From a Seed Magazine interview with Chris Paine, director of the new documentary, "Who Killed The Electric Car?"
In the end, GM refused to let leasers buy their cars. It seems bizarre that a corporation would refuse ready buyers.
I've never heard of another situation where a car company doesn't let you keep a car at the end of a lease. You buy it—usually, they're begging you to buy it. Here, they said, "You can't have it."
There was also no precedent for General Motors putting its own name on a car. And that's where the film becomes, in my view, sort of a "great American tragedy"—they took their own branded car off to the crusher.
The story here is fascinating. California used to have a zero emissions law with an increasing mandate for clean autos. The car companies, chafing under regulation as always, argued that California couldn't force them to produce what consumers didn't want. And in order to ensure that consumers wouldn't want the electric cars, they destroyed the supply, the on-the-road examples -- anything that could generate demand. Simultaneously, California was offering partial credit for nearly-clean vehicles, which is a violation of federal authority over CAFE standards, and the auto industry, in conjunction with the Bush administration, ramped up for a huge suit. As part of the settlement, California took out the electric cars mandate.
Later on, GM CEO Rick Wagoner identified the destruction of the electric cars divisions as one of his great regrets. Which makes sense. At the time, oil was cheap and plentiful, and there was little obvious reason to pump cash into efficient cars, particularly when the Japanese seemed to own that niche. But now, as oil skyrockets and the gas-guzzling behemoths languish on lots, a decade or so of electric car production and refinement could have put GM in a whole different position, making them a viable, and even leading auto company in the new century. If the answer to Who Killed the Electric Car? is GM, that might also solve the riddle of who's killing the American auto companies.
