Who killed the electric car?

Well besides the provocative title, the movie though not as powerful or professionally done as other muckracing movies of late, does provoke a lot of questions about the future of the automobile.

There are a few conspiracy theory type moments, like the revelation that GM destroyed all of its electric cars, and one of the big moments is when the vigil surrounding the last 78 EV1 (electric cars), which happened to be stored in one parking lot are taken to the middle of the desert and destroyed.


In general this movie stays away from conspiracy theories and concentrates on the central issues. It attempts to prove that there was demand for the electric car, and the interviews with several of the owners proves only that there were some who loved the car, and that the potential was there to build that demand.

The movie also attempts to prove that the limitations on the car were real, but the dificulties were possible to overcome.

Of course Big Oil is given a role as one of the guilty parties in destroying the electric car, but not a very prominent one. The big bad guy is the head of the California Air Resources Board. The board came up with the regulations which were to force the car companies to build electric (Zero emission vehicles) cars. These were repealed by this 'bad' guy (I can't remember his name) after there was heavy lobbying by oil companies and car companies and the fedreal government decided to sue california so that the regulation could not come into effect.

One of the funniest moments was when they showed the advertising for the electric car. The entire ad focused on the negatives and barely portrayed the positives of the car. With ads like that i'm not surprised it failed.

The entire movie endeavoured to show that GM effectively built a wonderful product but undermined it every step of the way. The main thread is that it threatened too many people, and in fact GMs entire product line would have been threatened.

It makes a rather compelling case, though the usual caveats about bias need to be mentioned as well.

I thought it was a good movie, well worth seeing.

The really really shocking thing for me, was the degree to whihc lobbyists have penetrated and really deformed (in John Ralston Saul's formulation) the democratic process. Every single public official in the movie was bought off by someone. It was disgusting. It is only at our peril that we imagine the same thing isn't true here in Canada.