It’s rather odd for me to be defending GM, but it seems to me they might be treated a touch unfairly on this topic. California had a mandate that a specified percentage of sales had to be non-polluting by a certain date for the majors (5% by mid ’90 something? Can’t remember for sure). GM is the only automaker that did much of anything about it, everybody else lobbied up and fought the mandate.
GM spent a ton of money and did some rather interesting things with the Impact, far more than just the powertrain. Found themselves standing all alone as everybody else in line stepped back a few and left them wasting in the wind. California backed off on the mandate, GM decided to cut the financial bleeding until conditions improved.
Seems odd that the only company who actually did something substantive gets all the blame in the view of some, while the ones who did nothing much but lobby against the initiative escape blame free it seems.
Eh, such is life I guess. Sometimes you’re the bug on the windshield.