Photo: Car Lease
These days we tend to give the Renault Fluence Z.E. the honor of being the world’s first mass-production electric car. Others point to the Leaf, as it was the first one to be successful. And the vast majority of us tend to credit Tesla with the birth of the electric car revolution.
But before all these cars, there were others, the true pioneers of the genre. One of the best known such vehicles is the EV1, a machine American behemoth GM made and handed into customer hands between 1996 and 1999, before deciding it’s not worth the effort and pulled the plug.
Historically speaking, it is the EV1 that was the world’s first purpose-built, production electric vehicle. Available only as a lease in select regions of the United States, it was ugly as hell, and offered laughable performance levels, judging by today’s standards: between 55 and 142 miles (88 to 229 km) range, depending on the type of battery and testing procedure.
The cool thing about it was that it used a crude version of inductive charging, and it could reach 60 mph in about eight seconds thanks to the 139-horsepower electric motor.
Despite its pros and cons, the EV1 is the predecessor of not a single brand new GM car. But it did inspire Elon Musk in setting up Tesla. In his own words, written in stone on Twitter back in 2017, “few people know that we started Tesla when GM forcibly recalled all-electric cars from customers in 2003 and then crushed them in a junkyard.”
With that in mind, having the EV1 return with Tesla styling cues and a more SUV-like stance could only be seen as justice being served. And that’s exactly what we have here, a digital exercise coming from British Car Lease and titled GM EVX.
Will this ever be made? Of course not. Does it look cool, and would something like this be successful? Sure, if it were made by Tesla, not GM.
Historically speaking, it is the EV1 that was the world’s first purpose-built, production electric vehicle. Available only as a lease in select regions of the United States, it was ugly as hell, and offered laughable performance levels, judging by today’s standards: between 55 and 142 miles (88 to 229 km) range, depending on the type of battery and testing procedure.
The cool thing about it was that it used a crude version of inductive charging, and it could reach 60 mph in about eight seconds thanks to the 139-horsepower electric motor.
Despite its pros and cons, the EV1 is the predecessor of not a single brand new GM car. But it did inspire Elon Musk in setting up Tesla. In his own words, written in stone on Twitter back in 2017, “few people know that we started Tesla when GM forcibly recalled all-electric cars from customers in 2003 and then crushed them in a junkyard.”
With that in mind, having the EV1 return with Tesla styling cues and a more SUV-like stance could only be seen as justice being served. And that’s exactly what we have here, a digital exercise coming from British Car Lease and titled GM EVX.
Will this ever be made? Of course not. Does it look cool, and would something like this be successful? Sure, if it were made by Tesla, not GM.
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