Who Killed The Electric Car? DVD Review

"Who Killed The Electric Car?" reviews

DVD

Who Killed The Electric Car?

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2007-03-16 16:00:51

Provider

DVD Review

Hollywood’s stars and wannabes have adopted the Prius like a third world orphan. In the mid-Nineties the electric car represent the solution to a California law requiring 10 per cent of its vehicles to be emission-free by 2003 . So how come it never worked out that way?

Director Chris Paine looks for an answer in this lively documentary. It’s a whodunit. And there’s a list of suspects lined up by the director. In 1997 $35,000 got you a car that went 120 miles and took about 45 minutes to charge. So who stopped it ruling the West Coast’s roads? The first entries to the market were inevitably imperfect, not to mention almost impossible to drive. But these flaws were ironed out and when petrol prices plummeted the product was refined further.

The USA’s car manufacturers worked overtime to overturn the West Coast law. General Motors stopped their production of the EV1 electric car and refused to let leaseholders buy them. How anti-green can you get? They then destroyed them when the leases ran out. Big Oil conglomerates added to the car's death too, advertising that the electric car was a threat to the environment! Logic is defied and the culprits are multifold.

Paine's informative and instructive film makes the USA look like a gasoline-guzzling addict - driven by big business. It’s an anathema in a modern world. Give them twenty years looking for an alternative and they’ll start blaming the public for not buying them!