Monday morning, a crowd of protesters tried to block the trucks carrying EV1s leaving the California facility, with police arresting two people.

The trucks arrived in Mesa on Tuesday carrying about 20 of the cars, and another group of trucks left Tuesday afternoon. In all, 78 EV1s stored in Burbank are scheduled for transport.

The protesters, mainly clean-air advocates who decry GM's pulling the plug on the EV1, held a monthlong round-the clock vigil at the storage facility in California. They say the auto giant should allow drivers to buy the EV1s for private use rather than scrapping them.

GM leased about 800 EV1 cars starting in 1996 in the Phoenix area and southern California with the proviso that after the three-year leases were up, the cars reverted to the company. But many of the EV1 drivers wanted to keep their cars, both for personal and environmental reasons.

"This is really the last gasp," said protester Mike Kane, 46, a Tempe native now living in Newport Beach, Calif. "They turned down many requests to buy or extend the leases."

About 100 people have offered $24,000 each to buy EV1s, said Kane, a member of a coalition of environmental groups and EV1 drivers. Kane was one of several protesters who followed the trucks from Burbank to the Proving Grounds until the trucks disappeared behind the gates of the secluded facility.

The EV1 program has come to an end, said Dave Barthmuss, a spokesman for GM's Western region environmental-technology division, replaced by new hybrid technology, experimental fuel cells and a new generation of clean-burning gasoline engines.

"God love these people," Barthmuss said of the protesters. "We appreciate their enthusiasm, and we appreciate their loyalty, but there just wasn't enough business to sustain the EV1 over the long term."

GM spent more than $1 billion developing and marketing the EV1, he said, but the public response was disappointing.

"Eight-hundred vehicles and $1 billion spent in four years does not a business make," Barthmuss said. "We have to make vehicles that sell in heavy volumes to stay in business."

There are several reasons GM refuses to sell the remaining EV1s, he said, with product liability the greatest concern. The experimental cars have about 2,000 unique parts, he said, that are no longer available from either GM or any other source. There are no technicians outside GM who can work on the highly complex vehicles, he said.

That means private owners would not be able to maintain the cars, which would not only tarnish GM's reputation when they break down but create safety hazards.

"Some of these parts, such as the electronic brakes, have serious safety concerns," he said. "If somebody should hit somebody else, in this litigious society we could have a problem."

The EV1s will not all disappear, Barthmuss added. GM has donated a number of them to colleges and universities for engineering students and to several museums, including a recent donation to the Smithsonian Institution, he said. GM engineers are currently testing EV1s in cold climates.

The electric-car experiment was not a failure, he said, although they were doomed when the expected breakthrough in battery technology never materialized to give the cars greater range between chargings.

"We believe the EV1 has been a tremendous success in developing technology," he said, noting that systems created for the EV1 are now used in hybrid vehicles and fuel-cell advancements. "There will be a little bit of EV1 in every hybrid and fuel-cell car."