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James Walker
STL 100
Who Killed the Electric Car
The electric car introduced in 1996 and was popular in California. The car was quiet small and produced no exhaust; it was a product that was loved by consumers and eco-friendly. This idea of the electric car was not one that was recent in implementing; about 100 years ago there were more electric cars than there were gas cars and they ran really well and quiet. The problem was that after long term use the car would get slower while the gas car was fine as long as there was enough gas in it and they were fast. Over time the air in California is very toxic due to over use of gas cars; 1 out of 4 from the ages of 15-25 have respiratory Issues in Los Angeles; there were 41 stage 1 smog alerts and 19 pounds of Carbon Dioxide was in their atmosphere. Car companies needed a change and wanted to be the first to revolutionize the car industry and introduce the electric car. In 1987 General Motors won the world’s solar race in Australia and started to do research on building a car model for everyday uses. To encourage the advancement in the car industry the state of California passed the Zero Emissions Vehicle Mandate in 1990. The mandate states that if dealers want to sell cars in California some of the cars had to produce no exhaust. This was hard to do because the electric cars were so expensive and many people had to lease the cars because they weren’t up for sale. The car was extremely popular to people who were eco-friendly however the car had very little advertisement and supports started to lose interest. In a survey taken 4000 people said they would try the electric car but when those 4000 were called only 50 ended up signing a lease for the car. The electric car wasn’t doing too good in the sales department.
Because the demand seemed to be very low for electric cars GM suffered in sales and because the car was so expensive to