In the early days of the automobile, the electric car was dominant, but inexpensive gasoline and innovations like the electric started allowed the gasoline engine to take over, and electric cars disappeared. In 1990, General Motors unveiled a new concept car called the Impact. The Impact was an all-electric 2-seat coupe, powered by batteries and electric motors, with sleek, futuristic and aerodynamic styling. Impressed by the technology in the Impact, the California Air Resources Board quickly issued a mandate in 1990 that stated that a percentage of new cars sold in California would have to meet zero-emissions standards. This percentage would by 2% starting in 1998 and 10% by 2003.
The General Motors EV1
The Impact became the EV1, which was released to the public in time to comply with the mandate. The EV1 was not actually offered for sale, but was leased through Saturn dealers in California and Arizona. The General Motors EV1 was not the only electric car available; other manufacturers had to comply with the mandate as well, offering the Honda EV Plus and Ford Th!nk, which were all-new vehicles designed as electric cars, and the Toyota RAV4 EV, Ford Ranger EV, and Nissan Altra EV, which were based on existing gas-powered vehicles. The EV1 was arguably the most modern-looking out of all of them.
While the automakers complied with the mandate, they also fought it. The film tells stories of how difficult it was to lease an EV1 and how the dealers had long waiting lists while GM claimed there was no demand and shut down the assembly line after 1999 (and as the film points out, one month after purchasing the Hummer SUV brand).
GM and DaimlerChrysler went so far as to sue the California Air Resources Board, and the Bush Administration joined them in the lawsuit. Meanwhile, oil companies ran advertisements claiming that electric cars were actually bad for the environment due to electricity coming from coal, and the new chairman of the California Air Resources Board, Alan C. Lloyd, Ph.D., had connections to the proponents of hydrogen-powered cars. After a hearing process that the film claims limited the speaking time of the supporters of electric cars and the 1990 mandate while giving full time to the representatives of automakers, the California Air Resources Board repealed the mandate on April 24, 2003, and put its support behind the development of cars powered by hydrogen fuel-cells.
With the mandate dead, automakers no longer had to produce zero-emission vehicles. But not only did they end production, they also terminated the leases on the electric cars that were already in the hands of the public. By July 2004, the last consumer EV1 in Los Angeles had been reclaimed by GM. Initially the public didn’t know what happened to the cars, but it was eventually discovered that they were being trucked to GM’s proving grounds and crushed. Some of the former drivers wanted to keep the cars and tracked them to the lots where they were stored, staging protests and at one point offering GM over $1 million for the cars in a particular lot, to no avail. Filmmaker Chris Paine shows footage taken by helicopter of stacks of crushed EV1s at GM’s proving grounds.
Other car companies took similar action, as TV personality Huell Howser inadvertently discovered nearly-new Honda EV Pluses to be shredded while visiting a metal recycler for his program California’s Green.
The film concludes by listing “suspects” for the “killer” of the electric car, including consumers, batteries, oil companies, car companies, government, C.A.R.B. and the hydrogen fuel cell, and the film finds all but batteries guilty. The film tries to draw parallels between the electric car and the so-called “streetcar conspiracy” (where General Motors and oil and tire companies bought up electric streetcar lines in numerous cites so they could convert them to gas-powered buses) but there’s no real evidence of a conspiracy here, just some poor decisions and individuals and companies looking out for their own interests.
In the end, while no major automakers produce all-electric cars, there are some independent companies making them, and some the technology developed for electric cars led to today’s hybrid cars.
The film has a clear pro-electric car position, and there are a few aspects that could have been given a closer look. As an example, lip service is given to the fact that the EV1 was very expensive, but this is brushed off with the idea that with higher production, economies of scale would have brought the price down. However, there are no numbers given nor any actual experts consulted on this issue (at least not in the film) so there is no way to know what level production would have had to reach for the EV1 to become affordable to the general public while still making GM a profit, if it were possible at all. General Motors may have known, or at least suspected, that the EV1 would always lose money. Perhaps GM genuinely expected the public to reject the electric car, so by building the best they could, they could come back to C.A.R.B. and say “We tried, but people just don’t want electric cars.” When the public started taking to the cars, GM may have had to try to stop the demand or else risk being forced to build cars that cost the company money. The decision to crush the existing EV1s is harder to defend, but since the EV1 was a unique product for GM, sharing few if any parts with other GM products, GM may have felt it was legally safer and less expensive in the long run to get them off the road rather than maintain a parts and service network for them.
One of the few surviving EV1s, at LA's Petersen Automotive Museum
Despite the film’s bias, there is an attempt to get interviews showing both sides of the story, though those on the opposing side generally don’t give very good arguments (perhaps due to editing), and there are far fewer of them than there are on the side of the filmmakers. The opposing side is represented by John R. Wallace of the Ford Th!nk EV Program (who gives reasonable concerns and positions), Dave Barthmuss from GM Communications and Edward H. Murphy, Ph.D. of the American Petroleum Institute (who give what sounds like propaganda) and Alan C. Lloyd, Ph.D., Chairman of the California Air Resources Board from 1999-2004 (who tries to defend his decision to end the mandate for zero-emissions cars). Meanwhile, the filmmaker’s side is represented by a wide range of personalities, including engineers who worked on GM’s Impact, GM’s former EV1 Marketing Director and other former employees in the EV1 program, former members of the California Air Resources Board, the developers of the batteries used in the EV1, Carter Administration Energy Advisor S. David Freeman, Consumer Advocate Ralph Nader, a number of drivers of electric vehicles ranging from celebrities like Mel Gibson to everyday people and more.
There are a few moments that don’t work. A “funeral” for the electric car, featuring Ed Begley, Jr. giving a eulogy, is kind-of gimmicky, and a little too much time was spent on the protests, especially seeing as how they were futile. The film also attempts to paint the Bush Administration as a party to the “conspiracy” when it joined the lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board, while it was probably just caving to the lobbyists of the auto and oil industries.
Overall, while there is no real evidence of a conspiracy, Who Killed the Electric Car? presents a story that many people wouldn’t otherwise know, and makes for a thought-provoking documentary.
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