I don’t think it was all that mysterious, or even sinister. The car was a compliance car, it was mandated by the state to exist, and was not at the time a profitable model. All of them were leased. When the mandate expired or whatever, selling the cars instead of taking them back would have meant supporting this very different car for a long time with parts and repair service. This would have been a huge headache, and not worth it by any measure. Yes, they could have attempted to make BEVs happen for the mass market in general, but every carmaker was free to do so and they all seemed to agree that it wasn’t a good risk until Tesla came years later and made that bet with the S and the 3. But that was 15 years of advancement later.

And GM could have crushed all of them, but apparently was proud enough of it and not afraid people would ‘discover its secrets’ and build a new EV, since they decided to just park a half dozen or whatever at schools for students to poke and prod at. I get that the optics of crushing them made them look like a villain from the “Captain Planet” cartoon, but it would have been foolish for them to do anything else.