On a semi-unrelated topic, I just watched Who Killed the Electric Car?. At least with printers, it's just the printer companies trying to be monopolistic. What goes on with other industries makes the computer industry seem like altruistic non-profits.

I really dug that movie. You have to take it with a big grain of salt, as it's very biased (naturally), but there are definite facts it presents that can't be ignored. The biggest one for me being "why did GM insist on taking back all the leased vehicles to scrap them?"

There is one main reason for them taking it back, to avoid losing more money on the vehicle. If they didn't take the vehicles back they would have been legally obligated to provide a part supply chain (for 15 years in the state of California) to service them. Since there were only about 800 leased that hardly makes any economic sense. Couple that with the price of the line and the limited number that were being leased, it makes perfect sense to get them off the road and shutter that line as soon as possible.

The experience GM gained during that program along with advances in technology directly lead to the Volt, which is due out this year. I hardly think they can be called the bad guy in this case.

Probably the most interesting factoid in the movie is that, during the 90's, the U.S. administration invested maybe a billion dollars on R&D for the Big-3 automakers to develop hybrid drivetrains. This freaked out the Japanese enough that Honda and Toyota started their own efforts. What the Japanese didn't know is that the U.S. effort was all show and no go, and now look at who's selling all the hybrids.

Have you watched the movie, Tim? What you say makes sense, but I don't think I'd say that GM wasn't the bad guy. Besides, apparently the cars were extremely light on maintenance and easy to repair. I find it hard to believe that GM of all companies didn't have the money to support 800 electric vehicles.

I don't see why the price of the line makes any difference. I never said they had to keep making them, I just thought it was awful the way they scrapped all these perfectly functional vehicles. Seems to be the opposite of green.

Besides, when Pontiac stopped making the Aztec, why couldn't they mercifully take all those vehicles back, so I could stop seeing them on the road? (I'm joking here, I just hate those cars)

I am very excited for the Volt, though it does seem like they're dragging their heels on getting it out there. I'm sure it's not an easy car to get into production, but it seems like the release is always just around the corner.

Speaking of the Volt, what is with GM's design team? The car initially started out looking like this:


and ended up looking like this:


Regardless of your opinion of the styling of the prototype, it at least looks like something; it has some character. The production model looks like … nothing. Okay, it's not quite that bad, but it looks like a knockoff Prius.

I can maybe understand the desire to be generic in this case; you don't want to turn off people with styling they might not like who are more interested in the drivetrain. But it's an endemic problem with GM, the new Camaro they released being a notable exception.

I don't know; maybe they feel burned by the Asstek and the SSR.

Wow, thanks for the comparison, Bitt. I hadn't really seen the two together, and you're very right. There are plenty of cars with wide appeal that have far better styling than that. The way it is it just looks like every other sedan in the world with a bit of a raised up hood.

It's not like the toned-down result is even good styling. Just look at the way the front passenger door ends at the front of the car. It might be nit-picky, but I really hate the way it cuts into that line on the bottom of the car. It looks sloppy or something.

I'm definitely still excited about all the tech inside the car, though.

I haven't watched the movie, from what I have heard about it was that it was a documentary with an agenda. If I heard it was more of an unbiased documentary that was talking about the history of the hybrid/electric vehicles I would have watched it.

The reason I mentioned the line price is because it figures in to the total cost that GM already lost on the experiment. They produced about 800 cars at a price of about $1B (around $1.25M per car). They were already way in the red on that program and having to supply parts would have made an already huge crater even larger. Since they were leased vehicles, it was actually cheaper to get the cars back and destroy them than to support them and build that infrastructure.

Incidentally, the Aztecs weren't just leased, those vehicles were purchased so they couldn't legally take them back. I agree with you, they were hideously ugly and I have no clue how they ever left the design team that way.

I thought the original Volt design was awesome and was looking forward to seeing them live. Sadly, things almost always change between prototype to production. I miss some of the prototype features on the Camaro that didn't make it to production. There are reasons things change, even if we (the consumers) don't like them or agree with them. For what it is worth, I do have a 2010 Camaro.

Uh yeah of course it does they want it to look like a Prius.

Out of curiosity, who paid for all of the charging stations in California? In 1990, GM made a serious commitment to manufacture and sell electric cars that they later backpedaled from. If the tax payees of California were responsible for the cost of getting the charging stations in place, then that reversal of commitment was a major blow to the public. It's not a wonder they were pissed off enough to make a documentary with an agenda.

From what I remember, it was GM in conjunction with local power companies. I am pretty sure they weren't publically funded, at least in AZ. CA might have been different, but I don't remember that being the case.