Well true, they weren't technically unavailable. They were however, the most unpleasant crapboxes they could slap together and slide through crash testing (Neon, Aveo, Caliber, Cavalier, Aspire...). Hopefully Mini has shown them how small cars can be efficient, fun and most importantly... Profitable.

With the Fiesta, Ford recently seems to have been listening though, and the Cruze might actually be OK too.

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so.... consumers chose that the EV1s should be taken out back and crushed?
there has never been fuel efficient cars mass produced in USA. only 'small' to grotesquely large vehicles with inefficient engines in them and recently only large cars with inefficienct engines in them.

a prius could be said to be a little bit fuel efficient (could be done much better still) yet GM fought even that. impossible they said

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GM sold the EV1 at a huge loss so they could buy the right to sell cars in CA. Once CA dropped the ZEV mandate, GM dropped the EV1. If GM had sold them for $100k like Tesla does, GM would have gotten endless grief. All of the other automakers also stopped selling EVs at a loss as well.

The Detroit automakers focused on large cars because they were profitable. Meanwhile, even those consumers who bought Japanese vehicles preferred the larger ones, often opting for V6 powered cars when 4 cylinders were more than sufficient.

GM "fought" the Prius? What are you talking about? Honda, Ford, Toyota, GM, and others have been working on hybrid technology for years.

http://green.autoblog.com/2009/01/02/so-you-think-toyota-invented-the-modern-hybrid-think-again/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_a_New_Generation_of_Vehicles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Mode_Hybrid

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GM: Hybrids make no sense

http://money.cnn.com/2004/01/06/pf/autos/detroit_gm_hybrids/

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Actually, Dave, if GM had sold the EV1 for $100,000 they would have made several hundred happy customers and made a substantial profit. Fact is, GM refused to sell at any price, and many EV1 drivers would have been willing to pay that kind of price.

As evidence - Tesla Motors has now sold over 850 Roadsters, which is more than the number of EV1s that GM offered for personal leases!

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DAVE:

Get your head out of your a$$....consumers are dumb so whatever they are fed they will buy. Did GM make the same huge effort to build quality small cars and market them the way they marketed their giant SUVs for mental midgets?

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"At no time were fuel efficient vehicles unavailable."

And, more importantly, at no time have small cars been profitable. (Likely, imports included.)

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BTW - Seven of the last eight cars I've owned have been four cylinders, four of them were stickshifts. (including my current whip, a 97 Miata)

GM sold Prizms, Metros, Trackers, Saturns, etc. alongside their larger vehicles. (Yes, I agree that the Cavalier was a POS)

People can make up their own minds. Don't blame GM if soccer moms buy SUVs when they should buy minivans.

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The efficient cars that GM made appeared to have been intended as stepping-stones to their good vehicles.

The efficient cars made by Honda, Toyota, and so forth were intended to be good vehicles.

Guess how many Hondas my dad has owned since I can remember, and how many Chevy's? 3-0, Honda.

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I love the, "People bought big cars, so that's why they made them!" argument. As if the automakers pump a huge chunk of their income into advertising for no particular reason.

Automakers pushed big, heavy vehicles as the latest must-have because they had a larger profit margin, plain and simple.

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Agreed. + 1.

How is this only Detroit's problem? The Big 3 certainly made mistakes but so did everybody else.

Over the past 10 years: BMWs got bigger, Hondas got bigger, Toyotas got bigger, and Nissans got bigger. Nissan and Toyota both invested heavily in new V-8 engines and the factories to build them. Unable to finance a new V-8, Honda did the next best thing and shoved a car-based truck out on to the showroom floor.

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It's 2010 almost and you think 25 MPG on average is good?

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@mister nomer

Because GM not only wouldn't mass produce their most efficient vehicle, they pried it out of the hands of their literally protesting customers. And then GM proceeded to create the hummer brand. I am not saying the other companies are flawless, but if you look at the sales sheets, they are doing better.

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Nozferat:
You're reporting a figure which reflects what customers want to buy. American cars meet or exceed the mpg figures of competitive foreign cars and people are still buying the foreign cars.

As to whether 25 is enough, that's a different question. If you want that to rise, you need to get people to stop buying RX350s more than you need them to stop buying domestic cars.

Boyprodigy1:
You mean like the Mini E? Which is only leased? What about the Mitsubishi iMiEV? Only leased.

GM couldn't afford to sell the car at the price it was leased at. And once California dropped their mandate to offer it, they stopped offering it since it was a money loser.

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You are right that it was a money loser but not for the reason you would think. You see, an electric vehicle doesn't need oil filters. Its transmission is a lot less complicated (and a lot less prone to break down). Its motor will go a million miles before burning out. And if huge pushes are made on batteries, they will go a lot further than 200k miles. My point is that they wouldn't have a business model for selling replacement parts (Which if you look is a huge portion of their balance sheets). And that is why they couldn't afford to sell it. Not because the costs are too high, but because they are too low.

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