How The GM EV1 Could Have Skipped The Crusher And Been Transformed Into A Gas-Powered Lotus

We’ve asked the question before here at The Autopian: When is it not OK to convert a gasoline-burning car to battery power?

Clearly, it would be sacrilege to rip out an ailing Ferrari’s Colombo V12 in favor of an electric drivetrain, and no one wants to see a Miura’s transverse mill replaced with an electric motor, no matter how it’s oriented under the rear clamshell. But for many other sickly fuel burners, it would be far more beneficial to just find an economical way to see them moving again.

Our own Thomas Hundal suggested one would hardly miss a suicide-door Lincoln Continental’s giant gas-guzzling V8 if it were converted to electric power, as the car was always intended to transport its occupants silently and effortlessly with the pull a high-torque powerplant – exactly what electric drivetrains are known for.

Hhere’s a dead Maserati Biturbo that’s been doing nothing more than keeping a driveway that is now battery-powered and once again attracting passers-by with its still-lovely styling, coddling occupants with its gorgeous interior, and pleasing the driver with a great ride and handling balance. Here’s one for sale in Florida with a mere 38 horsepower that seems to move just fine if the road test featuring a shirtless driver proves anything (you’ve been warned).

Flip the best-cars-for-EV-conversion question and we arrive at a more difficult challenge: what electric cars would you want to see have their batteries and motors ripped out in favor of a fuel tank and some arrangement of pistons to drain it? It’s hard to imagine what that would be, beyond the few Teslas you see with LS1 swaps just for shits and giggles. I can, however, think of one fastidiously engineered ultra-lightweight electric car that hundreds of millions were spent on before nearly every example was unceremoniously crushed: the GM EV1. Maybe we couldn’t save the electric EV1, but if we could have given GM’s great experiment a fossil-fuel heart transplant?

Batteries Not Included

Almost all early EVs started out as gas-powered cars, from Ford Fairmont and Renault LeCars stuffed with lead acid batteries in the seventies all the way up to the first Tesla production car- the Roadster.

Tesla’s two seat sports car (an example of which is currently floating in space) was heavily based on the lightweight Lotus Elise.

The low weight of the Lotus proved to be ideal to compensate for the always excessive weight of the batteries. Tesla built about 2,450 Roadsters from 2008 to 2012, paving the way for them to make their own from-the-ground-up car.

Here’s a strange proposal: what if Lotus ended up doing the opposite of this? Instead of providing a car for an EV conversion, imagine if they somehow got their hands on an obsolete electric car that was worthy of a high-revving combustion engine and “Handling By Lotus”? I think I have just the thing for them.

I Know Who Killed The Electric Car

General Motors has borne the brunt of many controversies over the years. They’ve been blamed for destroying street trolley infrastructure to increase sales of their buses (unlikely), trying to find dirt on Corvair critic Ralph Nader (rather likely) and, more recently, for killing the momentum of electric car development.

The story didn’t start out that way. When GM introduced the first mass-produced modern battery electric car in 1996, environmentalists and environmentally-conscious consumers praised the company for spending reportedly $350 million to do what no other car company was willing to do: develop an electric vehicle that was a “real car” and not a cobbled together compromised mess or a gussied-up golf cart. The EV1 project was spurred on by pressure in the state of California, which was threatening to require the largest car makers to have a fleet that was at least two percent emissions-free by 1998.

General Motors was the only one of the Big 3 to answer the call. Powered by 32 rechargeable lead acid batteries, the EV1 tipped the scales at around 3000 pounds despite the pack of cells weighing nearly 1700 pounds. This was thanks to extensive weight-saving work by The General. An advanced aluminum structure weighed only 290 pounds, and things like magnesium seat rails further slimmed the car. A slippery body with a drag coefficient of only 0.19 further increased the efficiency of the EV1 at speed.

By today’s standards, the EV1’s zero to sixty time of around 7.7 seconds is rather laughable, as is the first-generation car’s 60 mile range. Things improved dramatically for the second-generation cars, which featured a nickel-metal hydride battery pack in place of the lead-acid units and increased the range to nearly 160 miles.

Of course, in the typical Corvair/Fiero/Allante modus operandi at GM, the improvements came too late to change the public’s mind on an electric car being a true substitute for a fossil fuel powered one, and the EV1 was discontinued after the 1999 model year.

At this point, all of the conspiracy theories began. Critics claimed GM was sabotaging the electric car program as California relaxed its aggressive demands for zero-emission cars. Some proponents of the EV1 made claims of long “waiting lists,” but GM said that the EV1 was a slow seller, when actually, you couldn’t even buy it at all. That’s because every single EV1 was leased at a rather high cost of $300 to $574 per month on a car with an initial price of $34,000.

Personally, I have doubts about the whole grassy-knoll-level conspiracy thing. I’m not a shill of the auto industry; my constant GM bashing should make that obvious, but I do tend to believe this industry giant’s reasoning for discontinuing the EV1 program, taking back all lease cars, and destroying virtually all of the 1,117 examples built.

Even at the rather high lease price, GM was losing money on every car that they sold and would likely continue to do so for a long time, something no publicly traded corporation can realistically do regardless of the nobility of the effort. According to GM, liability concerns were paired with a lack of confidence in the charging infrastructure at the time. Twenty-five years later, those liability concerns seem valid (Chevy Bolt fires, anyone?) and the availability of charging stations around the nation is still rather pitiful; it’s hard not to see GM’s point. Don’t forget that the EV1 program was also limited to only California and Arizona; forget the frozen rust belt where I live and, with our current weather, the early EV1 would likely have had a range of a few hundred yards.

Look, I have zero interest in debating the factuality of Who Killed The Electric Car. My main issue as a card-carrying Autopian is with destroying useable cars that were, at the time, still newer than anything I’ve ever owned. Those EV1s could have lived a productive second life, and I know just the company that could have made that happen.

Lotus Notes

In the nineties, Lotus cars finally seemed to be getting back to their roots of making small, lightweight sports cars that, while still costly, were much more attainable than the supercar Esprits and GT-style Excels they had peddled since the late seventies.

The 1989 Lotus Elan came first, a welcome return to form for the now-General Motors owned Hethel firm even if the small Isuzu-powered two-seater spun the front wheels. Despite this out-of-character drivetrain layout, Elan’s handling was generally praised by the media with some calling it the best handling front drive car ever built.

Sadly, with a price approaching $40,000 there ultimately were few takers, with only 3,855 selling worldwide and a scant 559 in the place that car was supposedly targeted at: the United States.

Front drive was gone for Elan’s replacement, the mid-engined Toyota-powered 1996 Elise. This highly tossable back-to-basics sports car was a purely elemental throwback, a lightweight targa-topped machine with an interior that made a base model Geo Metro seem like a Rolls Royce.

The Elise wasn’t even available in the US until 2005 when it received an exemption for having headlamps and bumpers below the federal standards, and the lack of smart airbags doomed Elise sales in America by 2011. The model did last in other markets all the way up to 2021, by which time over 35,000 cars had sold over its twenty-five-year lifespan.

Still, Lotus had yet to revisit the tradition of the Lotus (Catherham) Seven and the sixties Elite/Elan models that featured good old front engines and rear-wheel drive, a configuration that Mazda seemed to flat-out rip off with great success in their MX-5 Miata of 1989. What if an opportunity presented itself that allowed Colin Chapman’s company to create such a car?

From EV1 To EVNone

Let’s say we somehow save the products of the EV1’s nine-figure development programs with magnesium seating parts from going to the crusher. A 1300-pound body and chassis? A drag coefficient like a bullet? Come on, we need to put some power and meaty rubber on this thing, right? Lotus seems perfect for that job.

General Motors had sold its interests in Lotus by 1993, but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t still willing to work together. In fact, GM was able to help always-cash-strapped Lotus with funds to help them make the Elise meet more stringent year 2000 crash safety regulations; in exchange, Lotus developed Opel and Vauxhall versions of the Elise that were produced from 2000 to 2005 with GM engines (the Opel Speedster and Vauxhall VX220).

Maybe Lotus could also apply some their chassis magic to a few more of The General’s sportier cars in exchange for a few bucks and a supply of a thousand or so formerly electric coupes (that they agree to totally strip clean) for them to turn into Lotus Elenas.

We’ll start with the EV1’s stock chassis:

Ripping those nasty, heavy old batteries out of the EV1 would be the first thing to do, along with all the soon-to-be-dated electronic systems. The skinny tires, rear axle,137 horsepower electric motor, and stubby-looking front fascia would also take permanent leave from the GM coupe. Now, the purveyors of the world’s best-handling cars have a rather blank slate to work with.

The lower the center of gravity the better, and somehow I can’t think of any GM motor that would work better in front of the former EV1 than a flat four made by a company that GM owned a twenty percent stake of at the time: Subaru. A turbocharged WRX STI engine would roughly double the horsepower of the original electric motor at 261. The six-speed manual ‘box would transfer power to a Soobie rear differential and independent suspension via a driveshaft sitting where the central batteries once lived, underneath a long, narrow fuel cell. One battery would remain at the back of the car, as well as the washer bottle

Much wider wheels and tires replace the low-rolling-resistance EV1 pieces, and rear track would increase significantly. Aesthetically, we can make the EV1 look dramatically different with rather minimal changes.

A longer nose cone with pop-up lights seems to echo the look of the Elan and Esprit (and the needed air slot for the Soobie intercooler). Rear fender skirts are ditched to show off the wider rolling stock; black rocker panels attempt to reduce visual weight of the flanks. A body-colored wrap over B-pillar and black painted accents around the windows change the look of the otherwise unchanged greenhouse.

Here’s an animation of the changes:

In back, the droopy tail might be good for aerodynamics but not for rear downforce or the appearance of a sports car.

We’ll add a large urethane or rubber spoiler to give a look similar to a Saab 900 Turbo or even the fourth-generation F-body cars. The entry keypad on the B pillar is ripped out and replaced with a retro plaque listing Lotus’s World Championship Car Constructor titles (boy, these guys were unbeatable on the F1 track in the seventies). Modified round taillights and a black-painted heckblende in the center complete the look, along with a rear diffuser panel surrounding the now-needed exhaust pipes flanking a backup light.

Once again, let’s look at an animation:

The end result is almost like a shrunken GM Gen 4 F-Body, in a similar way to how Bob Lutz’s 1968 Opel GT was a scaled down C3 Vette. It’s not a total thing of unparalleled beauty but it looks far more like a sports car than a GM electric vehicle.

We’ll Need A Tach Now

The EV1’s interior is a far cry from the basic cabin of the Elise, and we don’t even need to change much on the original car. Here’s the original in all its late nineties GM glory (though it’s actually a lot better than many of their offerings at the time):

Now here’s the modified cabin of the Lotus Elena:

The Soobie gear selector is surrounded by a new panel featuring HVAC and window controls; if these look like parts from an old 2001 Chevy Cavalier, that’s because that’s what they are.  A fluorescent tachometer and auxiliary gauge pod now live right in front of the steering wheel. Optional sport seats could replace the EV1 originals for ultimate lateral support. It might not look like much, but the mission of this thing is pure driving, not luxury. Honestly, it’s flat-out lavish next to the inside of that bare-bones Elise.

From Death Row To Pit Row

If we can keep the finished weight to around 2000 pounds, we’ll have a sports car that rockets to sixty in the four-second range, a very Lotus-like feat that other exotics would need three times the cylinders to replicate. Handling? Well, we know that Lotus tweaked the rear-engined Delorean to not be a total embarrassment to drive, so imagine what they could do here. I could see this being a much more useable and comfortable distance cruiser than an Elise, but still capable on the track and an outright blast on the road. The Hollywood actors who loved their EV1s would certainly cry foul at the sound of a throbby Soobie motor wailing away as you drift through corners, but this transformation would truly be recycling nonetheless.

Is all of this likely easier said than done? Probably. Most of the changes would likely prove impossible. Still, there’s so much potential for this advanced, lightweight GM car, and far more that it had to offer beyond just the cutting-edge-for-the-time electric drivetrain.

Remember also that the EV1’s original platform name was the PrEView, or P-Car to some. In some ways, that name means it should be a successor to the earlier GM P-Car that was also a compact two-seater: the Pontiac Fiero. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the legacy of not one but two underappreciated General Motors products live on?

This Is What A Lotus 4-Door Sedan From 1987 Could Have Looked Like – The Autopian

How The Indian Carmaker Tata Could Hypothetically Revive The Honda Element As A Sub-$20,000 EV – The Autopian

Let’s Make Some More Cars Out Of The Fiero’s Criminally Underutilized GM P-Body Platform – The Autopian

A Ford Maverick Could Be The Affordable, Practical Convertible The Market Is Missing – The Autopian