I just got back from seeing the movie Who Killed the Electric Car – the title says it all.
It was a great movie centered around the GM EV1 (Electric Vehicle) and other (great) electric vehicles that have been pulled from the market by their manufacturers. The makers recalled all the cars at the end of their leases (you could not buy one), even though many of the owners were prepared to purchase the cars at lease end.
Most of the auto makers that had EVs destroyed the cars once they were confiscated. At one point in the movie there is a protest scene surrounding 78 GM EV1s headed to the crusher – GM actually refused a $1.4 Million offer to purchase the cars – go figure!
Why would auto makers even bother making EVs and then removing them from the market, you may ask? Simple, California passed a law requiring a certain percentage (graduating from 2 to 10%) of vehicles sold to be zero emission. Once the law was repelled, they stopped making the vehicles.
The movie is filled with some great information, and is really quite eye opening. I will admit, it is a completely one sided view of what happened to the EVs – GM has a rebuttal here , but one thing is for certain – we need to lower our dependence on foreign oil – Period!
Please go see this movie, you’ll be glad you did. Check out the movie website for theatres in your area – this seems to be a small distribution film and is playing at a lot of the indy theaters.
Hopefully with movies like this and new EVs coming to market from independent manufacturers, the awareness, acceptance and demand for EVs will increase. I suspect the $3.00+ / gallon gas prices won’t hurt either.
Check out the Tesla Roadster one great example – a 250 Mile range EV, that costs about .01 (yes, that is a penny -not a typo) a mile to operate AND will out perform just about any car on the road with a 0-60 time of 4 seconds. Yep, the car is pricey – around $80-100k, but the company believes it can get an affordable car out for the masses in a few years. Check out their blog for some good info on why they chose to start with such a high end car, and where they are headed.
Ok, I’m off to see if I can find the SouthPark ‘Smug’ episode on my Tivo 🙂