Who Killed the Electric Car?

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© A.J. Malouin 2008

(Rating: 9 by Al and 22 by Caryl.)
(See our side-bar page “How Caryl & Al & The Film Snob Rate Movies”)

(2006/USA. Directed by Chris Paine.)
In 1996, sleek electrically propelled cars began sprouting up like corn stalks on roadways all over California.

It happened because during the 1980s — faced with the gasoline shortages, smog alerts, carbon pollution, and the other myriad short-comings plaguing the internal combustion engine — California’s legislature and GM had acted together to put this electric car on the road.

The car was fast, quiet, sleek, good-looking, had No exhaust, and ran without gasoline— the 100-year old commodity that has American soldiers entangled yet again in the Middle East.

Ten years later all those sleek quiet cars have been sought out and crushed to death. How and why that happened makes for a charming and poignant love story— with a very unhappy ending.

The director of “Who Killed the Electric Car?” actually leased one of those 1996 California electric cars. When he went to renew his lease, he found — as did all other leasees of the electric car — that he could neither get another electric-car lease nor buy the leased vehicle he was turning in. His frustration and dismay led him into deep research and the creation of this film.

The death of the electric car started when California repealed its Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate. The Big Three, the big oil companies and supporters of the Big Three (posing as our unbiased elected officials in Washington, D.C.) had all conspired — in the best American sense of that word — to squelch the electric car.

As is stated in the film, there is still a trillion dollars (that’s in American currency, folks!) worth of business to be done using the world’s current oil reserves. The American oil and car companies and their supporters in America’s government have No interest in walking away from that amount of business.

(The bad news for the entire world, of course, is that most of those oil reserves lie outside America.)

Even as the Big Three were creating an automobile that could thrive under California’s Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate, they were also therefore working behind the scenes to destroy the environment (pun intended!) into which the electric car drove.

This interesting and thoroughly researched film investigates all groups who may have been involved in the death of the electric car. It then assigns guilt as it finds it. The (usual) suspects include (1) the State of California, (2) the Big Three, and GM in particular, (3) the big oil companies, (4) the Federal Government, (5) the proponents of the hydrogen car, and (6) the American consumer.

“Who Killed the Electric Car?” is narrated by Martin Sheen, and includes appearances by Phyllis Diller, Mel Gibson and Tom Hanks. It contains enthusiastic interviews with former leasees— many of whom stood watch over a chained lot full of the last electric cars until those cars were loaded on to trucks to be crushed, out in the desert.

There are also interviews with the vibrant engineers who worked on the electric-car project, many of whom considered the project to be not just a job, but an environmental crusade.

There is also a charming interview with the Troy, Michigan, engineer (and his wife) who created and (sold to General Motors) the battery which made an efficient electric car practical.

After seeing this film Al was impressed by the styling and acceleration of electric car, and thought the film was a job well-done. Caryl rated this film considerable lower, however, as she felt it didn’t actually tell us enough about the electric car.

On the early July 2006 afternoon when Caryl and Al saw this film, another version of the electric car sat outside the theatre, blocking two of the doors to the lobby. Short-ranged, boxy, and capable of top speeds of 25 m.p.h (hang on to your Kangol!), this electric car looked like nothing so much as a thyroidal popcorn machine. (To avoid confusion, that’s probably why it was outside the theatre, instead of in the lobby, where you’d Normally look for popcorn.) This slow boxy car bore No similarity to the sleek fast machine chronicled in “Who Killed the Electric Car?”

America is a sadder, more noisy, more polluted Place without that electric car of the 1990s. As Ed Begley, Jr., said, however, the car wasn’t for everyone.

“It would have only satisfied the driving needs of 95% of all Americans.”

(1 hr 32. Rated PG for brief mild language.)