It was a car engineered to satisfy California's short lived requirement for auto manufacturers to make a zero emissions vehicle, hence the availability. Despite that, drivers loved it, and didn't want to give them back when GM cancelled the program (after lobbying the law repealed).
The car was engineered with 90s battery tech so it was plagued with problems that anyone who used such batteries in the 90s know existed: high self-discharge, memory effect, low energy density, voltage depression over time, and limited cycle life. These cars wouldn't last 2 years without needing their batteries replaced. That's why they never sold more than 600 of them.
"Memory effect" in the 1990s is an old wives' tale. It's a real condition discovered in the 1980s on satellite platforms with computer-controlled charging, but was identified and fixed quickly.
It never existed in consumer applications of NiCd batteries, especially as late as 1996.
It was not an old wives tail. I worked in wireless retail 23 years ago and saw these problems first hand. NiMH phone batteries from that era would scarcely last two years. Of course, it mattered less then because the tech was improving so rapidly that most people wanted a new phone every 2 years anyways. NiMH was an improvement over NiCd, but it still had memory problems nonetheless in its first few generations (modern NiMH batteries are better at this).
It could be mitigated by fully discharging a battery before recharging, and I'm certain that in applications such as satellites , they engineered the charging cycles to mitigate this. However, consumers powering phones and laptops can't be expected to maintain such discipline. Certainly people driving cars over variable distances can't be expected to uphold such requirements either, out of absolute necessity to travel a fixed distance between charges.
Lithium ion ultimately won because it solved these problems altogether. Modern NiMH has caught up a little bit, but Lithium has meanwhile improved as well.
You realize the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter is a hybrid EV right? Along with most trains and tanks and ships. But I'm not compensating for anything, so a small vehicle that gets me from A to B quickly, quietly, cheaply, safely, and has a 6ft long bed with fold down sides works great for me.
Those aren't really "sales" numbers (tbh I'm not even sure GM "sold" any car either given that it was able to destroy all of them).
GM only produced 660 units and 457 units. They never tried to actually mass produce the car and seeing how current electric vehicles are I really understand why; why cannibalize your higher margin ICE vehicles?
This is basically the same argument people make about a cure for cancer. Since there's a ton of money in treating cancer you can't develop a cure and kill your cash cow. It however, completely misses that somebody that isn't currently treating cancer can come in and develop a cure (i.e. Tesla) without tanking their treatment margins.
