Who Killed The Electric Car?

My daytime activities are keeping me way too busy lately, but I wanted to throw up a quick post about a new movie called Who Killed The Electric Car?

This is a documentary about General Motors and their EV1 electric cars they introduced in the mid-1990s. I haven’t seen the movie, but I did see an interview of the director on the Daily Show and it sounds like the movie is pretty harsh on GM and the oil companies.

I was curious to see if GM had any response to this movie. Thanks to the Wikipedia entry on this movie, I did find an interesting rebuttal to the movie written by GM on their website called Who Ignored The Facts About the Electric Car?

Given the cheap price of gas when the EV1 was introduced, I think it’s correct of GM to say that the general public had a very large part in “killing the electric car” due to the price and the driving range. However, I think it’s really strange and foolish that GM refused to let the EV1 test drivers buy out their leases and then proceeded to destroy all of these cars. The times and gas prices have changed and a lot more people would be interested in these cars, so GM’s decisions (regardless of motive) were incredibly short-sighted. For example, an EV1 would be perfect for me because I live pretty close to my job and frequent destinations like the grocery store.

Here’s the trailer.

Here’s the website for the movie.

I just skimmed over some of the material on this website, but it looks like they have some interesting documentation about the guilty parties involved the in the murder of the electric car.

I’m very curious to hear about who may or may not have blood on their hands.

Why?

I wish I could have one of these cars!

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew