I worked at GM during the EV-1 timeframe. Although some of the people who leased an EV-1 wanted to keep their car, the general economics of mass producing cars is that you need about 50,000 people per year that want to buy a specific car model to break even. At that time, a time of all time low gas prices, there weren't 50k people/year who wanted an EV. Too few people saw the benefits and the environmental need at that time. Maybe GM could have done a better job trying to sell it. But, it's not like they didn't try, they even built a huge ride at EPCOT to promote it.
It's unfortunate that it wasn't a success, but GM didn't have some secret agreement with the oil companies (they sued them a couple years later). GM killed the EV-1 because they couldn't make money selling it. The EV game is hard. Tesla has been at it almost 20 years and they just became profitable a couple years ago. GM wouldn't sell the left over EV-1s because if they sold them, they would be legally required to stock parts for years to come, which doesn't make sense when you only have a couple hundred cars.
It's unfortunate that it wasn't a success, but GM didn't have some secret agreement with the oil companies (they sued them a couple years later). GM killed the EV-1 because they couldn't make money selling it. The EV game is hard. Tesla has been at it almost 20 years and they just became profitable a couple years ago. GM wouldn't sell the left over EV-1s because if they sold them, they would be legally required to stock parts for years to come, which doesn't make sense when you only have a couple hundred cars.
The EV-1 was not a conspiracy.