Who Killed The Electric Car?

Time for a back-to-school reality check.

The world is now using 85 million barrels of oil each day.

Citizens of the U.S. Empire are the world’s biggest energy users, burning up more than 20 million barrels of the black stuff (close to 15 million barrels are imported) each 24 hour period. (China is in second – with five times more people – burning a daily 6 million barrels each day.)

And roughly 40% of those 20 million oil-filled barrels goes into our automobile gas tanks.

That puts the automobile’s internal combustion engine directly at the center of current debates about global peak oil and climate change.

Directed by Chris Paine and narrated by Martin Sheen, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” takes an engaging and provocative look at the rise and fall (twice now) of electric car technology in the United States.

As the more historically-minded among us know, early 20th century United States roads sported more “electrics” then gas cars, and, as Phyllis Diller (yes! Phyllis Diller!) explains, the electric car was a pleasurable form of transport - no cranking, no exhaust, and a smooth, quiet and comfortable ride.

But, by the 1920s, the gas powered engine won the contest, and electric cars went the way of the dodo…almost.

With the oil “shocks” of the 1970s – the decade U.S. oil production “peaked” – forward-looking Americans began looking for alternative forms of energy and transport. By the 1990s, electric cars started re-appearing on U.S. highways.

The state of California led the way, establishing tough auto pollution standards to encourage the development of cleaner car technologies for its smog-choked cities.

But one decade later, the “electrics” like General Motors’ widely-popular EV1 auto had all but disappeared.

Why?

Paine fingers a few culprits.

The oil industry (shocker!) engaged in well-funded disinformation and lobbying campaigns designed to discredit the electric car.

You know the drill:

“Regulatory” mandates are too strict and antithetical to the workings of the “free market.”

“Electrics” are for rich and elitist Hollywood “liberal” types.

Etc.

And auto industry executives (who five decades ago, let’s remember, bought up most U.S. urban public trolley systems and destroyed them to create consumer demand for automobiles) subsequently argued that there was no “consumer demand” for “electrics” and mounted misguided marketing campaigns designed to deter interest in the cleaner vehicles - despite repeated requests from customers and long waiting lists.

When the state of California’s Air Resources Board cancelled the state’s electric car mandate in spring 2003 and GM recalled all of its cars, citizen activists held a funeral designed to call attention to the situation, and then learned, astoundingly enough, that many of GM’s EV1s were sent to the Arizona desert where they were crushed, shredded into a million pieces, and left for dead.

See the film for both aerial and close-up on-the-ground footage of the same.

As one EV1 employee explains, there is no precedent for a U.S. auto company rounding up an entire line of cars and destroying them.

What gives? And who REALLY killed the electric car?

Customers (the usual scapegoats), for not demanding the electric cars more vociferously?

Inadequate battery technology, which allows “electrics” a maximum range of fewer 100 miles without a recharge? (The average American only drives 29 miles a day.)

Short-sightedness on the part of the auto industry?

Poor planning on the part of the federal government, which sued the state of California to stop the electric car’s development, while granting massive subsidies to SUVs and Hummers?

Interviews with a wide range of Americans, including auto and energy industry executives; consumer advocates like Ralph Nader (who got his start, of course, taking on the auto industry); celebs like Tom Hanks and a hilarious Mel Gibson (ironically enough – given his recent DUI experience); and electric auto industry employees like EV1 employee Chelsea Sexton, makes Paine’s film a fast-moving and fascinating account.

And with Goldman Sachs predicting the price of oil to reach $100 a barrel by this coming winter, perhaps the electric car may return soon to a road near you.

Or perhaps, the electric car has seen its heyday – such it was.

First published in the “Valley Reporter.”

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