I just got through reading The Car That Could: The Inside Story of GM's Revolutionary Electric Vehicle, by Michael Shnayerson. It's out of print, but well worth hunting down a copy.
I don't think there's any other book like this. Basically this author had inside access to the whole Impact/EV1 program, and he's relaying the kind of info that we'd never normally learn: the corporate politics, the national politics, the personality clashes, the engineering hang-ups, the processes that any car has to go through as it's brought from concept to production. This really is the stuff outsiders never see.
The story begins with a brief recap of the Sunraycer, proceeds with the original Impact show car, and then covers the entire, drawn-out, on-and-off-and-on-again process of turning it into the EV1. Prior to reading this book I had no idea what an epic journey the EV1 underwent to reach production. It's a minor miracle.
There's an underlying irony that the author did not intend. The book has a happy ending, with the first production EV1s rolling off the assembly line. After so many trials, the forces of enlightenment and progress have triumphed. Now the way has been paved for a bright future of clean cars for everyone -- and a bright future for a shiny new GM, reborn as the technological and environmental leader of the automotive world.
But of course, everybody reading the book today knows what followed after that, and how GM ultimately managed to snatch defeat from the very jaws of victory. It casts the entire story in a different light. There's plenty of foreshadowing here. Even before I was a third through the book it had become painfully obvious that GM is its own worst enemy.
I also got my nose rubbed in just how hard it is to create an electric car -- a proper car, a manufacturable and sellable car, not a car-show "concept" or a kit-car experiment or a homebrew conversion. Time after time I read about problems GM had to overcome, and I found myself thinking, "Tesla must have had to wrestle with stuff like this too." At least Tesla have a rough map to follow. GM were in uncharted territory with the EV1.
My biggest difficulty was keeping up with all the characters. There were a large number of people involved in this story, and that's no fault of the author. The author does his best to paint a word-sketch of each major player, to make them memorable, but the device itself becomes tiresome after a while. I think a dramatis personae for easy reference would have made the book more manageable.
I don't think there's any other book like this. Basically this author had inside access to the whole Impact/EV1 program, and he's relaying the kind of info that we'd never normally learn: the corporate politics, the national politics, the personality clashes, the engineering hang-ups, the processes that any car has to go through as it's brought from concept to production. This really is the stuff outsiders never see.
The story begins with a brief recap of the Sunraycer, proceeds with the original Impact show car, and then covers the entire, drawn-out, on-and-off-and-on-again process of turning it into the EV1. Prior to reading this book I had no idea what an epic journey the EV1 underwent to reach production. It's a minor miracle.
There's an underlying irony that the author did not intend. The book has a happy ending, with the first production EV1s rolling off the assembly line. After so many trials, the forces of enlightenment and progress have triumphed. Now the way has been paved for a bright future of clean cars for everyone -- and a bright future for a shiny new GM, reborn as the technological and environmental leader of the automotive world.
But of course, everybody reading the book today knows what followed after that, and how GM ultimately managed to snatch defeat from the very jaws of victory. It casts the entire story in a different light. There's plenty of foreshadowing here. Even before I was a third through the book it had become painfully obvious that GM is its own worst enemy.
I also got my nose rubbed in just how hard it is to create an electric car -- a proper car, a manufacturable and sellable car, not a car-show "concept" or a kit-car experiment or a homebrew conversion. Time after time I read about problems GM had to overcome, and I found myself thinking, "Tesla must have had to wrestle with stuff like this too." At least Tesla have a rough map to follow. GM were in uncharted territory with the EV1.
My biggest difficulty was keeping up with all the characters. There were a large number of people involved in this story, and that's no fault of the author. The author does his best to paint a word-sketch of each major player, to make them memorable, but the device itself becomes tiresome after a while. I think a dramatis personae for easy reference would have made the book more manageable.
