Who Killed The Electric Car? Review

"Who Killed The Electric Car" reviews

Movie

Who Killed The Electric Car

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2006-07-28 15:00:24

Provider

Review

In the mid-Nineties, it seemed all but inevitable that the electric car would, slowly but surely, come to dominate the bulk of the world's roads. After all, General Motors had a model on the road, while California had a law on its statute books requiring that 10 per cent of its vehicles be emissions free by 2003. Regrettably, it never worked out quite that way.

Chris Paine's documentary endeavours to find out why. Cleverly, he structures the film as though it were a whodunnit with a list of suspects waiting to be crossed off. First, needless to say, is the ridiculous price: $35,000 in 1997 for a vehicle that could go for 120 miles without a charge and which took at least 45 minutes to charge.

And yet, as we have seen with computers, video cameras and DVD players, the first entries onto the market are inevitably imperfect, not to mention difficult to operate. Generally, though, such flaws are ironed out, before the price plummets and the product is refined.

California's automobile companies, however, went out of their way to overturn the law. General Motors stopped its production of the EV1 electric car and, worse, refused to let leaseholders buy the cars, destroying them when the lease ran out and they were returned. Oil companies, too, contributed to the car's demise, taking out ads that claimed the electric car was a threat to the environment.

The result, according to Paine's instructive narrative, means that the States is stuck on gasoline for another two decades while the world seeks an alternative. Doesn't big business suck?