GM Impact electric car
The appeal has always been undeniable: a car that emits no pollution, burns no imported oil, never needs an oil change and has no spark plugs, filters, muffler or radiator to break or need replacing.
For years, electric cars have been held up as the solution to the nation's environmental and energy ills. And, for years, enthusiastic predictions of when the first practical electric vehicle would hit the market have proved empty. The batteries were too inefficient, the range and speed were impractically low and, most of all, critics said, the stodgy auto makers would never take the risk of such a radical departure from the tried and true.
So when General Motors, with its reputation as the stodgiest of them all, announced last year that it would have a sporty electric car in showrooms by the mid-1990s - a car with enough zip to keep up with fast traffic and sufficient range to meet the urban commuting needs of millions the surprise was double: First that it would happen at all, and second that it was GM that was making it happen.
The story of GM's high-risk, high-stakes decision is a story of how the future can be defined by bright, inventive, determined individuals-even in what many think of as a great, unwieldy dinosaur of a company. The car traces its lineage not to traditional automobile product planners but to the builders of an exotic human powered airplane and an equally exotic sun powered racing car-and to GM's controversial decision in 1985 to spend $5.2 billion to purchase Hughes Aircraft Co., a California-based maker of sophisticated satellites and military radar systems.
The car, now being designed by a handpicked group of 200 in the hidden shops of General Motors' technical center in Warren, Mich., will be sold throughout America, Europe and Asia. If it turns out to be as successful as GM hopes, it could mark the beginning of a worldwide shift away from petroleum powered personal transportation vehicles to clean electrics.
Though no one could have imagined at the time where it would lead. the development of GM's electric car began in late 1986 when solar power enthusiast Hans Tholstrup mailed Roger Smith, then GM chairman, an invitation to enter the World Solar Cliallenge--a race of 1,950 miles across Australia for cars powered by sunlight. The letter and a 44-page rule book bounced around GM's upper manageament, then were finally sent, without comment, to Hughes-presumably because Hughes employs solar cells to provide electric power for its satellites.
Tholstrup's invitation landed on the desk of Hughes Vice President Howard Wilson, who seized the moment. Wilson, a radar expert nearing retirement. had eagerly volunteered for the job of selling" Hughes's fancy technologies to its new owner when GM bought the company the year before. He'd already pirsuaded Pontiac to offer a held up" display derived from fighter aircraft that projected instrument panel readings onto the windshield. Wilson realized that the race "was an opportunity to show how technology from Hughes and GM could be merged." He buttonholed Hughes experts for ideas. Edmund Ellion. then director of technology for Hughes Space & Communications Group and holder of two dozen solar cell patents, said Hughes could make the electric power source needed but that the company knew nothing about building cars. It would probably take two years. The race was only 10 months away.
The Condor connection. But Ellion suggested that Hughes might collaborate with Paul MacCready, it classmate of his at California institute of Technology. MacCready, chairman of it small California company. AeroVironment, had become internationally famous in 1977 when his Gossamer Condor won the Kremer prize as the first successful human powered airplane. That fragile craft is now displayed prominently in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. MacCready's team later built the first human powered plane to cross the English Channel and, with Du Pont's sponsorship, a solar powered aircraft that flew from Paris to England. it turned out that one of MacCready's top young engineers. Alec Brooks, designer of the Flyng, Fish-the world's fastest human powered watercraft - had already thought about the Australian race. He'd sketched sketched a apossible entry begaore he realized he didn't have the necessary resources to enter.
With MaCready and Brooks eager to participate, Wilson jumped on a plane for Detroit. He cornered Robert Stempel, executive vice president for GM's overseas operations-and now GM chairman-and got permission to spend $75,000 on a quick study. Three intense weeks later, in late March 1987, Wilson. MacCready and Brooks returned to Detroit for what would be a crucial meeting. They convinced Executive Vice President Donald Atwood (now deputy secretary of defense), who supervised Hughes; Robert Eaton, who headed GM's technical staffs, (now head of GM in Europe), and Stempel that they could build a racer in the seven months remaining-and that they could win. Two days later, the executive committee committed the corporation's prestige and millions to the solar car race.
In a reversal of traditional roles, little AeroVironment ran the effort while giant GM supplied technical support and expertise from the far corners of its empire. The task was formidable: Design a racing car so light and streamlined that it could run swiftly on the amount of electricity consumed by a hair dryer.
The sleek, teardrop shaped General Motors Sunraycer that emerged from AeroVironment's skunk works simply blew away the competition, averaging 41.6 miles pcr hour to finish 2 1/2 days ahead of the second-place entry. GM trumpeted its triumph around the world, showing Sunraycer at 269 events before turning it over to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. GM was so pleased with AeroVironment's performance that it bought 15 percent of the little company.
That might have been the end of it, but Sunraycer's success led the restive California team to wonder how its lessons could he applied. "Early in 1988," Wilson says, Alec approached me and suggested we ought to consider building an electric vehicle using the same concepts that had worked with Sunraycer. it was very appealing to me." Brooks's idea was to push available and affordable technology to the limit. If a car with state-of-the-art electronic controls could be made very light, very aerodynamic and with low rolling resistance from its tires, he argued, it could deliver striking performance even with the small amount of energy that could be stored in proven, inexpensive. recyclable lead-acid batteries.
Wilson and Brooks made the rounds at GM to solicit information and, implicitly, to garner support for their project. Their association with Sunraycer gave them credibility and opened doors at the highest levels. Wilson ran interference for it," MacCready says. "He knew just who to talk to, in which order, to get enthusiasm for it. He was the quarterback as well as the chief blocker."
Not everyone was sure the ambitious goals could be met. Kenneth Baker, chief engineer on an aborted GM electric vehicle project a decade ago who runs GM's new program, says that at "clandestine dinner meetings" he raised doubts that lead-acid batteries could supply sufficient power and range. More-advanced batteries, still under development, might be needed. Experts at Delco Remy, GM's battery division, were even more skeptical. Having been involved in past electric car projects that we canceled, they were reluctant to participate in another.
But Delco Remy was developing a new "recombinant" battery for fishermen's trolling motors. Gas given off during charging was captured chemically so none escaped. This meant the battery could be sealed, and water would never have to be added. Possibly the experimental lead-acid battery could be scaled up for a car.
Wilson and Brooks delivered their 100-page-plus proposal for a fully equipped, air-conditioned, two-seat prototype electric commuter car to GM management in July 1988. The reaction was cautious at first. GM had built electric cars before, but none of them had really panned out," Stempel recalls, and there were many other demands for resources. "The issue was, do we have enough technical confidence it would work this time'?"
What tipped the balance in its favor was a small black box that had been developed for the Sunraycer. Developed by electronics wizard Alan Cocconi, it managed battery power far more efficiently than anything available before - and, says Stempel, that was the heart of the project here." The go-ahead for a one-year program came in November 1988.
War in the ranks. But almost as soon as the new car began taking shape, a battle erupted that nearly killed it. GM's advanced concepts center, a 36-person design studio in Newbury Park, Calif.. charged with sculpting its exterior lines, wanted to make a striking design statement. Brooks and his engineers wanted a shape with low aerodynamic drag. Tempers flared. Brooks threatened to design his own car. "We couldn't give way," MacCrcady said, even if it meant scuttling the whole project. "It was that serious."
After "a thousand phone calls" from the warring parties, Donald Runkle. vice president of GM's advanced engineering staff, all early proponent of the project whose budget now supported its development, flew to Califronia and knocked heads togther." Unless something was done, he said, "we were going to end up with one car that met the statistics and was ugly and another that was and didn't work." He issued an ultimatum: "One car or zero, that's the deal." They got the message. Runkle held us together," Brooks says. The final design met the engineers specs, and the designers think it's beautiful.
The electric car project had been sold as nothing more than a technology demonstration, a learning exercise for GM insiders. Then, says Runkle, Roger Smith got into the act." With growing public concern about air pollution and with clean air legislation pending, the chairman wanted to show off the electric prototype in the nation's smog capital, at the Los Angeles Auto Show in January 1990. Runkle argued that would give away proprietary technology. He lost - and suddenly the team had barely six months to build a real car that would live up to its promises.
When the dust settled, the car, dubbed the GM Impact electric car" (a spate of jokes-Johnny Carson said the GM Impact electric car would be competing with the Ford Whiplash - has apparently persuaded GM to come up with a new name for the production model), met its proponents' high expectations. Wind tunnel tests showed the car was 50 percent more aerodynamic than the best on the highway. Cocconi's electronic controller, crammed into a 60-pound package under the hood, was at least three times better than any built before. In a week at the Arizona proving grounds the 2,200-pound GM Impact electric car, including 870 pounds of batteries, clicked off 0-to-60 miles per hour acceleration times of just 7.9 seconds. A camera crew videotaped GM Impact electric car beating a Japanese-made Nissan 300ZX sports car in a drag race. Most important, perhaps. it ran 124 miles of stop-and-go driving before its batteries died-enough range between charges for most commuters.
Roger Smith himself introduced GM Impact electric car at the L.A. Auto Show, and it captured more attention than any concept car GM had ever shown. Some who saw the car mailed GM cash for a down payment-, others even sent donations to encourage more development. The money was returned, but the public reaction made GM executives begin thinking seriously about the GM Impact electric car as more than just a flashy demo.
They were all painfully aware of the risks of trying to turn a handmade, fiberglass bodied, one-of-a-kind prototype into an aluminum skinned, crash resistant model manufactured by the thousands and driven by ordinary motorists. But they also knew that California air pollution officials intended to begin flatly legislating gas cars out of polluted areas. A decade earlier. GM had proposed building electric cars to combat the high cost of gasoline, then gas prices plummeted and the idea died. This time the equation was different. Environmental concerns were only likely to grow, and not just in the United States but worldwide. Just three months later, in the buildup to Earth Day 1990, Smith took GM Impact electric car to Washington and announced that GM would produce it car like it.
General Motors didn't set out methodically to reach this point. it happened because, bit by bit, in the best tradition of American enterprise, it grasped the vision held out by dreamers like MacCready, Brooks and Wilson, who, in Stempel's words. "imagine the impossible and go about to do it." Now practical people like Baker have what he calls "the opportunity of a lifetime to write automotive history" as his team develops the production version. Perhaps someday the original GM Impact electric car will reside, like its precursors, Gossamer Condor and Sunraycer, in a Smithsonian museum, a symbol of a new transportation age.
U.S. News & World Report
August 26, 1991
Cook, William J.