Arthur Matteson has been resurrecting electric cars almost his whole life.
Matteson is an electrical engineering master’s student and president of the MSU Solar Car Team, a team that – in addition to designing, building and racing a solar car – is resurrecting a 1997 General Motors EV1.
A history of homebrewing
Matteson began tinkering with electric vehicles at a young age. His first subject was his grandfather’s 1980 Renault LeCar, an electric car that had fallen into disrepair.
“I’ve actually got a picture of me sitting next to the electric car when I was three, with my grandfather there,” he said. “And so I said, you know, ‘I want to make that thing go.’”
At the age of 16, he did.
But he didn’t stop there. He continued to improve the Renault, eventually replacing the DC motor with a more energy efficient and contemporary AC motor – similar to those found in many of today’s hybrid vehicles.
An AC motor facilitates regenerative breaking, he explained, recharging the car’s battery when pressure is applied to the breaks.
Matteson affectionately refers to the Renault as a homebrew, a term signifying the do-it-yourself experimentation common to many hobbyists.
In high school, he turned his electrical hobby into a small business, installing custom under body lighting kits for his classmates, simultaneously ingratiating and alienating himself from his peers.
“I’ve basically been tinkering with this stuff every day of my life,” he said. “That’s why the social skills weren’t there. That’s what college has been for.”
Rechargine the EV1
Nine months ago, MSU gave Matteson the keys to one of the world’s few undestroyed General Motors EV1 electric cars.
GM donated the 1997 EV1 several years ago to MSU for research purposes, but it had been sitting untouched in a university salvage area ever since.
Matteson is designing and, along with fellow members of the Solar Car Team, manufacturing a complex electrical system called a multilevel power inverter.
He hopes the inverter will resurrect the EV1.
“A multilevel power inverter is a system that can produce a varying output voltage from a given number of interconnected sources without the need for full amplitude pulse with modulation,” he wrote in a preliminary draft of his master’s thesis.
In layman’s terms, his design incorporates 54 individual batteries that are joined together to provide a cool, quiet and safe power source to the motor.
The EV1 originally used 26 53-amp hour lead-acid batteries, compared to the smaller 22-amp hour 12-volt batteries Matteson’s design will incorporate.
General Motors also used an inverter to connect their batteries, but their full-amplitude system produced dangerous shocks and wasn’t good for the motor, according to Matteson.
Matteson estimates the resurrection of the EV1 will cost $5,000. The money will come out of a dwindling $80,000 grant the Provost provided to the Solar Car Team more than five years ago.
They are currently seeking sponsorships and donations to supplement the approximately $20,000 that remain in the fund. The team’s upcoming solar car race – a three week trip from Dallas to Calgary – will likely cost more than $50,000.
GM made Matteson’s electrical design necessary by stripping the EV1 of its batteries, the motor controller and a few small electrical components before donating the car to MSU, according to Dan West, vice president of the Solar Car Team.
“There are certain terms and agreements that we had to sign to,” West said, explaining the university’s agreement with GM.
“We can’t restore it how it was supposed to be, so we’re changing the electric components to it. They don’t want the same thing that was running down the highway running again.”
GM stressed this point in a letter written to MSU in November of 2005 – more than a year after the university received the car.
“The school will not attempt to get the vehicle running again as an EV1,” they wrote. “The school will not attempt to get EV1 parts for the vehicle from GM, a Saturn retailer, or any other source.”
The manufacturer’s strict policy is not without precedent.
General Motors killed the electric car
In 2003 GM discontinued the EV1 and, when most of the leases expired in 2004, began destroying the vehicles.
Former and would-be lessees bemoaned the automaker’s decision, as documented in Chris Paine’s 2006 film, “Who Killed the Electric Car?”
GM designed the EV1 in response to California’s zero emissions mandate, and began leasing the car in 1997.
Over the next several years, the Michigan-based automaker continued to lease EV1’s, eventually upgrading the car’s battery and issuing a voluntary recall to repair a charge port cable.
Owners praised the car while others joined growing waiting lists.
The California Air Resources Board relaxed their zero emissions standard in 2003 and GM, citing a lack of profitability, canceled their electric car development program.
Others have taken up the mantle, including Tesla Motors who unveiled their electric Roadster sports car in 2006.
Matteson sees a future for electric cars, and believes that the technology exists to make them profitable.
“They almost did too good of a job on the EV1,” he said. “And then they did such a good job to prove that it wasn’t profitable. And it could be profitable if they made one with four seats –which they prototyped – and just made one that is a little more practical.”
“I hope that they do that. But if they don’t, I will.”
To see this story’s progress history click here.
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OK, maybe you have to hit me over the head with it. But WHY did GM strip the car? WHY is GM so insistent that they don’t rebuild it as an EV-1? WHY did GM send them a reminder of the agreement? Was it because of the movie?
Also, your story history indicates that this grew from a tip that the students were turning this car into a solar vehicle. Is that still going to happen, or was that just bad information?
GM obviously wasn’t very clear about why they stripped the battery system. The letter was sent in 2005, so it was well before the movie but around the time former lessees were lamenting the discontinuation.
The original tip was confused, probably on my end. It’s the Solar Car Team, but the EV1 is a project independent of their solar car preparation. For more information about their solar car efforts, follow the story’s progress history by clicking the link above.
What does GM say when you ask them directly why they stripped the vehicle and forbade that it be rebuilt as a true EV1? You can at least report that. What do others (students and faculty involved in the project, GM watchers, electric car enthusiasts) say about why they think GM not only stripped the car, but was insistent that it not be rebuilt with EV1 parts scavenged elsewhere?
On the surface, it makes no sense. Why would they care? It seems like it may be for the same reason that they destroyed the brand new vehicles instead of selling or giving them away. But why did they do that? It can’t be an issue of GM worried about revealing proprietary technology. Heck, they were selling the car to the public. Something must be going on here. To me, that’s a nagging hole in the report so far.
One of the challenges we set for ourselves on Spartysecrets.com is to do all our reporting - and publish whatever we scrounge up - in one week. We didn’t get ahold of GM in our one-week window, but I finally did today. Here’s an unedited interview I conducted with Dave Barthmuss, a General Motors group manager for western region environment and energy, or - as he put it - a spokesperson.
Spartysecrets: Can you tell me about the EV1 donation program?
Dave Barthmuss: The EV1s were available for lease to customers in California from ‘96 to 2000. It had very limited appeal because of its range issue and batteries. We were only able to lease 800 in four years. After spending over a billion dollars to market it, we had to discontinue it. We did one of three things: donated them to museums, gave them to college students to work on them so they could learn more about automotive engineering, and recycled - or scrapped - the rest. 50 or so went to universities.
SS: Why were they donated?
DB: To extend the learning of the EV1. Part of what we need is good automotive engineers. This is a great way for them to learn about energy and propulsion systems and for them to come up with a new idea. Whether its powered by whatever means.
SS: How and why were they specifically modified before donation?
DB: Primarily the battery electric propulsion system, because those parts were frankly just wearing out. We did not want to have a vehicle in the hands of students that we didn’t have the confidence could be operated in a safe way. Because we could only lease 800 of these vehicles, we ran out of parts. in 97 or 98 we couldn’t order enough parts from them to make it profitable for them (the part manufacturers). We didn’t have any inventory of spare parts. We had to cannibalize parts of other EV1’s to keep these going safely.
Its not (a car) meant for a shade-tree mechanic - so to say - because of the high voltage and unique parts. We felt it best to provide it in a safe way for the students to tinker with, revise, innovate, make them run with their own technologies, rather than have a particularly dangerous experimentation.
SS: Why was the university told not to seek EV1 parts or to get the car running again as an EV1?
DB: A, they’re (the parts are) not available. B, they’re old. Probably at the end of their useful life. The EV1 had 2000 unique parts. It was developed on early ’90s parts. We just did not want to advocate people finding these old spare parts and failing.
SS: If GM donated these vehicles for science, they must have been proud of them. What do you think about the technology of the EV1?
DB: At its time it was the most technologically advanced vehicles in the world. It set many patents and standards. It was a tremendous, full-functioning, battery-operated vehicle. Frankly, there is a little bit of EV1 in every electric-type vehicle we have. The regenerative breaking is still used. The power convertor is the same technology used today in fuel cells. All the EV1 engineers are working on our electric vehicles and hybrids. They use the same regen breaking process to recharge their battery systems. Without the EV1 we couldn’t be building hybrids and our new Eflex system - that is being illustrated by the Chevy Volt concept vehicle. We appreciated the passion and enthusiasm of the people that leased the vehicles. We just wish there were a lot more of them.
They were built right there in Lansing. Unfortunately, the plant only operated at about 8 percent production. It may have also built Buick Riyadas at that time, but it was primarily for EV1s. In 1996 gasoline was still under $2, we still had the Trade Centers, we didn’t have a war driving up the cost of petroleum, we didn’t have Al Gore’s “The Inconvenient Truth.” Times were very different then. People were a lot less willing to pay a monthly lease fee.
SS: You say demand wasn’t there. What about the reported waiting lists?
DB: We had a list of about 5,000 people that said “I’m interested” and said they wanted to learn more. we generated that list by our award-winning advertising. We contacted every single one of those people, showed them the EV1, showed them the charging system we’d put in their garage for them, showed them it would go 100 miles and how long it would take to charge. Then, only 50 out of those 5,000 were willing to sign a lease. Then you find out, this isn’t practical for my everyday use.
SS: How much was spent on the project and why didn’t GM try to recoup any of its investment?
DB: Well over a billion (dollars). Perhaps closer to a billion and a half. We would have had to sell vehicles in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, for us to be able to recoup the investment.
If it was going to succeed, it was going to be in California. People were doing nothing but selling these things on the floor. We had a sales force just for them. Our salespeople had cell phones before anyone else. We leased them through our Saturn retailers, which was our most trusted brand. Given the California regulations and environmental mind frame, the climate, the support that California was giving… But with all that only 800 people in 4 years does not a business make. It really doesn’t make a difference in attacking the environment and energy changes we’re trying to make.
Hi, I’m a self proclaimed lover of all cars, I have no degree’s or any real money for that matter. I never could’ve afforded an EV1, they didn’t even lease them in Illinois. But I’ve always been fascinated with cars, and this one in particular. I loved the 4 seat one when I saw it at the auto show, and when I herd they killed all of them it made me sick,I mean what a waist of a great car! I’m very happy to see someone resurrecting one and being aloud for that mater.I love the color I thought they killed all the green ones. I wish you and your team all the luck on making her better than ever! When finished will she be street legal? Please tell me GM can’t take it and crush it too?
Just wanted to say I saw a S10 Ev motor controller E10 E14 Item #320198434824 on e-bay yesterday current bid was about $1,400 Just thought the item may help in your resurrection.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks, we’re glad to hear there’s still interest in the issue!
The story about not able to get customers for the EV1 does not jibe with reality. Or maybe Chelsea is misremembering. I suppose that GM believes that a lie repeated often enough will be believed. GM could not come close to meeting the demand for the vehicles. It doesn’t seem they tried very hard.
Certainly, the development costs were high, but the production cost would be less than building ICE cars as there are way fewer parts per vehicle.
It is all water over the dam with a large amount of our tax dollars wasted. It sure would be nice if GM would at least be truthful. If they lie when I know they are lying, how can I believe them when I have no way of verifying?
I guess I have trouble understanding why they can’t just say “Our lawyers and lobbyists beat down CARB and we didn’t have to do what we didn’t want to do.”
You have hit the nail on the head, If they were available now, they could be $1000 per month and be glad to pay it for the 100 to 200 miles per day with the new battery technology and a VFD drive with NO failures reported in any electronic drive component.
Many people are looking hard at GMs fabuluous reaults from the NMH and Ni-Cad reesults.
I would buy one in any state of dis-repair and you can email me with any conditions to comply with for purchase/ lease.
Victor Patasce
email: bea3less@aol.com
Phone: 717-235-6804
Hi Arthur,
If you really want to ressurect the EV1 don’t install another drive system in it. You will only have one EV1. What good will that do, the need is for thousands.
Take it apart and reverse engineer it. Make it an open source design. Have different people make replica parts that are within their area of expertise. Parts that are too expensive can be modified to be cost effective. People knowledgable in electronics would make controllers, people familiar with sheet metal would make body parts, Etc.
We have developed a design of an almost perpetual car which runs on battery power for almost unlimited distance against present and future battery technologies. This technology can also convert present Hybrid automobiles to run thousands of miles without charging the batteries. Interested parties can contact us at GasAlternative@yahoo.com.