Who Killed The Electric Car?
Directed by: Chris Paine
Narrated by: Martin Sheen

When gas prices hit an all-time high last summer in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, most of us just accepted it and went about our daily business. But if you step back and think about it, such a plight seems absolutely ludicrous. In this age of amazing technological achievement, how is it possible that we are still a slave to crude oil for the majority of our transportation needs? Every other industry has made amazing innovations in the past few decades, and yet somehow cars are still stuck in the dark ages. What gives?

Here we have another somewhat political documentary that tackles one of the most promising transportation alternatives ever to come about: the electric car. But wait a minute… did you even know that such a thing existed outside of science-fiction movies? I have vague recollections of hearing about cars that could be plugged in and charged overnight, but I had never actually seen one until now.

It wasn’t that long ago (the late 90’s to be exact) that GM actually manufactured an initial run of electric cars (a model known as the EV1) that were leased and driven by a small group of people in California at the time. Although the cars definitely had a few kinks to work out (they couldn’t travel long distances, for example), they would have been refined and improved on these details with future models. The big advantage was an obvious one — no reliance on gas, and absolutely no pollution! Unfortunately, newer models never came, and once the EV1 leases were up, GM recalled them and every single unit disappeared from the road.

What happened to the EV1, and why did such a significant invention never find its way into the hands of consumers? It turns out that’s not such an easy question to answer, but it’s one that director Chris Paine decided to explore in Who Killed The Electric Car?

I was a bit unsure about this movie, especially since I had assumed the answer to the above question was obvious. Oil companies rubbed out the EV1 because it was going to cut into their profits, end of story, right? While that certainly is a part of the story, the truth is not quite so cut and dried. The car itself was created in order to satisfy a mandate passed in California requiring that at least 2% of new cars be emission-free by 1998. Strangely, that mandate was never upheld. Clearly there were government officials who were responsible on some level as well.

We start off with interviews from EV1 owners, who generally have nothing but praise for the vehicle. As you might expect with a car that was only released in California, we also hear from a few celebs who owned them, including a rather wacky Mel Gibson (sporting his “Apocalypto” beard), and Tom Hanks (who talks about his EV1 only in clips from an appearance on Letterman). We also meet some of the GM employees who were involved in the EV1 project, from engineers to technicians to PR people, many of whom lost their job when the EV1 was cancelled.

While the testimonials help to build up some emotional ties to the car, the thing that drew me in most about this documentary is the mystery of where the cars actually went. After GM recalled the cars, there were reports of them being stored in fleets at various GM plants, unused. There are some exciting scenes where the filmmakers try to follow the cars as GM is shipping them away in trucks, and later use a helicopter to fly over a restricted area to see what is being done to the cars. Believe it or not, they were actually being crushed up and used for parts, which is a pretty powerful moment in the film. (GM did literally “kill” the electric car.) This eventually leads EV1 devotees to picket outside another GM storage facility and attempt to save the cars by offering to buy them on the spot.

Later in the movie they examine the potential “suspects” that could be blamed for the death of the EV1, and give a judgment on each. One of the eye-opening things for me was the portrayal of the hydrogen fuel cell as a Bush administration red herring, that is, a “pie in the sky” technology being pursued solely to keep up appearances with environmentalist groups. I’m not sure if this is entirely true, but it certainly makes the electric car seem even more important, and its loss so much more tragic.

I would have liked to see a bit more analysis of the marketing of electric cars, since there was a lot of speculation as to whether or not consumer demand was actually there. One of the TV commercials they showed for the EV1 was abysmal, and there were some indications that GM never tried to pushed it on the public at all. Shortly after the EV1 was abandoned, GM embraced the Hummer as the next must-have vehicle for Americans, clearly with a lot more success. I’m a big believer that marketing people can get consumers to buy just about anything, so I find it hard to accept the excuse that the EV1 simply didn’t meet people’s needs.

Overall, I’m not much of a car junkie, but I am interested in the future and as such this movie had me hooked. It doesn’t get very technical, nor does it get very personal, but it’s still manages to spin a surprisingly good yarn. Who Killed The Electric Car? plays out very similar to Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, in that it will probably succeed in infuriating you as it progresses and yet you can’t stop watching. This movie is not just for conspiracy nuts, this movie is for anyone who cares about the environment and about having a market where consumers are truly free to choose the products they want. I’m sure it’s too late for this movie to make a difference as far as the EV1 is concerned, but we can only hope it helps prevent another great invention from being squandered ever again. — Sean

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