Comment by mrguyorama

>If GM killed it to keep it from succeeding

They didn't, and this is just absurd.

Not only were electric cars available since the very beginning of cars, but they've always been available as niche options. There are tens of electric cars that postdate the EV1 and predate the Tesla. Do you even know their names?

We have stupidly cheap gas. An electric car has only ever been a curiosity for America. Even now, the primary driver of people buying electric cars is ideological, and a mild convenience of never having to go to a gas station.

Pre-lithium battery electric cars are a huge hassle, for very little gain, even outside the US. The history of cars is a global one, and no amount of conspiracy theory about GM can counter the fact that nobody else made electric cars either, even in places with drastically more expensive and unreliable gasoline.

They have always been a novelty, like hydrogen and LPG and compressed gas engines.

Hybrids were the closest anyone got to making older battery chemistries meaningful for car-style transportation, and even that was extremely limited.