Trailer: Who Killed the Electric Car?

Posted by David Roberts at 11:50 PM on 11 May 2006

Read more about: electric vehicles | cars | movies

Somebody's probably posted about this already, but if not: The trailer for Who Killed the Electric Car? is available here.

We've written previously about the movie here, here, here and here.

For story: Trailer: Who Killed the Electric Car?
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A few more for you

...here and here.

I hope the trailer has its desired effect. Not to defend the stuffed shirts, but you can't say GM didn't try. They lost a billion dollars making and marketing that car. GM tried to put the cart in front of the horse, got burned and became gun shy.

Why would they have tried if they were not serious about it? Note that only wealthy celebs could afford one. That was not the only electric car that tested the market. The Japanese had one also. They screwed up by trying to market a car before they had a battery. Car manufacturers are not battery researchers. They buy their batteries from vendors. The lack of a viable battery is all that stands between an electric car and feasibility to this day, although I really hope that is about to change.

It is too bad Detroit's CEOs have blown the chance to be the first out of the blocks with a viable plug-in electric and it is even sadder that they are blaming their demise on their own workers instead of having the integrity to own up to their lack of vision and leadership.

I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but the fact that a 38 volt, high-current, lithium battery is just now becoming available for power tool applications (due out this month) suggests that the electric car had to wait for the right battery and that there wasn't much to be done about it before that happened. I could also be completely wrong but you will never be able to prove that!

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 10:26 AM on 12 May 2006

The electric car had to wait for...

our society to be ready to compromise just enough of its lifestyle for a better environment. The "treehuggers" are still too few a minority and general society is still unwilling to sacrifice much, until it hits the pocketbook. We must accept that the environment is not yet a priority in the USA. It is however being driven by peripheral markets which eventually will determine the future of automobile legislation. Yet as long as we have an oil tycoon in the President's seat, you can bet that
environmental technologies will be paid lip service only. The fact is that oil companies have made enough profits now for decades yet they will continue to drive energy policy for a long time to come. The only thing that will disrupt that are events such as the price of oil today and consumer's willingness to invest short term in environmental alternatives purely for altruistic reasons.

We can get there, yet we must all try a bit harder.

Sass Peress CEO/Chairman ICP Solar www.sassperess.com

by speress at 5:49 PM on 14 May 2006

This movie begins in 1996...

I haven't seen this movie yet...

But I remember 1998...

Gas was about $0.80 a gallon in the Southeast where I lived at the time; the Clinton administration was boasting about the reduction in pollution levels; and the stock market was booming.

Why buy an expensive electric car that looked like an economy car when you could purchase an internal combustion sports car, an SUV, or a luxury BMW for the same price?

WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? WE DID. THE CONSUMERS.

GM lost close to a billion dollars developing a viable electic car. The market was not ready for it during the crucial product introduction phase of the life-cycle.

Consumers wanted SUVs. They were very profitable so that is what all the auto manufacturers invested their R&D into.

Now oil is expensive again and auto manufacturers are caught nearly flat-footed with huge inventories of SUVs, few manufacturing lines dedicated to hybrid cars, and one-step away from chapter 11 right now.

The trailer implies that Big Oil companies somehow played a hand in the disappearance of electric cars. They never forced anyone to buy an SUV.

by iremember at 6:57 AM on 18 May 2006

Selective Emphasis

There is a lot of talk about how demand just wasn't there. How about GM's conscious decision to make it difficult to purchase these cars? After the California Air Resources Boards abandoned their earlier mandates, there was little reason to continue with the vehicle. The status quo makes GM far more money than any reform would. How about the reclamation of hundreds of cars from hundreds of dedicated EV1 users? These were people who wanted to continue using these cars. How about GM's claim that parts from these cars were going to be recycled? Instead they were secretly shredded in the desert. The car threatened the oil industry, the repair industry, the brake industry and a whole lot of people who wanted to keep things exactly as they were. There's a lot of negativity about the average citizen and their gluttony. People will do the right thing if they're given the chance.

by mikeroddy at 3:07 PM on 20 May 2006

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