I know there is a crowd of people that are enthusiastic about the EV-1 and think GM killed it, but I'm pretty sure GM had a closer look at whether they could profitably produce them than the enthusiasts.
Which if you compare that to the state of the world in 2008 when Tesla launched its Roadster you can see the difference of "We can't buy anything to solve this problem" and "This is a problem, what needs to be created to solve it?" mentalities.
It is always a challenge at BigCorp to get them to actually create something new, they don't have to push the state of the art because they already have a profitable business. Sometimes this attitude is responsible for their demise.
Not as judged by buyers.
According to https://insideevs.com/february-2018-plug-electric-vehicle-sa... Model 3 is already outselling Bolt (in February 2.5k vs. 1.5k)
Model 3 is on track to sell 20k per month within months, which will be 10x Bolt sales.
If buyers show 10x preference of X vs. Y, Y is not "reasonably comparable".
I wonder if they had offered them for sale at prices that would cover their parts obligations if that would have gone over well.
My question is, what if GM had offered them for sale for $250,000 (I'm making up an obscene number) because they estimated that their service obligations would cost that much? How well would that have gone over with the enthusiasts?