Once upon a time (starting from 1996) General Motors built the EV1, the first attempt at a proper EV from one of the big American car manufacturers. People from Arizona and California could lease these. Because of $reasons GM took the cars back in 2002. To all intents and purposes no cars stayed with customers. People *resented* GM for it for the last 25 years.
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Some cars ended up at colleges and universities, but they were all disabled and crucial parts removed and the colleges were contractually denied the option to sell them. But late last year one of those cars got in the “abandoned car” process with a towing company and in the US that is the only way to forcibly change the ownership of a car.
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The towing business put the car up for auction and the new owners, who now legally own this EV1 are restoring it on YouTube. With actual, meaningful help from GM which nobody expected because until now the company did not want to talk about the EV1 but that has fundamentally changed.
Check out this playlist for the progress on the car and the visit to GM:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUK0LPn0iHC_BbTpJcpnz7UYN8ojx8ndL
Wikipedia page for the EV1 is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
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Andreas Sikkema