Impound/tow/lien -> title has always been the easy button for getting legit title to a vehicle that was never supposed to be sold (UPS vans, Uhaul trailers, etc), so long as it was never reported stolen.
Absolutely hilarious that he managed to work the "doesn't work it if pops up as stolen" angle in the opposite direction to make the car impossible to really do anything with (i.e. no junkyard can take it whole, no subsequent changes of title can happen) and live in various sorts of limbo for 20yr.
No, having a title of ownership is not the same as registering as a street legal vehicle. BYD cars don’t meet DOT Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards which is a deal breaker, regardless of which state you’re in. Even if you could get it registered, insurance would be impossible.
My state lets you register hand built and other oddball vehicles - basically, if you can get it past customs, you can register it. The out of state inspection for a title transfer is to check the VIN.
Insurance would need to be from a specialty provider who do insure oddball vehicles. Someone I know (in CA no less) insured his homemade electric motorcycle this way. (It’s titled as the chassis of the BMW regular motorcycle it was built from.)
If you’re pulled over, you would need to show things like seat belts or turn signals and so on. I got nailed for not having a shoulder belt in a homemade vehicle made after 1960. Seat belt ticket was my punishment, although the cop remarked that adding a shoulder belt would be a good idea.
You have to show you built it though. A stock BYD would probably not count, I'm not sure how much change you would need though to get it to count as homemade.
The difference in vehicle regulations between the EU and US are not along a linear scale of rigor. They have different requirements for different things. They are different opinions of what “safe” even means.
A mechanic/storage lien is simply a way to get title without the cooperation of whoever the last guy in the database as having title is. It doesn't solve stupid government rules.
What's legal per the law is a tiny fraction of what you can put on a DMV form and have the form get past the clerk and process properly which itself is a tiny fraction of what the cops will go after.
This is what we do when buying a property that has ancient junk vehicles on it - sometimes without even a VIN intact. The purpose of a title is so that you can scrap them and get them off your property.
Going through the hassle of getting a title for stuff you'll scrap is, ugh, an ill advised use of time unless your goal is to tell everyone at the cocktail party how law abiding you are or the vehicles are interesting enough for the title to have baseline value or something like that.
Scrapyards will take fractions of cars without asking questions. People who part out cars or deal in scrap metal know this and will take anything off your hands for free as long as the work vs what they're getting pencils out.
Scrapyards are also places the police investigate as money laundering for crime. They will take untitled things, but only if they think it wasn't stolen. Start bringing in too much scrap vehicle parts and they will start demanding paperwork - one or two parts "everyone" has so no not worth it but if it gets to be a bunch they start suspecting crime and then demand paperwork.
Just saw it up so it's not obviously one complete car. Nobody cares as long as their ass is covered. You can get away with more if they know you and know you not to be sketchy.
Even if they know you they'll never take a full car body in one piece without a title or any of the other "open and shut case" violations of law because they don't wanna risk getting Randy Weaver'd because a good customer had government problems and became an "informant".
In California? Probably not. In other states? Well there are lots of military vehicles sold as explicitly non-road legal with a requirement of sale being that you can't title them. I see those with license plates and titles for sale in Texas all the time. I just don't happen to have much need for a Humvee or similar vehicle.
I used to walk past one of these every day on my way to and from my dorm.
My school apparently had no idea what it was for years and it just sat outside underneath the EE building and people would draw dicks in the dust on it. When they realized what it was, they immediately yonked it inside and made a student team to refurb it.
It's super cool I got to see such a piece of history and rare car even if I didn't realize it for so long.
> Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 American documentary film directed by Chris Paine that explores the creation, limited commercialization and subsequent destruction of the battery electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the mid-1990s. The film explores the roles of automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, the federal government of the United States, the California government, batteries, hydrogen vehicles and consumers in limiting the development and adoption of this technology.
Wasn’t the Model T the first mass-produced automobile? Wouldn’t surprise me if the early 20th century electric cars were basically handbuilt by dozens or even hundreds of different manufacturers.
The Model T is the first assembly line produced automobile. Mass production significantly predates the Model T. Generally, the production of guns in France in 1765 using standardized parts is generally considered the first mass produced item.
Which of those 30k was mass produced? The model t was seen as the first mass produced vehicle. I think when it obtained that classification it was producing around 200k annually.
The answer is probably more in the middle in that mass produced places more emphasis on the standardization. I imagine those Columbia cars were not build on an assembly line.
I bet for every example there's a hundred more that are just not registered and or are registered as something else.
It's like machine guns, you're not paying for the hardware. You're paying to not have the state send a squad of thugs to shoot you for not getting permission. People don't want the permission. They want the hardware. So they just get the hardware and keep it on the down low.
Also, everyone in automotive who isn't an OEM or in the emissions racket (i.e. the two groups benefitting) absolutely hates the government and this is exactly the kind of "interesting" vehicle junkyard people would save for their own personal golf cart use. Usually OEMs are super anal about making sure stuff actually gets crushed but they shat out too many EV1s into the world to do a good job of that like they do for prototypes, test mules and other stuff with low double digit production runs if that.
The only place for it is back on the road. If I was the owner I would spit into GM's face and put a million miles on the odometer. It should be a private Uber.
The EV1 was way, way ahead of its time, and was more or less outright killed for various reasons including car makers having deep sunk cost in ICE engine tech. The battery tech back then was vastly inferior to today but it was still good enough for a shorter-range economy EV that could have replaced a gas for a lot of daily commuter drives, especially for two-car families.
For reference: the first generation Nissan Leaf had similar range to the EV1. I still have one of these. It's our family's second car, and has run flawlessly for over 10 years with virtually zero maintenance. Range is still about 60 miles per charge.
BTW... despite the antics of Musk, I think he was absolutely instrumental in advancing car electrification. Yes there were others making EVs, but Tesla was the first to make them cool and in so doing force the rest of the industry to move. Without Tesla dragging the industry kicking and screaming into EVs I think we'd still be stuck with almost 100% ICE cars. China might have done it, but that's because they don't have the same sunk cost in ICE engines we have.
Why did you name check Musk and not the actual founders of Tesla, Eberhard and Tarpenning, that took advantage of their experience with lithium batteries and the forward-thinking Californian regulatory regime to found their company there to build an electric sports car?
Good point, and they're worth name checking too, but the company didn't go anywhere big until Musk took over.
Musk clearly has (or at least had) a great skill when it comes to scaling companies doing hard things. If he had one under his belt, like Tesla, I'd be willing to chalk it up to luck, but he has two: Tesla and SpaceX. Both have been spectacular successes doing things most people run away from screaming with their tail between their legs, namely volume production of innovative cars and aerospace.
IMHO SpaceX is a lot more impressive. There's an old joke: how do you become a millionaire? A: start as a billionaire and found an aerospace company.
I think without him Tesla would have been a boutique car company. They would have made expensive boutique cars for a subset of visionary EV early adopters, but would not have moved the industry. To move the industry you have to grow hard and fast enough to scare legacy car makers into trying to play catch-up, which is what Tesla did. The only other thing I can imagine moving big car makers like this would have been the government mandating an EV transition. Big bureaucratic things only move when kicked.
People hate acknowledging this because Musk's politics have turned so many people off, but unfortunately there appears to be no correlation between skills in one domain and being a generally well adjusted human being. The world doesn't work this way. A person can be good at something and still be a lunatic or an asshole.
I mean... if we dismissed all achievement of people who were assholes or lunatics, we'd basically have to throw out 2/3 of all music.
If anything there might be a slight negative correlation between extreme skill in some domain and being well adjusted, for a variety of reasons including the weird way people treat "savants" in any field. I also suspect a big one is that people with messed up backgrounds (bad childhood, etc.) or psychological issues sometimes "over-compensate" by achieving hyper-skill in some area.
I see Musk in the the same way that I see Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was famous for his "reality distortion field".
I think that Musk/Tesla gave Politicians the idea that everyone can go electric and as a result it ended up being mandated into law. Then manufacturers had to try to make cars which were electric.
What are the obstacles to making GM EV1 replicas, albeit with modern batteries? The design still has merit and would undoubtedly be long range with the lead acid batteries swapped out for something new.
You can get businesses making replicas in small numbers, for example, I am sure you could get a Lancia Stratos, however, would GM have a big copyright ban on such a venture?
Traditionally, lack of demand and the fact that GM was fastidious about keeping them off the road means that they would probably threaten a lawsuit. Electric cars in general have only become popular in the last 5-10 years; the lore of the EV1 has grown accordingly.
Copyright law for art and sculpture requires registration of each design; in searching the copyright records it appears that GM doesn't do this. Really the more appropriate forum would be to get a design patent but those last for only 15 years anyway.
Trademarks must be registered (and also apply to specific categories, though a kit car and production car are in the same category). Surprisngly, "EV1" is owned not by GM, but by Kia (the graphic is different). What this means is you can make the (GM) EV1 logo no problem, and also sell a kit car as something like "inspired by the GM EV1" but if you sell it as an "EV1" then Kia might come knocking.
In short, I don't see much getting in the way of making an EV1 kit car as long as you don't advertise it as a literal GM or EV1 car. Though as stated, you can include or sell separately an EV1 badge that buyers can slap on their own property without issue.
They probably would. If the Saturn is older than 25 years, it can be registered as a classic car. The fact that it's highly modified with new parts doesn't really matter. It's what people in the hot rod scene have been doing forever.
For newer cars, you could probably register it as a self-built (kit car).
The states register vehicles, not insurance companies.
And while a big box insurance company might not insure a heavily modified vehicle, there are niche insurance companies who will. Or you could even self insure in a state that allows it.
Why not? The only issue is if that Saturn was scrapped - once a car is scrapped there is no legal way to get it titled. (but you can still call it home built with parts from the scrapped car - it just needs a new VIN).
Impound/tow/lien -> title has always been the easy button for getting legit title to a vehicle that was never supposed to be sold (UPS vans, Uhaul trailers, etc), so long as it was never reported stolen.
Absolutely hilarious that he managed to work the "doesn't work it if pops up as stolen" angle in the opposite direction to make the car impossible to really do anything with (i.e. no junkyard can take it whole, no subsequent changes of title can happen) and live in various sorts of limbo for 20yr.
Could you do anything like that to trick the DMV into letting you register a BYD vehicle in California?
No, having a title of ownership is not the same as registering as a street legal vehicle. BYD cars don’t meet DOT Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards which is a deal breaker, regardless of which state you’re in. Even if you could get it registered, insurance would be impossible.
My state lets you register hand built and other oddball vehicles - basically, if you can get it past customs, you can register it. The out of state inspection for a title transfer is to check the VIN.
Insurance would need to be from a specialty provider who do insure oddball vehicles. Someone I know (in CA no less) insured his homemade electric motorcycle this way. (It’s titled as the chassis of the BMW regular motorcycle it was built from.)
If you’re pulled over, you would need to show things like seat belts or turn signals and so on. I got nailed for not having a shoulder belt in a homemade vehicle made after 1960. Seat belt ticket was my punishment, although the cop remarked that adding a shoulder belt would be a good idea.
You have to show you built it though. A stock BYD would probably not count, I'm not sure how much change you would need though to get it to count as homemade.
Are they actually unsafe or they just haven't gone through the certification?
They're on sale in Europe where the car safety standards are slightly different to the US, but generally considered more rigorous.
The difference in vehicle regulations between the EU and US are not along a linear scale of rigor. They have different requirements for different things. They are different opinions of what “safe” even means.
And Chinese cars rate higher on the European safety metrics than Western cars. https://insideevs.com/news/779537/euro-ncap-safety-rating-ch...
For whatever reason, the industry term for the certification is "Homologation" (1)
But yes, the vehicles which aren't on sale typically haven't been homologated. Why invest the time and money in that when it's not needed?
Actually deemed unsafe and not meeting the rules is much rarer, e.g. Tesla CyberTruck in Europe. (2)
In either case, you may get away with owning it, but not driving it on public roads.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homologation https://www.productipedia.com/kb/productipedia/compliance-re...
2) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/08/tesla-cyb...
A mechanic/storage lien is simply a way to get title without the cooperation of whoever the last guy in the database as having title is. It doesn't solve stupid government rules.
What's legal per the law is a tiny fraction of what you can put on a DMV form and have the form get past the clerk and process properly which itself is a tiny fraction of what the cops will go after.
This is what we do when buying a property that has ancient junk vehicles on it - sometimes without even a VIN intact. The purpose of a title is so that you can scrap them and get them off your property.
Going through the hassle of getting a title for stuff you'll scrap is, ugh, an ill advised use of time unless your goal is to tell everyone at the cocktail party how law abiding you are or the vehicles are interesting enough for the title to have baseline value or something like that.
Scrapyards will take fractions of cars without asking questions. People who part out cars or deal in scrap metal know this and will take anything off your hands for free as long as the work vs what they're getting pencils out.
Scrapyards are also places the police investigate as money laundering for crime. They will take untitled things, but only if they think it wasn't stolen. Start bringing in too much scrap vehicle parts and they will start demanding paperwork - one or two parts "everyone" has so no not worth it but if it gets to be a bunch they start suspecting crime and then demand paperwork.
Just saw it up so it's not obviously one complete car. Nobody cares as long as their ass is covered. You can get away with more if they know you and know you not to be sketchy.
Even if they know you they'll never take a full car body in one piece without a title or any of the other "open and shut case" violations of law because they don't wanna risk getting Randy Weaver'd because a good customer had government problems and became an "informant".
In California? Probably not. In other states? Well there are lots of military vehicles sold as explicitly non-road legal with a requirement of sale being that you can't title them. I see those with license plates and titles for sale in Texas all the time. I just don't happen to have much need for a Humvee or similar vehicle.
I used to walk past one of these every day on my way to and from my dorm.
My school apparently had no idea what it was for years and it just sat outside underneath the EE building and people would draw dicks in the dust on it. When they realized what it was, they immediately yonked it inside and made a student team to refurb it.
It's super cool I got to see such a piece of history and rare car even if I didn't realize it for so long.
Before: https://images.hgmsites.net/med/gm-ev1-electric-car-at-misso...
After: https://i.redd.it/8hqyo6iq7ixa1.jpg
See perhaps 2006 movie:
> Who Killed the Electric Car? is a 2006 American documentary film directed by Chris Paine that explores the creation, limited commercialization and subsequent destruction of the battery electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the mid-1990s. The film explores the roles of automobile manufacturers, the oil industry, the federal government of the United States, the California government, batteries, hydrogen vehicles and consumers in limiting the development and adoption of this technology.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
And from the same director in 2011:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Electric_Car
The EV1 was the first mass-produced electric car to be offered to the public
There were ~30,000 electric cars around at the start of the 20th century, so I’m not sure this holds up.
Wasn’t the Model T the first mass-produced automobile? Wouldn’t surprise me if the early 20th century electric cars were basically handbuilt by dozens or even hundreds of different manufacturers.
The Model T is the first assembly line produced automobile. Mass production significantly predates the Model T. Generally, the production of guns in France in 1765 using standardized parts is generally considered the first mass produced item.
Plus according to this the Detroit Electric Sold 13,000 units between 1907 to 1939
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Electric
Which of those 30k was mass produced? The model t was seen as the first mass produced vehicle. I think when it obtained that classification it was producing around 200k annually.
EV1 had 1,117 units produced according to Wiki, so I guess any model of those 30k with more than that would count.
Edit: apparently Columbia built 1,937 electric cars in 1904 alone according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(automobile_brand).
The answer is probably more in the middle in that mass produced places more emphasis on the standardization. I imagine those Columbia cars were not build on an assembly line.
^ modern-day, post-war, computerized
Do we all have that one friend who also secretly has an EV1, or is that just me?
I bet for every example there's a hundred more that are just not registered and or are registered as something else.
It's like machine guns, you're not paying for the hardware. You're paying to not have the state send a squad of thugs to shoot you for not getting permission. People don't want the permission. They want the hardware. So they just get the hardware and keep it on the down low.
Also, everyone in automotive who isn't an OEM or in the emissions racket (i.e. the two groups benefitting) absolutely hates the government and this is exactly the kind of "interesting" vehicle junkyard people would save for their own personal golf cart use. Usually OEMs are super anal about making sure stuff actually gets crushed but they shat out too many EV1s into the world to do a good job of that like they do for prototypes, test mules and other stuff with low double digit production runs if that.
It's just you and without some proof of it in a private garage it's really not even you.
>and without some proof of it in a private garage it's really not even you
<glows brightly>
The only place for it is back on the road. If I was the owner I would spit into GM's face and put a million miles on the odometer. It should be a private Uber.
The EV1 was way, way ahead of its time, and was more or less outright killed for various reasons including car makers having deep sunk cost in ICE engine tech. The battery tech back then was vastly inferior to today but it was still good enough for a shorter-range economy EV that could have replaced a gas for a lot of daily commuter drives, especially for two-car families.
For reference: the first generation Nissan Leaf had similar range to the EV1. I still have one of these. It's our family's second car, and has run flawlessly for over 10 years with virtually zero maintenance. Range is still about 60 miles per charge.
BTW... despite the antics of Musk, I think he was absolutely instrumental in advancing car electrification. Yes there were others making EVs, but Tesla was the first to make them cool and in so doing force the rest of the industry to move. Without Tesla dragging the industry kicking and screaming into EVs I think we'd still be stuck with almost 100% ICE cars. China might have done it, but that's because they don't have the same sunk cost in ICE engines we have.
Why did you name check Musk and not the actual founders of Tesla, Eberhard and Tarpenning, that took advantage of their experience with lithium batteries and the forward-thinking Californian regulatory regime to found their company there to build an electric sports car?
How about “volume production” as a reason?
Still Californian government providing orders of magnitude more cash for that to happen than Musk ever did.
Is there some technical contribution by Musk I'm unaware of?
Good point, and they're worth name checking too, but the company didn't go anywhere big until Musk took over.
Musk clearly has (or at least had) a great skill when it comes to scaling companies doing hard things. If he had one under his belt, like Tesla, I'd be willing to chalk it up to luck, but he has two: Tesla and SpaceX. Both have been spectacular successes doing things most people run away from screaming with their tail between their legs, namely volume production of innovative cars and aerospace.
IMHO SpaceX is a lot more impressive. There's an old joke: how do you become a millionaire? A: start as a billionaire and found an aerospace company.
I think without him Tesla would have been a boutique car company. They would have made expensive boutique cars for a subset of visionary EV early adopters, but would not have moved the industry. To move the industry you have to grow hard and fast enough to scare legacy car makers into trying to play catch-up, which is what Tesla did. The only other thing I can imagine moving big car makers like this would have been the government mandating an EV transition. Big bureaucratic things only move when kicked.
People hate acknowledging this because Musk's politics have turned so many people off, but unfortunately there appears to be no correlation between skills in one domain and being a generally well adjusted human being. The world doesn't work this way. A person can be good at something and still be a lunatic or an asshole.
I mean... if we dismissed all achievement of people who were assholes or lunatics, we'd basically have to throw out 2/3 of all music.
If anything there might be a slight negative correlation between extreme skill in some domain and being well adjusted, for a variety of reasons including the weird way people treat "savants" in any field. I also suspect a big one is that people with messed up backgrounds (bad childhood, etc.) or psychological issues sometimes "over-compensate" by achieving hyper-skill in some area.
I see Musk in the the same way that I see Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was famous for his "reality distortion field".
I think that Musk/Tesla gave Politicians the idea that everyone can go electric and as a result it ended up being mandated into law. Then manufacturers had to try to make cars which were electric.
What are the obstacles to making GM EV1 replicas, albeit with modern batteries? The design still has merit and would undoubtedly be long range with the lead acid batteries swapped out for something new.
You can get businesses making replicas in small numbers, for example, I am sure you could get a Lancia Stratos, however, would GM have a big copyright ban on such a venture?
Traditionally, lack of demand and the fact that GM was fastidious about keeping them off the road means that they would probably threaten a lawsuit. Electric cars in general have only become popular in the last 5-10 years; the lore of the EV1 has grown accordingly.
Copyright law for art and sculpture requires registration of each design; in searching the copyright records it appears that GM doesn't do this. Really the more appropriate forum would be to get a design patent but those last for only 15 years anyway.
Trademarks must be registered (and also apply to specific categories, though a kit car and production car are in the same category). Surprisngly, "EV1" is owned not by GM, but by Kia (the graphic is different). What this means is you can make the (GM) EV1 logo no problem, and also sell a kit car as something like "inspired by the GM EV1" but if you sell it as an "EV1" then Kia might come knocking.
In short, I don't see much getting in the way of making an EV1 kit car as long as you don't advertise it as a literal GM or EV1 car. Though as stated, you can include or sell separately an EV1 badge that buyers can slap on their own property without issue.
Why would you want it? Modern Evs I would assume are superior in both safety and design.
I doubt insurance would allow you to register an old Saturn that was converted into an ev1.
They probably would. If the Saturn is older than 25 years, it can be registered as a classic car. The fact that it's highly modified with new parts doesn't really matter. It's what people in the hot rod scene have been doing forever.
For newer cars, you could probably register it as a self-built (kit car).
The states register vehicles, not insurance companies.
And while a big box insurance company might not insure a heavily modified vehicle, there are niche insurance companies who will. Or you could even self insure in a state that allows it.
Why not? The only issue is if that Saturn was scrapped - once a car is scrapped there is no legal way to get it titled. (but you can still call it home built with parts from the scrapped car - it just needs a new VIN).
You're saying copyright but it's more likely to be a trademark issue.
[flagged]