Who Killed the Electric Car?

*Warning* - This isn't a exactly a cinematic review about this movie... more just information that I gathered while watching it. I think it's still appropriate to have on this club's blog(?).

I'm glad that I decided to go to this movie while it was still playing at Riverview. It's doubtful that I would have ever gotten around to renting it, and I would have missed out on the sense of entitlement that is the driving force behing this post. I feel entitled to share with you some of the bullet points (Get it? Bullet... Who Killed...), or some of the points that I found particularily interesting as I watched last night.



But maybe I should first start with what the movie was all about.

- Basically, in 1996 GM commericially released its EV1, available by lease only to a very limited number of customers (many of them "stars").
- The car companies were motivated to go electric by the California Air Resources Board's (C.A.R.B.) 1995 decision (the Zero-Emissions Vehicles mandate) to implement a plan to increase the % of emissions-free vehicles on the road.
- In the following years, although GM claimed to be commited to electric vehicles, the company began to fire its EV1 sales teams and denied EV1 owners of their lease renewel options.
- In the meantime, C.A.R.B. is pressured to lessen its standards to accomidate car manufacturers. Then, in 2002, when the car companies decided to sue the C.A.R.B. to futher reduce the emissions standards, the federal government backed them, claiming that the C.A.R.B.'s ZEV mandate could disrupt the fuel economy.
- In 2003 (the very next year), the Chairman of the C.A.R.B., who some might say bowed to easily to car manufacturer's demands, was appointed to chair the California Fuel Cell Partnership. Also, George W. Bush singles out the Fuel Cell as the future for America's independance on foreign oil.
- GM takes all of its EV1's off the road, under the protest of their celebrity owners (this is where the film gets its drama), and groups are formed to try to stop GM from taking away and crushing all of these perfectly functioning cars. Enter documentary crew.

There are too many interesting bullet points to really mention here, but here are a couple (and these are all according to the film, I haven't done any other research on the subject).
• Fuel Cells are powered by hydrogen, which is more difficult to produce, store, and use than gas.
• The current hydrogen fuel cell run car isn't even close to the mass production stage (now costing ~$1,000,000/car to make).
• The energy and pollution required to make hydrogen usable for cars is close to that the energy/pollution expended by cars on the road today. (Compare to electric cars that pollute less, even if they were solely powered by electricity from coal burning plants.)
• The Fuel Cell car requires the building and maintainence of a re-fueling infastructure (10,000-20,000 hydrogen stations across the U.S.).
-BUT-
• The fuel cell market is one that can be taken over by the oil industry (by buying up fuel cell related patents), whereas electricity is something they can't dip into. No wonder George W. is backing the fuel cell. Oil will run out someday, but if the only future technology promoted (allowed) is the fuel cell, these companies will be able to keep their monopoloy on the motor vehicle energy market.

• *GOOD NEWS* Ironically, because the Asian car companies saw the EV1 and other steps being taken by American car companies in the 90s, they began production on the Hybrids which are now out-selling all of the U.S.'s best efforts in Hybrid/high-MPG cars. The plug-in Hybrid is on the way too. A car that, like the EV1, can be plugged in at home and travel hundreds of miles on one charge. The government and the U.S. auto industry won't be able to compete in this market very long by just repeating the word HYDROGEN over and over and over.

• The EV1 was a watered down version of what car companies could produce if they put their best efforts into making/selling it. For instance, the battery patent that GM bought to use in the production of the EV1 was better than the one that it was eventually sold with.
• Range was a major concern of electric car consumers, and even with the 'weak' EV1 battery, a person could go 60-70 miles per charge, which sounds like a little, but is over twice that the average American goes in a day. Plus, plugging in the car at night instead of NEVER going to the gas station, never getting an oil change (no internal combustion engine)... not too bad.
• Not that any of those range figures really matter, because since the '90s individual researchers/developers have created electric cars that they can charge personally, where the charge lasts over 300 miles (at 70 m.p.h.), and Oh yeah, these same cars can go from 0-60 in 3.5 seconds! ...these are not the toy-like, putt-around cars GM was marketing and the general public envisions.

So, a question I had at the end of this movie: "Why isn't the electric company in bed with GM, Ford, Honda, Toyota, etc?! Wouldn't they have a lot to gain by backing the production of the electric car?