Electric Car? makes interesting case, but steers clear of many questions
Posted on Friday, August 18, 2006
Who Killed the Electric Car ? B- Cast: Documentary with Martin Sheen, Dave Barthmuss, Jim Boyd, Alec N. Brooks, Alan Cocconi Director: Chris Paine Rating: PG for mild brief language Running time: 91 minutes
Designed to wheedle outrage from the NPR / Mother Jones / Wild Oats Market crowd, Chris Paine’s Who Killed the Electric Car ? is a breezily indignant case study of the short, strange life of the electric car — particularly General Motors’ sleek, sprightly EV 1.
Paine was an EV 1 driver from 1998 until GM literally jerked the cars from the garages of lessees in 2003 (the vehicle was never for sale ). His documentary, which implicates auto manufacturers, the federal government, the distant promise of hydrogen fuel cell technology, the California Air Resources Board and irrational consumers in the murder of the electric vehicle, is undisguised argument rather than objective history. At times it takes on such a tone of aggrievement that one can’t help but notice most of the EV 1 s seemed to end up in the hands of rich people who cherished the car more as a token of their greenness than as a functional vehicle.
Mel Gibson loved his electric car; so did Tom Hanks and former thirtysomething actor Peter Horton. So what ?
Chelsea Sexton, a former EV 1 “specialist” (one of a small cadre of bright and enthusiastic young people GM recruited to market the car ), seems to suggest that celebrities were given cars; Paine curiously avoids the question of how much the cars cost. (In a recent column Car and Driver editor Csaba Csere asserted the electric cars cost GM more than $ 1 million apiece to produce, a charge that, if substantiated, would certainly cast a different light on Paine’s argument. )
Still, the EV 1 seems like a reasonable vehicle for a certain kind of consumer — if you don’t drive an awful lot, it would have sufficient range. (Though Csere contends that the range of an electric vehicle is severely impaired in cold weather; especially if you want to run the heater and defroster. ) It was clean and zippy and passably stylish. As of last weekend, a gallon of gasoline in Los Angeles was running about $ 3. 50.
Yet with films like An Inconvenient Truth and A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash suggesting we’re either on the precipice of crisis or smack in the middle of it, an electric car seems a viable, comforting option.
But was that the case in 1990 when California adopted the Zero Emissions Mandate, which required two percent of new vehicles sold in the state to be emission-free by 1998, 10 percent by 2003 ? It’s been said that the surest way to get the car companies to oppose change is to mandate it — they resisted seat belts and air bags — and the EV 1 was developed as a specific response to this mandate. It was marketed stealthily, even as GM and other manufacturers gathered political muscle to fight the mandate. Paine does a good job of framing the mystery suggested by the title, and there’s a serendipitous moment when Huell Howser, host of a PBS show called California Gold, stumbles across a junkyard full of near-new electric vehicles scheduled for shredding. “These look like perfectly good cars ! Why are you shredding them, too ?” an incredulous Howser asks of a yard employee. “Little bit of a mystery, really,” the employee replies. “Since I’ve been here the last eight years, they bring us these cars from the dealerships. And they say that they’re test cars. And they've been brought over to — to test various emissions. And the insurance companies won’t reinsure ’em. So we have to watch ’em destroyed here.” “ That seems like a shame, ” Howser says. “It’s a terrible shame,” the employee concurs.
GM claimed there was no demand for the vehicle, although Paine argues that — even with lack of marketing — there were waiting lists. The real question is not who killed the electric car — GM did that, abetted by government expedience and consumer indifference — but whether the vehicle got a fair trial in the marketplace.
While we might understand the need for more fuel efficient, less environmentally harmful vehicles, most of us still buy our cars for reasons that have little to do with practicality. Cars and trucks are fashion items, and they are marketed like athletic shoes. We buy for style and image. Some of us don’t mind spending more for an SUV as big as a boxcar, others don’t mind paying a premium to drive a hybrid and advertise their social consciousness.
As Ed Begley Jr., who has become a poster boy for a kind of vague feel-good liberalism, observes at the mock funeral that serves as a framing device for the film:
“What the detractors and the critics of electric vehicles have been saying for years is true. The electric cars are not for everybody. Given the limited range, it can only meet the needs of 90 percent of the population.”
But selling cars is not about meeting those kinds of needs. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but a car is always more than transportation.
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