Motorola’s Secret 1990s Corvette EV

Back in the early ‘90s, Motorola had a crazy idea—what if they took a classic sports car like the C4 Corvette, and made it electric? Yep, they created a fully electric 1987 Corvette, and it's a project that most people have never even heard of. I know I haven’t! The team at Motorola was ahead of their time apparently, and experimented with EV technology long before it was mainstream…

This secret project wasn’t some lightweight attempt. The car packed lead-acid batteries, which were the tech of the time, adding a hefty 700 pounds to the already heavy Corvette. Despite the extra weight, the car's electric motor delivered instant torque, making it feel quick, even by 1990s standards. What's really interesting is that they also tested the car with nickel-cadmium batteries, pushing it to over 400 horsepower. The whole idea was to see if an electric Corvette could hang with the gas-powered competition—and it could.

But like a lot of early EV experiments, the project never saw the light of day. The car was left to rust in a salvage yard in Illinois, a forgotten project car just sitting there, it’s just a waste isn’t it? It’s kind of sad when you think about it—this could have been a turning point for performance EVs, way before Tesla or any other electric carmakers even hit the scene.

The Motorola Corvette is a classic case of a project being way ahead of its time. If this had taken off, it might have changed the way we think about performance cars a lot sooner. Imagine if instead of waiting until the 2000s for electric supercars, we had them ripping up the streets in the ‘90s! It’s pretty wild to think about how this one-off concept could’ve changed the future. Although I still think our connection to combustion engine cars isn’t about how soon we were introduced to the idea, but rather the emotion and visceral feeling we get combustion cars (like the sound for example) that just isn’t there with EVs.

The Motorola EV Corvette is a forgotten piece of automotive history that deserves more attention. It was innovative, fast, and had the potential to probably break some ground. But like many great ideas that are just too early, it got left behind. Today’s EVs probably owe a lot to projects like this—even if they didn’t make it past the prototype phase.?

Cited Sources:

​Notebookcheck.com