One of the traits of early electric vehicles (EVs) is that many automakers have built these EVs primarily as what’s known as compliance cars. These cars are built primarily to sell in the state of California to meet California Air Resources Board (CARB) requirements and allow the automakers to continue selling cars in the state.
Many of these compliance EVs have short battery ranges, may not be offered in popular body styles, often are priced with a significant price premium relative to comparative ICE models, and often were not actively marketed or promoted by auto dealers.
The result is these electric cars sell very poorly for a few years and then the automaker decides to literally pull the plug on the model. Hopefully, however they’ve learned a few things about battery technology, charging infrastructure and perhaps even how to sell electric vehicles by monitoring more successful competitors such as Tesla.
A key question then becomes, once these EVs are killed off, with what new models, if anything does the automaker replace the vehicle?
Following is a table of passenger electric vehicles (we are not including commercial or fleet vehicles) that have been sold in the US since 1999 and then later discontinued. This list also includes EVs that have been rumored or announced that they will be discontinued in the future. (The table is sortable by column):
