I watched "Who Killed the Electric Car?" last night, on a whim. I usually avoid documentaries like that because it just gets my blood boiling. And this was no exception -- it's a good documentary, and they lay it out methodically. It's a clear case of an automobile company sabotaging and scuttling one of their own products in the interest of serving Big Oil. It just kills me, because the EV1 was clearly a cutting-edge vehicle. 100% electric battery-powered, no emissions, fast and powerful, it was a real forward step. GM had the opportunity to corner the market on a new and exciting product, and they backed away from it and, instead, went with SUVs. And not only did they scuttled the EV1, but they took them all back from folks who leased them and had them all crushed and impounded on a GM lot! Amazing. Near as I can tell (although this isn't explained in the movie, I'm just theorizing, here) they realized they weren't going forward with electric cars, and they didn't want the EV1s out there to 1) show that electric cars were desirable and realizable, and 2) potentially be snagged by competitors and reverse-engineered, giving a competitor access to a fine electric car that they had no intention of mass-marketing.
In the wake of the Gulf Disaster, the open wound in the world that it represents, this documentary is a must-see, because you really see how Big Oil calls the tune in our country. It's especially fascinating to see the damning appraisal of hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell cars -- both of which are blind alleys intended to keep gasoline front-and-center. Fuel cell cars are inordinately expensive, relative to electric cars, and are, even in the best-case scenario, a stopgap technology. There's been plenty of money poured into them, and they're still a prohibitive blind alley -- compared with that, the electric cars are a far-cheaper, user-friendlier real-world alternative.
Anyway, the movie shows a clear case of companies acting against their long-term economic interest and actually foregoing commanding market share because of the easy, oily money being made in the here-and-now. And how they will work tirelessly to ensure that emission-free electric cars don't displace the gas-guzzlers anytime soon.
Amazing stuff, well worth a viewing, but if you have an iota of liberal and progressive values in your heart, it'll piss you off.
It's also staggering to see that the first electric cars appeared in 1897.
