Film: Who Killed the Electric Car?
•California has the poorest air quality
•In 1989, a study found many vehicles in Los Angeles caused respiratory diseases,
and they produced more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which leads to global
warming
•In 1987, GM won the one of a kind solar powered vehicle award
•GM’s air resources board saw electric opportunity to solve another problem
•Passed the gas emission test
•EVI – the first electric production car in 21st century
oWas fast, elegant, sexy, fairly priced, quiet
oAll you need to do is just plug it in at night, and when you need to drive just
unplug it
oThe cost of driving this is the same as driving a gasoline car
•Not everyone was sure that electric cars would save US
•People are very cautious about the new electric car
•“I don’t know if it will be strong enough, how far it will go”
•Car companies made car compliance
•For the regulation, they GM felt that they needed to change something
•Then laid off assembly line and sales staff
•GM models have been going back to the decades
•White House joins fight against Electric Cars
•Federal government joined the car companies to introduce Hydrogen cars
•California killed its electric car mandate April 2002
•Across California, drivers held protests to save electric cars
•With no more electric cars on the road, GM now has their own EV1 fleet
•No clue as to where the cars were going
•About 50 EV1s were crushed and piled one on top of another
•It was wrong, but more wrong was reasons for it
•EV1s were not the only electric vehicles in jeopardy
•In Los Angeles, Toyota has RAV4 EVs that are also shredded into a million pieces
•Activists came together to bring back the EV1s on the roads, but despite the 1.9
million dollar cheque, it was useless
•Who killed the electric car?
oBig oil companies
oAir resources board
oCar companies say that there was not enough demand for electric cars, but
some consumers never knew it existed
•Suspect: consumers – guilty
•Consumers couldn’t see the difference
•What really killed the EV was American consumers – they didn’t believe they could
be functional
•Did EVs really not have enough range?
•Suspect: oil companies – guilty
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•Oil companies got intimately involved and saw EV as a threat, had a strong incentive
to discourage EV
•Oil companies have imposed a prevention program for electric vehicles
•There’s still a billion barrel on the earth’s crust, there is still lots of business
•But at some point, people will snap over to EV, which is what the oil companies fear
•What the oil companies fear is the EV will be successful and they will be losing
money to electric vehicles
•Suspect: car companies – guilty
•GM didn’t believe EV would catch on, they hated the mandate so much they didn’t
want to do the business
•The reason why EV1s give GM a kick start was that there was not a profit seen for
electric cars, could not see how Toyota could make profit from Prius
•Electric cars had no internal combustion
•Servicing EV1 was easy and clean, while gasoline cars were dirty
•Large SUVs (i.e. Hummer) were preferred over the EV1 because was promoted to be
safer
•With the influence of oil and car companies, electric cars had to stop
•There was radical change when solar panels were pulled down from Whitehouse
•Today, we are still addicted to oil, although we come up with alternatives
•The oil industry and American car companies are resistant to change
•Clean cars are too important to be left with American automobile companies
•Suspect: CARB (California Air Resources Board) – guilty
•Suspect: Hydrogen Fuel Cell – guilty
oSome supported hydrogen fuel cell vehicles
oA car powered by hydrogen uses 3-4 times more energy than vehicles powered
by electricity
oNot enough room for hydrogen fuel, hydrogen fuel is expensive, must build
more hydrogen infrastructure, and competition for hydrogen must not
improve
•On March 15, 2005, the last EV1s were taken away
•Suspect: batteries – not guilty
•Suspect: government – guilty
•The fight over electric cars was quite simple – the fight over the future
•The future is hybrid cars, hybrid cars are the best solution – fuel efficient, clean, can
plug in any garage
•Serious problem – America is addicted to oil
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