What Really Happened to the Electric Car?

A Discussion of the 2006 Documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?

If you have never had any feelings for a car before, you will after watching this riveting and heartbreaking 2006 documentary directed by Chris Paine and released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment involving the creation, commercialization, and ultimate destruction of the electric car. At this point, in 2010, it is safe to assume that many people have never heard of, or much less seen, an electric car on the road. I certainly had never heard of an EV1 before watching this. About a decade ago, primarily in California, this was not the case.

This documentary focuses primarily on California and the bold Zero Emissions Mandate (or ZEM) the California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed in 1990 in an effort to reduce the amount of hazardous CO2 being pumped into the air. Wikipedia states that "the program goal [was] to reduce the pervasive air pollution affecting the main metropolitan areas in the state, particularly in Los Angeles, where prolonged pollution episodes are frequent".

Automobile companies, such as General Motors (the company Paine spends a great deal of time critiquing), had two choices regarding the mandate; comply or fight back. As the narrator mentions, the car companies would ultimately do both. GM complied in the beginning by making and producing the EV1, a car that ran on electricity and could go roughly 60 miles on one charge. Those who owned and drove the car, including such celebrities as Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks, Alexandra Paul, Peter Horton, and Ed Begley, Jr. adored the little car for its efficiency and speed. Ultimately, demand for the electric car grew.

If there was such a demand, why then, did the electric car vanish? Why do we not see everyone driving them? The documentary spends a great deal of time trying to answer this question, and there is no easy answer. Paine lists several suspects who contributed to the demise of the electric car, including the car companies, the oil industry, and, shockingly, the government.

Car companies such as GM, according to the film, are guilty due to not only suing the state of California over ZEM (causing the mandate to eventually be dropped), but doing anything and everything they could to prove there was no demand for the car. Eventually, they pulled the cars off the market and crushed them at secret, highly guarded crushing sites. You may be shocked to know that Toyota and Honda secretly destroyed their electric cars as well. Watching the small, perfectly reliable electric cars being driven away to destruction while their owners watched in tears will break the heart of anyone who has ever loved a car, or anyone who simply wants to do the right thing for the environment. Owners and supporters did their very best to prevent the destruction of the electric cars, even going so far as to try to buy them from GM, to no avail. Many of the protesters were arrested for trying to prevent GM from taking the cars away.

The oil companies are also guilty because they feared the loss of their business to a competing technology. The oil companies so feared the loss of their business, they bought patents to prevent modern NiMH batteries produced by Iris M. Ovshinsky from being used in electric cars, which would have made the electric car even more efficient than it was when it first hit the market.

The government, shockingly, is nearly as guilty (if not more so) than the car companies for destroying the electric car. Not only did they join the car companies in suing California over ZEM, but they also promoted the purchase of vehicles such as the gas guzzling Hummer with preferential tax breaks.

After all of the discussion about the production and demise of the electric car, you have to wonder just how effective and reliable the electric car really is. Is it really better than gasoline cars? Well, consider this: According to the film, for every one gallon of gasoline burned by a gasoline car, nineteen pounds of CO2 are pumped into the atmosphere. There is no doubt that that is a major contributor to global warming. Also, when a mechanic works on your car, they get really dirty from all the oily parts. With an electric car, your mechanic could go home every day without a spot of grease on him. If that wasn't enough to convince you, perhaps the fact that respiratory problems such as asthma have soared in California since the 1980s from the amount of pollution caused in part by gasoline cars.

So is there any hope of the electric car returning to the market? Happily, there is. There are plans to release a plug in hybrid car. The plug in hybrid is much like the hybrids already on the road, but can be charged easily at home, reducing the need to charge your car at a charging station. And, if the documentary is to be believed, the car could get 160-180 miles before needing to be charged again. Talk about efficient and earth friendly! When is this car expected to be on the market? Unfortunately, not until about 2020 according to some sources, though there are several shops already offering after-market conversions such as Pat's Garage in San Francisco. I don't know about you, but I am eagerly awaiting its release. In the mean time, there are other businesses such as Evolveit Motors (formerly Salida Conversions) that sell full conversion kits including technology formerly used and purchased as remnant inventory from the Ford and GM prototype programs.