[HN Gopher] The only GM EV1 ever publicly sold
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The only GM EV1 ever publicly sold
Author : zdw
Score : 75 points
Date : 2025-11-19 15:17 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theautopian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theautopian.com)
| robin_reala wrote:
| _The EV1 was the first mass-produced electric car to be offered
| to the public_
|
| There were ~30,000 electric cars around at the start of the 20th
| century, so I'm not sure this holds up.
| xattt wrote:
| ^ modern-day, post-war, computerized
| nocoiner wrote:
| Wasn't the Model T the first mass-produced automobile? Wouldn't
| surprise me if the early 20th century electric cars were
| basically handbuilt by dozens or even hundreds of different
| manufacturers.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The Model T is the first assembly line produced automobile.
| Mass production significantly predates the Model T.
| Generally, the production of guns in France in 1765 using
| standardized parts is generally considered the first mass
| produced item.
| dboreham wrote:
| Dang. I thought it was the British Navy pulley blocks.
| infecto wrote:
| Which of those 30k was mass produced? The model t was seen as
| the first mass produced vehicle. I think when it obtained that
| classification it was producing around 200k annually.
| robin_reala wrote:
| EV1 had 1,117 units produced according to Wiki, so I guess
| any model of those 30k with more than that would count.
|
| _Edit: apparently Columbia built 1,937 electric cars in 1904
| alone according
| tohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(automobile_brand)._
| infecto wrote:
| The answer is probably more in the middle in that mass
| produced places more emphasis on the standardization. I
| imagine those Columbia cars were not build on an assembly
| line.
| chiffre01 wrote:
| Plus according to this the Detroit Electric Sold 13,000 units
| between 1907 to 1939
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Electric
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Impound/tow/lien -> title has always been the easy button for
| getting legit title to a vehicle that was never supposed to be
| sold (UPS vans, Uhaul trailers, etc), so long as it was never
| reported stolen.
|
| Absolutely hilarious that he managed to work the "doesn't work it
| if pops up as stolen" angle in the opposite direction to make the
| car impossible to really do anything with (i.e. no junkyard can
| take it whole, no subsequent changes of title can happen) and
| live in various sorts of limbo for 20yr.
| fragmede wrote:
| Could you do anything like that to trick the DMV into letting
| you register a BYD vehicle in California?
| throwup238 wrote:
| No, having a title of ownership is not the same as
| registering as a street legal vehicle. BYD cars don't meet
| DOT Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards which is a deal
| breaker, regardless of which state you're in. Even if you
| could get it registered, insurance would be impossible.
| dmurray wrote:
| Are they actually unsafe or they just haven't gone through
| the certification?
|
| They're on sale in Europe where the car safety standards
| are slightly different to the US, but generally considered
| more rigorous.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| And Chinese cars rate higher on the European safety
| metrics than Western cars.
| https://insideevs.com/news/779537/euro-ncap-safety-
| rating-ch...
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| For whatever reason, the industry term for the
| certification is "Homologation" (1)
|
| But yes, the vehicles which aren't on sale typically
| haven't been homologated. Why invest the time and money
| in that when it's not needed?
|
| Actually deemed unsafe and not meeting the rules is much
| rarer, e.g. Tesla CyberTruck in Europe. (2)
|
| In either case, you may get away with owning it, but not
| driving it on public roads.
|
| 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homologation https://www
| .productipedia.com/kb/productipedia/compliance-re...
|
| 2)
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/08/tesla-
| cyb...
| kube-system wrote:
| The difference in vehicle regulations between the EU and
| US are not along a linear scale of rigor. They have
| different requirements for different things. They are
| different opinions of what "safe" even means.
| trollbridge wrote:
| My state lets you register hand built and other oddball
| vehicles - basically, if you can get it past customs, you
| can register it. The out of state inspection for a title
| transfer is to check the VIN.
|
| Insurance would need to be from a specialty provider who do
| insure oddball vehicles. Someone I know (in CA no less)
| insured his homemade electric motorcycle this way. (It's
| titled as the chassis of the BMW regular motorcycle it was
| built from.)
|
| If you're pulled over, you would need to show things like
| seat belts or turn signals and so on. I got nailed for not
| having a shoulder belt in a homemade vehicle made after
| 1960. Seat belt ticket was my punishment, although the cop
| remarked that adding a shoulder belt would be a good idea.
| bluGill wrote:
| You have to show you built it though. A stock BYD would
| probably not count, I'm not sure how much change you
| would need though to get it to count as homemade.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| I think a chassis is the deciding factor, since you can
| shove modern components in 50+ year old chassis and build
| street legal hotrods. You register it as that old chassis
| model from whatever manufacturer built it.
|
| As I understand BYD use less components than the other
| traditional car manufacturers (more brains/integration in
| axle vs having lots of CAN connected shit around the car)
| so in theory I could see builders installing a BYD
| drivetrain into an old chassis the same way people can do
| LS swaps into Miatas.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| A mechanic/storage lien is simply a way to get title without
| the cooperation of whoever the last guy in the database as
| having title is. It doesn't solve stupid government rules.
|
| What's legal per the law is a tiny fraction of what you can
| put on a DMV form and have the form get past the clerk and
| process properly which itself is a tiny fraction of what the
| cops will go after.
| trollbridge wrote:
| This is what we do when buying a property that has ancient
| junk vehicles on it - sometimes without even a VIN intact.
| The purpose of a title is so that you can scrap them and
| get them off your property.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Going through the hassle of getting a title for stuff
| you'll scrap is, ugh, an ill advised use of time unless
| your goal is to tell everyone at the cocktail party how
| law abiding you are or the vehicles are interesting
| enough for the title to have baseline value or something
| like that.
|
| Scrapyards will take fractions of cars without asking
| questions. People who part out cars or deal in scrap
| metal know this and will take anything off your hands for
| free as long as the work vs what they're getting pencils
| out.
| bluGill wrote:
| Scrapyards are also places the police investigate as
| money laundering for crime. They will take untitled
| things, but only if they think it wasn't stolen. Start
| bringing in too much scrap vehicle parts and they will
| start demanding paperwork - one or two parts "everyone"
| has so no not worth it but if it gets to be a bunch they
| start suspecting crime and then demand paperwork.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Just saw it up so it's not obviously one complete car.
| Nobody cares as long as their ass is covered. You can get
| away with more if you're a regular and they know you and
| know you not to be sketchy.
|
| Even if they know you they'll never take a full car body
| in one piece without a title or any of the other "open
| and shut case" violations of law because they don't wanna
| risk getting Randy Weaver'd because a good customer had
| government problems and became an "informant".
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| In California? Probably not. In other states? Well there are
| lots of military vehicles sold as explicitly non-road legal
| with a requirement of sale being that you can't title them. I
| see those with license plates and titles for sale in Texas
| all the time. I just don't happen to have much need for a
| Humvee or similar vehicle.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Yes, and it's been done in the past. Will likely still get
| caught at some point. I had a friend that owned a Motorex
| skyline where the importer did the testing but then fudged
| the papers to say it was something else and federal gov
| revoked its status but people that had cars imported before
| that got to keep them.
|
| This article has some info about it and other things:
| https://www.jalopnik.com/here-s-how-people-illegally-
| import-...
| fragmede wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, that's a wild ride!
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >This article has some info about it and other things:
|
| Even by sketchers and jorts standards that's still, wow.
| The way that article is just dripping with post-boot saliva
| is a great illustration of the gulf between high class
| "porche or miata + Land<cruiser/rover>" type car
| enthusiasts and "buys whole cars for parts" type
| enthusiasts. Hopefully Doug's opinions have, uh, refined,
| over the last decade. Can't see how they wouldn't have.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| Something similar happened to one of the Dominos delivery
| vehicles (a DXP [0]). The purchaser got sued for trademark
| violations [1]. In this case, the car was totaled in an
| accident and the insurance company sold it.
|
| [0] - https://ir.dominos.com/news-releases/news-release-
| details/do...
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN-yLTDkAS4
| bobmcnamara wrote:
| Some states have rules that enable junkyards to bypass any sort
| of checks if a vehicle is above a certain age.
|
| Meant to expedite purging jalopies, this, of course, is
| horribly ripe for abuse by predatory tow companies.
| adenta wrote:
| Do we all have that one friend who also secretly has an EV1, or
| is that just me?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I bet for every example there's a hundred more that are just
| not registered and or are registered as something else.
|
| It's like machine guns, you're not paying for the hardware.
| You're paying to not have the state send a squad of thugs to
| shoot you for not getting permission. People don't want the
| permission. They want the hardware. So they just get the
| hardware and keep it on the down low.
|
| Also, everyone in automotive who isn't an OEM or in the
| emissions racket (i.e. the two groups benefitting) absolutely
| hates the government and this is exactly the kind of
| "interesting" vehicle junkyard people would save for their own
| personal golf cart use. Usually OEMs are super anal about
| making sure stuff actually gets crushed but they shat out too
| many EV1s into the world to do a good job of that like they do
| for prototypes, test mules and other stuff with low double
| digit production runs if that.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >You're paying to not have the state send a squad of thugs to
| shoot you for not getting permission
|
| Hmm, you could get a swatting 2.0 by taking real video and
| shoving in some LLm generated scenes of people showing off
| their machine gun (parts) pretty easy.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| It's just you and without some proof of it in a private garage
| it's really not even you.
| Theodores wrote:
| What are the obstacles to making GM EV1 replicas, albeit with
| modern batteries? The design still has merit and would
| undoubtedly be long range with the lead acid batteries swapped
| out for something new.
|
| You can get businesses making replicas in small numbers, for
| example, I am sure you could get a Lancia Stratos, however, would
| GM have a big copyright ban on such a venture?
| nubinetwork wrote:
| I doubt insurance would allow you to register an old Saturn
| that was converted into an ev1.
| criddell wrote:
| They probably would. If the Saturn is older than 25 years, it
| can be registered as a classic car. The fact that it's highly
| modified with new parts doesn't really matter. It's what
| people in the hot rod scene have been doing forever.
|
| For newer cars, you could probably register it as a self-
| built (kit car).
| bluGill wrote:
| Why not? The only issue is if that Saturn was scrapped - once
| a car is scrapped there is no legal way to get it titled.
| (but you can still call it home built with parts from the
| scrapped car - it just needs a new VIN).
| kube-system wrote:
| The states register vehicles, not insurance companies.
|
| And while a big box insurance company might not insure a
| heavily modified vehicle, there are niche insurance companies
| who will. Or you could even self insure in a state that
| allows it.
| toast0 wrote:
| I imagine it's not hard to get liability/collision
| insurance on a modified vehicle, and that's all you really
| need; most insurance will cover damages you cause on "any
| vehicle" you drive, so it doesn't usually cost much to add
| an additional vehicle unless it's particularly risky; that
| this has a real VIN and a real manufacturer should make it
| pretty easy. If you really think you need comprehensive
| insurance, you'd need to get specialty insurance anyway,
| because normal insurance is going to give you a near zero
| value on a car like that.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| You're saying copyright but it's more likely to be a trademark
| issue.
| humanpotato wrote:
| Traditionally, lack of demand and the fact that GM was
| fastidious about keeping them off the road means that they
| would probably threaten a lawsuit. Electric cars in general
| have only become popular in the last 5-10 years; the lore of
| the EV1 has grown accordingly.
|
| Copyright law for art and sculpture requires registration of
| each design; in searching the copyright records it appears that
| GM doesn't do this. Really the more appropriate forum would be
| to get a design patent but those last for only 15 years anyway.
|
| Trademarks must be registered (and also apply to specific
| categories, though a kit car and production car are in the same
| category). Surprisngly, "EV1" is owned not by GM, but by Kia
| (the graphic is different). What this means is you can make the
| (GM) EV1 logo no problem, and also sell a kit car as something
| like "inspired by the GM EV1" but if you sell it as an "EV1"
| then Kia might come knocking.
|
| In short, I don't see much getting in the way of making an EV1
| kit car as long as you don't advertise it as a literal GM or
| EV1 car. Though as stated, you can include or sell separately
| an EV1 badge that buyers can slap on their own property without
| issue.
| infecto wrote:
| Why would you want it? Modern Evs I would assume are superior
| in both safety and design.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I suggest seeing how Revology was able to proceed.
|
| (They make reproductions of 1967 and 1968 Mustangs)
|
| https://revologycars.com/
| throw0101c wrote:
| See perhaps 2006 movie:
|
| > _Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 American documentary
| film directed by Chris Paine that explores the creation, limited
| commercialization and subsequent destruction of the battery
| electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General
| Motors EV1 of the mid-1990s. The film explores the roles of
| automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, the federal
| government of the United States, the California government,
| batteries, hydrogen vehicles and consumers in limiting the
| development and adoption of this technology._
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
|
| And from the same director in 2011:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Electric_Car
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The only place for it is back on the road. If I was the owner I
| would spit into GM's face and put a million miles on the
| odometer. It should be a private Uber.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Drive it and park it in front of the GM's headquarters. Do a
| cannonball run. These guys are Youtubers so I expect lots of
| great content. However I fear some of the more exciting ideas
| may not come to bear because "Influencers"/Press are usually
| afraid of OEM cutting off access. Hopefully these guys aren't
| in that group.
| api wrote:
| The EV1 was way, way ahead of its time, and was more or less
| outright killed for various reasons including car makers having
| deep sunk cost in ICE engine tech. The battery tech back then was
| vastly inferior to today but it was still good enough for a
| shorter-range economy EV that could have replaced a gas for a lot
| of daily commuter drives, especially for two-car families.
|
| For reference: the first generation Nissan Leaf had similar range
| to the EV1. I still have one of these. It's our family's second
| car, and has run flawlessly for over 10 years with virtually zero
| maintenance. Range is still about 60 miles per charge.
|
| BTW... despite the antics of Musk, I think he was absolutely
| instrumental in advancing car electrification. Yes there were
| others making EVs, but Tesla was the first to make them cool and
| in so doing force the rest of the industry to move. Without Tesla
| dragging the industry kicking and screaming into EVs I think we'd
| still be stuck with almost 100% ICE cars. China might have done
| it, but that's because they don't have the same sunk cost in ICE
| engines we have.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Why did you name check Musk and not the actual founders of
| Tesla, Eberhard and Tarpenning, that took advantage of their
| experience with lithium batteries and the forward-thinking
| Californian regulatory regime to found their company there to
| build an electric sports car?
| leobg wrote:
| How about "volume production" as a reason?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Still Californian government providing orders of magnitude
| more cash for that to happen than Musk ever did.
|
| Is there some technical contribution by Musk I'm unaware
| of?
| api wrote:
| Good point, and they're worth name checking too, but the
| company didn't go anywhere big until Musk took over.
|
| Musk clearly has (or at least had) a great skill when it
| comes to scaling companies doing hard things. If he had one
| under his belt, like Tesla, I'd be willing to chalk it up to
| luck, but he has two: Tesla and SpaceX. Both have been
| spectacular successes doing things most people run away from
| screaming with their tail between their legs, namely volume
| production of innovative cars and aerospace.
|
| IMHO SpaceX is a lot more impressive. There's an old joke:
| how do you become a millionaire? A: start as a billionaire
| and found an aerospace company.
|
| I think without him Tesla would have been a boutique car
| company. They would have made expensive boutique cars for a
| subset of visionary EV early adopters, but would not have
| moved the industry. To move the industry you have to grow
| hard and fast enough to _scare_ legacy car makers into trying
| to play catch-up, which is what Tesla did. The only other
| thing I can imagine moving big car makers like this would
| have been the government mandating an EV transition. Big
| bureaucratic things only move when kicked.
|
| People hate acknowledging this because Musk's politics have
| turned so many people off, but unfortunately there appears to
| be no correlation between skills in one domain and being a
| generally well adjusted human being. The world doesn't work
| this way. A person can be good at something and still be a
| lunatic or an asshole.
|
| I mean... if we dismissed all achievement of people who were
| assholes or lunatics, we'd basically have to throw out 2/3 of
| all music.
|
| If anything there might be a slight negative correlation
| between extreme skill in some domain and being well adjusted,
| for a variety of reasons including the weird way people treat
| "savants" in any field. I also suspect a big one is that
| people with messed up backgrounds (bad childhood, etc.) or
| psychological issues sometimes "over-compensate" by achieving
| hyper-skill in some area.
| EliteGadget wrote:
| I see Musk in the the same way that I see Steve Jobs. Steve
| Jobs was famous for his "reality distortion field".
|
| I think that Musk/Tesla gave Politicians the idea that
| everyone can go electric and as a result it ended up being
| mandated into law. Then manufacturers had to try to make
| cars which were electric.
| dboreham wrote:
| > A person can be good at something and still be a lunatic
| or an asshole.
|
| There's a correlation. He's "successful" precisely
| _because_ he 's a lunatic/asshole.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Because the poster was referring to promotion, of which elon
| was much more successful than the actual founders.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| They didn't found their company to build electric sports
| cars, they founded their company to design and sell
| conversion kits, and famously got into a big argument with
| Musk when he wanted to sell complete cars.
| maxerickson wrote:
| How much do you think the EV1 cost just to build?
|
| I don't know, but I'd bet it wasn't "cheap second car" low.
| madamelic wrote:
| I used to walk past one of these every day on my way to and from
| my dorm.
|
| My school apparently had no idea what it was for years and it
| just sat outside underneath the EE building and people would draw
| dicks in the dust on it. When they realized what it was, they
| immediately yonked it inside and made a student team to refurb
| it.
|
| It's super cool I got to see such a piece of history and rare car
| even if I didn't realize it for so long.
|
| Before: https://images.hgmsites.net/med/gm-ev1-electric-car-at-
| misso...
|
| After: https://i.redd.it/8hqyo6iq7ixa1.jpg
| bobmcnamara wrote:
| I remember that car!
|
| Slapped a dillo late one night after walking through that
| tunnel.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| It can happen but you should generally refrain from it.
| rvba wrote:
| > Except the car wasn't there when the police arrived. "GM knew
| about this, and they smuggled the car separately from all the
| other cars out of the state," Sawyer claims.
|
| > Because the car left the State, Sawyer had little recourse.
| "The cop says, 'Well, the car's out of State, contact the FBI.'
| And I tried to contact the FBI, but they weren't interested," he
| tells me.
|
| I dont understand this part of the story. So if somene steals a
| car and drives it out of state only FBI can search for it and
| they dont???
|
| Doesnt this mean legalization of crime?
|
| If it works on the car, will it work on other things too, that
| they just look the other way?
| toast0 wrote:
| If you know where it ended up, you can probably get State
| resources activated over there too. But if you need law
| enforcement to investigate an interstate case, you pretty much
| need the FBI.
|
| The FBI does not investigate all reported crimes, and neither
| do state and local law enforcement, so yeah... if you do crime
| that nobody wants to investigate, you can get away with it; at
| least until those meddling kids show up.
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