Who Killed the Electric Car?

Who Killed the Electric Car is a smart little documentary about a promising technology that was silenced before its potential could even begin to be realized. The film does not resort to partisanship or heavy-handedness in order to get its message heard. Instead, the facts as delivered by the customers and designers carry the film and have the power to outrage anyone who is even marginally concerned about saving the planet.

The story of the electric car begins in California, which in the 1990s passed a Clean Air Bill requiring all car companies to put at least 10% zero-emissions cars on the road. GM took the lead in developing a working, practical electric car. The EV-1 model was a marvel of engineering during the 1990s, incorporating cutting-edge battery technology and technical expertise. The car could travel up to seventy miles before needing to be recharged, gave off no emissions, and was a smooth, quiet ride. GM leased around a hundred EV-1s to the public, but in a couple years time had recalled all of the models. All EV-1s were then destroyed by GM for a reason that wasn't particularly clear to either those who worked on the project or had driven the car. So, the question is posed, who killed the electric car?

This movie causes the same kind of moral outrage that films like An Inconvenient Truth and Why We Fight aroused. It gets under our skin to see oil industries using their powerful lobbying strength in order to kill a technology that could potentially save our automotive life from ecological disaster. However, the film cleverly does not portray any one group as the demon responsible for the demise of the EV-1. The filmmakers investigate many possibilities, including the car makers themselves, politicians in Washington, and the advertising as potential actors. All are found guilty of having a hand in ending the engineering marvel of electrically-powered cars.

It is interesting to see how hydrogen-powered cars have outclassed electric cars as the cars of the future that will help us end our dependence on foreign oil. For one thing, electric cars were already manufactured and could be proven to handle the average American's thirty mile daily driving regiment. Hydrogen cars on the other hand are still leagues away from being introduced to the general public. Currently, a hydrogen car will cost a million dollars for a consumer, and hydrogen refueling stations are nearly non-existent. With the EV-1s, consumers could charge their vehicles in their own garages and would pay the equivalent of sixty cents per gallon of gas in terms of fuel economy. Yes, electric cars depend on coal from power plants, but their use of coal is far less than current cars' use on oil. Furthermore, emissions would be all but eliminated with electric cars.

Narrated by Martin Sheen, the film moves along at a brisk pace and never fails to keep the viewer's attention. A wide range of interviews include politicians, celebrities, and GM engineers, to create a rich tapestry of viewpoints and criticisms. At the end of the film, whether you believe them or not, it is still hard to deny that a travesty took place with the death of the electric car. People talk about reducing our dependence on oil, but this was the first real development that would have made that talk a reality. And we killed it.