The 1997 Chevrolet S10 Electrics

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These trucks aren't just conversions, homemade or professional, they were built and sold by Chevrolet with electric motors, controllers, and batteries. They got 35-55 miles on each charge with lead acid (PbA) packs and far more on nickel metal hydride (NiMH) which took around 3 hours to charge from empty to full on the modern equivalent of level 2 charging, and could easily maintain a speed of 70mph. It certainly sounds impressive for '97, and I would argue is perfectly useable for most people's needs. So why aren't these a widely known about thing? By all measures a practical EV built by a major manufacturer and sold to fleets that early should have gone down as revolutionary. Well, these are the direct siblings of the GM EV1, and if you know anything about the EV1 you'll know GM wasn't particularly excited to be building EVs, and when they no longer had to build EVs they pulled them all from market, ended all leases, and crushed all examples in an effort to bury the concept of electric vehicles being anything more than golf carts with roofs. Around 75 examples of the electric S10 were saved from this fate out of the 462 produced by being sold rather than leased. I estimate that around 50 still exist today.

I first learned about the previous generations of EVs on a trip down to California when my dad and I visited the Petersen and I saw the AC Propulsion TZero, which really acted as the turning point for me from thinking that EVs were all just ugly tech encumbered and slow hippie mobiles to realizing that they were not only practical and efficient, but could also be cool. Later on when I was trying to make a point to a friend that a sub $1000 Geo Metro was all the car most people needed I happened upon a Solectria Force for sale on Craigslist. Before this I had assumed that aside from the ones in museums all older EVs had been crushed, and the ones that somehow survived would be incredibly expensive. However, here was one staring me in the face for only $700. I didn't end up buying that one, but it did convince me to keep looking. After many considered Zap Xebras and an offer on a B&Z Electra King I got a lead on a guy with an electric Chevy S10, and after looking it up and finding out that it was essentially an EV1 crammed into an S10 I pounced. A month or so and $2000 later I had it in my driveway.

The restoration process

Upon it being delivered to me I immediately started checking all components for burst capacitors, and luckily there were none except for two in the PIM (the main controller). These were both easily replaced by the computer shop down the road. More problematically, during the search I decided I should check the HTCM, the module that controls the heat pump and cooling system for the batteries, cabin, and motor and controller, but when I went to remove it there was no HTCM to be found. This spawned a months long hunt to find a replacement, and while I could find people with them, they were either unwilling to sell them or to look for them in their spare parts. Eventually I just relented and bought a second S10e from which I could pull the HTCM.

The inside of the PIM. Note the two large bulging capacitors to the left.

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