future. We must reduce our dependence on foreign oil. There are fearful reasons for killing the EV1, reasons that GM should reject.
It threatens the dealer network, the existing profit model, economies of scale
on certain parts no longer needed, and it's got a big The best result will be for GM to go back into production of a low-cost version of the EV1 and of more models, developing a panoply of Electric car options for avid buyers and revitalizing the company. The design and development money spent on the EV1 is gone. Now the question is what sort of return will GM achieve. On the one hand, destroying the vehicles costs the company money. On the other hand, selling the EV1 to grateful customers begins to build GM's future as sensitive to environmental issues, and interested once again in customer satisfaction. Please don't turn your back on GM's former customers, on America, and on GM's viability as a car company. By killing the EV1, GM is really turning its back on its own future. |