I've been watching these videos, I'm honestly shocked about the complete 180 gm is pulling...

In the past, they would have wanted the motors disabled and the batteries incapacitated (if they weren't already, because half of them were trash), if they couldn't legally scare you into letting them scrap the car.

I kindof feel like there's some ulterior motive, like they want another museum piece for themselves, or sales are really hurting and they want to drum up some good will. Call me skeptical if you must, but they _really_ didn't want these on the road.

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xp84 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t think it was all that mysterious, or even sinister. The car was a compliance car, it was mandated by the state to exist, and was not at the time a profitable model. All of them were leased. When the mandate expired or whatever, selling the cars instead of taking them back would have meant supporting this very different car for a long time with parts and repair service. This would have been a huge headache, and not worth it by any measure. Yes, they could have attempted to make BEVs happen for the mass market in general, but every carmaker was free to do so and they all seemed to agree that it wasn’t a good risk until Tesla came years later and made that bet with the S and the 3. But that was 15 years of advancement later.

And GM could have crushed all of them, but apparently was proud enough of it and not afraid people would ‘discover its secrets’ and build a new EV, since they decided to just park a half dozen or whatever at schools for students to poke and prod at. I get that the optics of crushing them made them look like a villain from the “Captain Planet” cartoon, but it would have been foolish for them to do anything else.

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maxerickson 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

Was it even a compliance car?

It's eternally fascinating that people can't or won't grasp that the cars cost far more to produce than they could put them to market for, instead deciding that it was a big conspiracy.

It took until ~2015 for batteries to become practical for expensive mass market cars.

	▲	aeturnum 4 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Was it even a compliance car? I am not an expert but I believe that US regulations require that manufacturers make a range of vehicle types to sell on the US market. You don't need to sell a lot of, say, compact cars - but you need to offer a compact car in order to sell your cash-cow large trucks.
	▲	ryukoposting 5 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		And even now, the fantasy of the $30,000 EV hasn't really been realized. In the US, your only option right now is the Leaf, but good luck finding one for under $32,000.

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bluGill an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This is common for all cars of all makes. You want people to buy new ones so there is an areg where old cars are a liability. People buying new cars trade them in after three years, so you want some value left so they can afford that, but you want them to wear out in about 12 so that people have reason to keep buying more instead of keeping the old. Then after about 25 years it is a collectors car and you can be proud of the few left - they are not impacting new sales much (if any) and give people reason to dream about cars.