Who Killed The Electric Car?
“Who controls the future? Whoever has the biggest club. One they can bash you with and one they can belong to.”
Documentaries can be difficult to review for a number of reasons. Nine times out of ten, so long as the director presents his or her facts accurately, in an even-handed fashion, and preferably without too much emotional manipulation of the audience, it’s hard to fault the films themselves of any particular wrongdoing regardless of whether you agree with the intended viewpoint or not. Maybe that in addition to the anger stirred up by the movie (and my bizarre sleeping habits) can be blamed for the impenetrable writer’s block I’ve been so unsuccessfully clawing and scratching at for the last week.
Who Killed the Electric Car?, written and directed by Chris Paine and expertly narrated by Martin Sheen, guides us through the troubled history of General Motors’ EV1, the first real attempt in about eighty years by a large auto manufacturer at mass-producing an electric vehicle. Yes, you read that correctly: electric cars dominated America’s cities and highways in the early 20th century, and the downfall of those elderly vehicles in many ways paralleled that of the EV1 and its contemporaries.
But that’s just the history lesson; the real meat of this documentary is the murder mystery. Kicked-off quite appropriately by a maudlin but nonetheless quite amusing faux-funeral, Paine, Sheen, and many of those directly involved with the EV1 project - designers, marketers, even the owners themselves (many of them celebrities, for reasons explained in the film) - walk us through the assassination blow-by-blow, putting at least half a dozen individuals and organizations in the lineup before the midpoint.
In putting together its arguments against each of the alleged perpetrators, the film holds back very few punches. Despite strong consumer support on the street for the availability of electric vehicles, General Motors seemed to do everything it could to keep their own project from succeeding. Advertising for the EV1, featuring spooky music and imagery of scarecrows and Hiroshima-esque sidewalk silhouettes, appeared designed to keep potential customers as far away from the showrooms as possible, while calls made to people already on the waiting list emphasized the vehicle’s limitations rather that its strengths.
As if that weren’t enough, the oil companies had their fingers in the pot right from the start, first by forming bogus “consumer interest groups” to attempt the removal of electric recharge stations and later via the hostile purchase of patents vital to the development of new battery technology. They also asserted their influence through political channels: namely, the Bush administration, which includes at least three former oil industry executives. Bush himself owned an oil company in Texas (which went belly-up under his leadership and was bought out by the Saudis) while Condi Rice spent time on Chevron’s board of directors before joining the White House. She even has an oil tanker named after her.
Conspiratorial elements aren’t all there is to this story, however. The board which passed the laws making the EV1 possible in the first place is also thought to have played a significant role its downfall, possibly due to mounting pressure from auto manufacturers and Big Oil or perhaps a mere case of shortsightedness, which would appear to be pandemic among most of the suspects named in the film.
Even the consumers themselves aren’t given a free pass. Whether it be a lack of information, an abundance of misinformation, or an egotistical need to parade their vehicles around as demonstrated by one Hummer driver we see interviewed, it could be that some people aren’t ready to abandon their gas guzzlers just yet.
In the end, the guilty parties are numerous (I won’t name them here) and solid points are raised as evidence, enough to almost certainly make you question your preconceptions about the feasibility of electric vehicles and their hydrogen-powered cousins while simultaneously deepening any anger you may already feel towards the aforementioned culprits. While the tone is almost unavoidably somber for the duration, especially in regards to the ultimate fate of the EV1s themselves, a great deal of time is spent in the opening and closing acts to leave the open-minded viewer with a sense of curiosity and enthusiasm, both for the existing potential for these vehicles and for the future.
When the EV1 launched in 1996, the technology already existed in these cars (however embryonic as it may have been at the time) to make a serious impact on the world’s environmental and political landscape. Ten years later when this documentary was released, that landscape had already worsened drastically. In just two years, gas prices have doubled with no end in sight. Has the situation finally degenerated to the point where auto companies and their customers will see the electric car as a viable option? If the EV1 and its cousins had been allowed to live, how far would they have come in all this time?
To answer some of those questions, Chris Paine will soon be releasing a sequel, Who Saved the Electric Car? Until then, you might want to explore YouTube to see the current generation of electric vehicles in action, such as the Tesla Roadster. You might be surprised about what they can do. As for mass-produced electrics, the Chevy Volt could blow it all wide open once again in 2010, if the same climate of protectionist industry and weak-willed politics doesn’t lead it to the same unfortunate end.
The electric car may have already died twice, but with oil becoming prohibitively expensive and the green movement strengthening its impact on the public consciousness, perhaps the third time will finally be the charm.
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It’s tough listening to yet another victim of
perhaps the most dishonest film ever made.
“Who Killed…” is nothing but a long sequence
of lies, starting with the absurd claim that
GM killed the electric car by cancelling its truly
crappy EV-1. The Toyota Rav4 Electric and Honda
Electric were far better cars than the small
cramped EV-1, and Honda cancelled their electric car
program after less than a year due to lack of public
interest, and Toyota killed theirs the same year the EV-1
program was cancelled, which had been long overdue.
So how come Toyota and Honda aren’t painted as killers
of electric car? Simple. Chris Paine made a backroom
deal with those two companies and in return rewrote
history and does not mention them. And do you really
believe that the EV-1 was cheap transportation? If so,
it’s quite obvious that the film failed (on purpose)
to inform it viewers just how exorbitantly expensive
those electric cars really were.
Some electric car facts the film never told you:
Production costs: EV-1 : over $50,000, more than 3 times
that of the much better Honda Accord. Toyota Rav4 - $43,000,
Honda EV - $53,000.
Costs of ownership : new battery pack about every 5 years :
25 NiMH batteries that weighed 1200 pounds (!!). Replacement
costs : Toyota dealerships reportedly priced a complete
battery pack replacement at $35,000. The EV-1 battery pack cost
well beyond $20,000, but GM leasees were never asked to replace
their batteries, while Toyota demanded that their leasees pay for
theirs (none ever did - they simply turned in their leased
vehicles). The per mile costs of owning an NiMH powered EV are
astronomical - more than 30 cents per mile in battery costs alone,
or over $4,000 per year, 4 times what gas powered drivers were
paying for fuel.
Still think those electric cars were cheap?
Still think avoiding a $20 oil change makes me want to go
own an electric? Do you really believe that maintenance costs
for an EV are significantly less? How can that be, when 98% of
the parts on the electric are found in gas powered cars? My
Buick calls for its first tuneup at 100,000 miles, and costs $20.
Oil changes cost me less than $20 per year. That’s it. The EV-1
wass recalled numerous times for mechanical and electrical
problems.
Popularity : no one wanted the EV-1, despite large federal
and state subsidies to those who leased them. No leasee ever
paid anywhere near the cost of those vehicles. Of 5,000 GM
customers who responded to a survey saying that they were
interested in an electric car, only 50 were dumb enough
to sign up. NEVER, in the 6 year life span of the EV-1 (which was
longer than the production run of most cars, making a complete
lie of the claim that the cars weren’t available) were more
than 800 of the 1200 EV-1s on lease at the same time.
ONLY the conscious-striken, those desperate to drive one and
greenwash their image, wanted those cars. They were one gigantic,
expensive headache. The required 8 hours to recharge. Always
available? Get real.
Other problems: GM reported that fear of running out of
electricity was very strong, especially among their women
drivers.
Could the EV-1 get you where you wanted to go? Not likely.
Can you survive with just the EV-1 and without a gas powered car?
Not unless you never needed or wanted to go to a destination over
40 miles away. That was the limit of the car’s driving radius, although
it would shrink as the batteries aged. At 5 years of age, they had less
than 80% of their earlier power (car became slow) and range capacity.
Customers played Russian roulette if they dared try to go too far. Just
because the EV-1 could get you there a year ago, didn’t mean it could
today. And those distances varied depedning upon all kinds of things -
terrain, driving style, A/C usage, etc. It simply was often impossible
to know whether the car could make it to you destination or not, even in
the unlikely event that you knew how far you had to go (assuming no
detours, etc).
“Who Killed the Electric Car?” is far and away the most dishonest film
ever created. Contrary to the cheerleading film, the EV-1 was recently named
by a panel of auto analysts as one of the worst cars ever built. There was no
conceivable reason for producing the EV-1. The film’s claim that Califonria’s zero
emission law required them is a complete lie - the zero emission laws pertained to
all two dozen automakers, not only to those three (Honda, Toyota, GM) who
actually produced electric cars. The zero emission law was a joke, and wouldn’t
have withstood a court challenge. Recently an appeals court ruled in an almost
identical situation that states do not have the power to force manufacturers to
produce products according to their desires.
Without a practical electric battery, any attempts to build a battery-only
electric car are doomed : even dimwitted 7 year olds are aware of that obvious
fact. Anyone can build an electric car - they were doing that long before World
War I. Problem is, the EV-1 wasn’t any better than those early electric cars
in the critical areas of driving range, costs, and recharge times. In 90 years
the electric car that had been made obsolete by the Model T Ford in 1906
was much the same. I was originally interested in the EV-1 when I learned about
it in 1989. But when it finally appeared (after waiting for those “NiMH wonder
batteries” which turned out not to be so much wonderful as expensive) I was
appalled to learn of everything it couldn’t do. Nobody killed the electric
car in 2002, because the electric car wasn’t alive. It was, in the words of senior
Motor Trend editor MacKenzie, DOA.
GM is currently building the Chevy Volt, a car which avoids all the stupidity
of the battery-only, can’t-do electric car. And it will achieve virtually
everything an battery-only electric can and still be a viable alternative to the
gas powered car, which the EV-1 never was. Do the simple math and you’ll find
that as a commuter (which accounts for over half the gasoline usage in this
country) the Chevy VOLT can eliminate the need of over 96% of liquid fuel (even without any workplace recharging) and what remains can easily be met using ethanol. There simply is no need for forcing consumers to accept inferior products like the totally crappy EV-1, which met the transportation needs of practically no one, even those who could afford its high costs of ownership, such as Hollywood stars looking to greenwash their image by driving that “coal-powered” vehicle.
All you liars who are claiming the EV-1 (or Toyota Rav4 electric or Honda EV)
were viable cars will soon have the opportunity to put your money where your mouth is. Mitsubishi announced an electric car to be built in 2009, and it is superior to the EV-1 in every conceivable way : 1) it only takes half as long to recharge; 2) at 100 miles, is has 20% more driving range; 3) it costs much less than the EV-1,especially when comparison take account of inflation - it will cost $39,000 for the basic model; 4) it can carry three times as many passenger and has room for luggage; 5) its battery pack costs less, at $20,000, and will last 5 years;
Now, all you morons and jerks who claim the EV-1 was a wonder car better be lined up to buy this little gem from Mitsubishi.
Sure you will.
I haven’t seen it. But, frankly, whether the movie was a lie or not, I only have this to say;
It’s a fucking crime that we don’t have electric cars. Period. I don’t give a fuck if anyone was keeping it down, or purposely attempting to keep them from being made. The fact that we’ve spent essentially the last century using the exact same finite fuel source, without electric cars being phased into the population due to the “fuel” being essentially infinite, is a god damn crime against humanity and the planet.
I’ve seen the movie. On one hand, it seemed very well put together; on the other, it also seemed too conspiracy-theory-y and relied on too few people to really get a cohesive report (it’s been like a year since I’ve seen it, but I think there are only like 3-5 families of owners shown).
But I agree with G. Schroeder; it’s a crime we don’t have electric cars, or that we’ve subsisted on the same finite resource for so long.
Personally, I hold out hope for cars running on water, dreams, or starlight, but haven’t figured out how to run them through an engine just yet.
@ Kerry Bradshaw: You are replying to points which I never actually raised in my review. Had you actually read it, you may have noticed that I didn’t take much of a firm stance on the issue one way or another, aside from a sense of vague anger towards the situation. More importantly, calling anyone who disagrees with your opinion a lying moron is not how you stimulate a healthy debate on this blog.
Furthermore, the formatting of your comment could lead one to suspect it of being copy/pasted from another site. That’s a good way of getting your replies marked as spam. Please keep that in mind.
@ The G-Man: I would go one step further and say that the lack of any alternative is just as criminal. The best we can really do right now would be converting existing cars to electric via small-time hobby garages and the like for about $20,000 a pop. Mass production, research, and time are the only ways this is going to change, which means that someone out there has to actually have the will to get it started.
I’m just waiting for the sequel. “Who Makes Steve Guttenburg a Star?”
Watch the entire documentary here - http://www.redux.com/playlist/who_killed_the_electric_car_entire_full_length_documentary
There really hasn’t been much aside from economics that has ‘killed’ the electric car. Why was the EV-1 so bad? Because the battery technology had not had any major breakthroughs for decades. Why was this? Because there was no real push for it. Gasoline was cheap, batteries were not, and very few people cared enough to put the money into battery technology as long as gasoline was cheaper.
Yes, now we’re scrambling to make up for lost time, because all of a sudden gasoline /isn’t/ cheap. It’s still cheaper than batteries, but we’re staring into the face of that changing and we don’t like what we’re seeing.
The problem is that a company will not, /can/ not, bet on long term goals. Stockholders demand that money spent shows a return, and they don’t accept “50 years down the line”. The only way to get things like that done is through government grants and incentives, and it takes a strong wave of popular support to get such motions passed. That strong wave of popular support didn’t happen until just recently, even in the 90s people were content with the way things were going even though they knew it couldn’t last.
Hell, some people still are. Hummers are quite popular, even though an idiot could tell how impractical the things are.