In About-Face, GM Says It Has Developed a Fix for EV1 Fire Hazard
Hoping to put an embarrassing recall behind it, General Motors Corp. said Thursday that it has developed a fix for the fire hazard that forced it to take all its first-generation electric vehicles off the road three weeks ago.
Environmentalists see the decision to repair the cars as a positive sign: GM’s confirmation that it is committed to its electric vehicle program. But the 450 drivers who lost their sleek, battery-powered EV1s in the March 2 recall aren’t heartened by the news. The auto maker, the world’s largest, said that it will take nine to 10 months to complete the repairs and that it will not provide replacement cars in the interim.
The company had been stung by the recall because it was forced to put the electric vehicle drivers--many of them outspoken environmentalists--into gasoline-powered replacement cars. GM paid for the gasoline, but that did little to assuage some EV1 drivers’ anger.
Word of the EV1 fix comes less than a week before the California Air Resources Board will hear testimony in Sacramento from electric vehicle drivers and others about the state’s mandate that, beginning with 2003 models, major auto makers include thousands of zero-emission vehicles in the fleet of cars and trucks available for sale in the state.
“There was some reason to be concerned that GM was going to walk [from the recalled EV1s], so it is heartening to see they are showing enough commitment to get them back on road,” said Tim Carmichael, executive director of the Santa Monica-based Coalition for Clean Air. “The winners will be the drivers and the public breathing the air in California.”
The auto maker said that it will terminate existing leases in the interim and that after April it will no longer supply rental cars at GM’s cost.
“It’s great news, but it also is disappointing,” said Phil Karns, a principal engineer at Qualcomm Inc. in San Diego and an EV1 driver since May 1998. “I’m disappointed I won’t get the car back sooner.” He said he also would have liked to hear GM officials commit to building more of the 1999 model EV1s that have longer-range batteries and were unaffected by the recall. That the company will not make such a commitment, Karns and other drivers say, could be seen as a lack of enthusiasm for electric vehicles.
Kris Trexler, a Los Angeles film editor, is more upbeat. “I’m thrilled to death that they found a way to fix it,” he said.
Dorothy Beers, a high school science teacher in San Diego County, agreed. “I don’t care how long it takes. I’m just glad I’ll get my baby back.”
GM recalled the first-generation EV1s, made in late 1996 and 1997, because of a faulty component in the charging port that many in the EV community believe contributed to at least one and possibly two vehicle fires in recent months.
Although the company won’t acknowledge the fires, which consumed EV1s and the garages in which they were parked while being recharged, GM said it has reviewed charging ports from at least 16 vehicles in which the component had failed--some showing signs of overheating.
The component in question is a capacitor that helps regulate the voltage coming into the vehicle during recharging. GM initially said that because of the complexity of the electronics package it was not sure it could devise a repair and might have to retire the cars, reported to cost as much as $100,000 apiece to build.
But Thursday--after weeks of lobbying from lessees of the recalled EVs--GM said it had figured out how to fix the problem.
Because of the time it will take to design the new components, find a supplier, test, build and install the replacement, GM is telling customers that it will be sometime in the first quarter of 2001 before the repaired vehicles will be available.
