On Earth Day, A Look Back at the Promise of GM’s Impact EV Concept

Happy Earth Day 2020, everyone. Somehow, Earth Day just doesn’t seem ancient enough to be celebrating its half-century point, but perhaps so many of us have distinct memories connected to various iterations they’ve all sort of clumped together. My Earth Day memories? Here are two I should be too embarrassed to be repeating. Here goes:

During that very first one in 1970 (gasp!) my junior high school (which, in a 1960s hangover, was protesting government funding of Boeing’s SST challenge to the French Concorde) held a mock session of congress in the gym where the “bill” I’d come up with—to tax cars based on their emissions—was being hotly debated. With everybody confused and loudly arguing about it, I was called down from the bleachers to better explain how this tax thing worked. Heroically, I leaped up to the stage, but my toe caught its very edge and I fell flat on my face; when I stood up, I’d forgotten the question. (Politics would not be in my future.) But the bill passed.

On Earth Day 1993, I had two tickets for an all-star concert at the Hollywood Bowl headlined by Paul McCartney and I sheepishly asked a (great) Ford PR guy if—as a personal favor—there was a special car I could use to impress my date. This was a big deal. He hesitated, then said “Well, I shouldn’t do this, but if you’re very, very careful with it…” he was momentarily quiet “I’ve got a Lincoln Town Car we keep for Richard Nixon when he’s on the West Coast.” The date was a dud, but driving Tricky Dick’s car to an Earth Day concert was worth it just for the absurdity. But he did create the EPA, right?

I’m not the only one thinking about Earth Days past, though, as I just received the below from my pal, Dr. Alec Brooks, a longtime EV expert and a name you might recognize from helping us out with a few electric-car comparisons in past few years. It’s a story from Alec’s years working at AeroVironment, the firm that created the Impact EV, the prototype that convinced GM to build the EV1:

Hi Kim,

This Earth Day marks the 30th anniversary of GM Chairman Roger Smith’s speech at the National Press Club luncheon where he announced that the automaker would produce the EV1 electric car. I was part of a GM task in early 1990 that put together a business case and plan for making a production version of the Impact, the electric prototype that preceded the EV1. Living out of a hotel in Warren, Michigan during the week, and flying back to California for the weekends, at least GM would provide me with any car I wanted for the duration of my time in the Mitten state. Okay, how about a Corvette? They told me sure, no problem, and soon I learned that a Corvette is not an ideal car for Detroit in the winter. Another perk? Jim Hall, twin brother of Bob Hall of Miata fame, also was on the task force, and he clued me in to how the idea for the Miata had originated on the banks of the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena in a discussion with his brother.

Anyway, our task force’s work on the Impact EV was slated to end after a couple of months, which was before Earth Day. Bob Stempel, who was president of GM at that time, was for moving forward with a production version, having set the ball in motion about three years earlier with his approval of the GM Sunraycer I had worked on (which had won the Solar Challenge in Australia) and his later support for the Impact prototype.

When the decision was made to make the EV1 announcement at the Press Club, they decided to have the Impact there for the event, parked at the entrance. My job was to coordinate getting it to Washington, D.C. We had a truck and trailer left over from the Sunraycer program, so a team of a few people from AeroVironment drove Impact in it to D.C. the week before Earth Day (I flew in the day before). GM’s PR department had arranged a photo shoot in the morning for USA Today at their building in Rosslyn, Virginia (across the river from DC). But the shoot ran long, and we ended up needing to have the Impact at the Press Club within 30 minutes.

Reloading the car in the trailer would take almost that long, so I made the decision to drive it to the Press Club, with the truck following behind me. Traffic was heavy but flowing. We went over the bridge and along the street between the National Mall and the White House. A few people honked in approval and one yelled out asking what the sleek, tadpole-shaped car was.

A few things about the Impact aren’t widely known: It had a functional HVAC heat pump system (Tesla just developed something similar, though we more or less built the Impact’s from the ground up back then) that could also direct either cooled or heated air through the battery pack to regulate its temperature. Its compressor drive inverter was by Alan Cocconi, its system integration by Taras Kiceniuk (a friend since high school), and most forward-looking of all, it also had an integrated fast charging capability that could draw 20 kW from a large AC outlet, co-invented by Cocconi and Wally Rippel. The same duo developed the car’s two drive motors (one for each front wheel) while Cocconi invented its braking energy regen function, which was driver-adjustable on the accelerator pedal (and GM refused to implement on the production EV1).

Still, it’s amazing how far electric vehicles have progressed since the cutting-edge Impact back then. I see Teslas all over the place now, and it’s great to have such a variety of EV choices and so many more in the works. You could drive any of those vehicles across Washington, D.C. today and nobody would bat an eye. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Impact and I made it to the Press Club just in time for the EV1’s big announcement.—Alec

A few months before that Press Club announcement, GM presented the Impact to journalists prior to the L.A. Auto Show and Alec gave all of us a ride (while apologizing for the interior noise). After Roger Smith gave his speech introducing the car, he sat down directly in front of me. Michael Moore’s Roger & Me had just come out, and I’ll confess I had some seriously evil thoughts.

Back before Earth Day was a thing on a calendar, growing up in Orange County, California, meant a deep breath made my lungs hurt so much you just learned not to do that. And thinking it was normal. A brown sky over L.A. was simply “the sky.” Since Earth Day 1970, a hell of a lot’s improved, and on the occasion’s 50th anniversary—for all the terrible reasons it’s happening—American cities are getting a deep breath of the cleaner air the Impact promised to deliver starting 30 years ago.

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