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| Who Killed the Electric Car? | 
 enlarge | Actor: Martin Sheen
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
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Avg. Customer Rating:  275 reviews
Sales Rank: 506
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Subtitled)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 93
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 15286
UPC: 043396152861
EAN: 0043396152861
ASIN: B000I5Y8FU
Theatrical Release Date: 2006
Release Date: November 14, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In 1996 electric cars began to appear on roads all over California. They were quiet and fast produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline. Ten years later these futuristic cars were almost entirely gone. What happened? Why should we be haunted by the ghost of the electric car?SPECIAL FEATURES:12 Deleted ScenesDocumentary: "Jump-Starting the Future"Music Video: Meeky Rosie's "Forever"System Requirements:Run Time: 91 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: PG UPC: 043396152861 Manufacturer No: 15286
Amazon.com
It begins with a solemn funeral…for a car. By the end of Chris Paine's lively and informative documentary, the idea doesn't seem quite so strange. As narrator Martin Sheen notes, "They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline." Paine proceeds to show how this unique vehicle came into being and why General Motors ended up reclaiming its once-prized creation less than a decade later. He begins 100 years ago with the original electric car. By the 1920s, the internal-combustion engine had rendered it obsolete. By the 1980s, however, car companies started exploring alternative energy sources, like solar power. This, in turn, led to the late, great battery-powered EV1. Throughout, Paine deftly translates hard science and complex politics, such as California's Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, into lay person's terms (director Alex Gibney, Oscar-nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, served as consulting producer). And everyone gets the chance to have their say: engineers, politicians, protesters, and petroleum spokespeople--even celebrity drivers, like Peter Horton, Alexandra Paul, and a wild man beard-sporting Mel Gibson. But the most persuasive participant is former Saturn employee Chelsea Sexton. Promoting the benefits of the EV1 was more than a job to her, and she continues to lobby for more environmentally friendly options. Sexton provides the small ray of hope Paine's film so desperately needs. Who Killed the Electric Car? is, otherwise, a tremendously sobering experience. --Kathleen C. Fennessy Stills from Who Killed the Electric Car? (click for larger image) Writer/Director Chris Paine Blogs About Who Killed the Electric Car
 When Who Killed the Electric Car premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (on the same weekend as An Inconvenient Truth), we wondered whether movie goers were ready for a new kind of 'action film'. Fortunately people jumped onboard and this seems even more true today.
We put this DVD together after the release of the film to include a dozen short scenes we couldn't quite fit into our story. My favorite is one with Stan and Iris Ovshinsky who developed the revolutionary battery technology that powered GM's electric car (and today's Prius). These two brilliant octogenarians took our small camera crew on a Willy Wonka style tour of their inventions including the world's largest thin film solar cell factory. As we stood under a football field size machine in Troy Michigan, I blustered "Is solar power back?" Stan exclaimed " What?! Solar never went away... What was back was backward thinking!" And as his machine cranked out miles of solar cells above us, we knew he was right.
I'm especially glad that the optimistic last scene of Who Killed the Electric Car has proven that we weren't just wishful thinkers when we finished our edit. The clips feature the first glimpse of the ultra fast Tesla electric sports prototype as well the Zenn neighborhood electric vehicle. Both cars are starting to roll off production lines today. And while the State of California (and some car companies) are still gambling on hydrogen fuel cells, plug-in cars are proving to be more environmentally efficient and popular. Early adopters deserve a lot of the credit. Oil companies and the internal combustion engine monopoly may have "killed" thousands of electric cars (EVs) in the 1990s, but EVs are coming back. (Stay tuned for next film...)
I hope you'll find our documentary takes you on a wild ride out of the 20th century and into the 21st. --Chris Paine, Writer/Director
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| Customer Reviews: Read 270 more reviews...
 A "Who Done It" for the auto industry. July 20, 2006
132 out of 143 found this review helpful
A great film about another sorry episode in the history of America's automobile and energy industry. Set as a "Who-Done-It", the film chronicles how short sighted automakers (especially GM) develop great electric cars in response to the California ZEV mandate only to do everything in their power - from suing the state, making ridiculous ads, creating a red-tape filled lease application process - to kill them. Consumers buy bigger and bigger vehicles (whether they need them or not). Government officials and staffers bow to the pressure of intense lobbying, and conflicts of interest. The sad fate of most of the EVs produced during the late '90s to 2002 is revealed.
GM, especially, comes off as incredibly vindictive. What automaker ever tracked down every car of any model and crushed them (not the Corvair, Edsel, etc.)? Even after loyal drivers pleaded to keep them, offering to buy the last remaining EV1s with junk titles at lease buyout prices, GM went out of its way to ensure that the EV1 was history.
The passion of GM's EV specialist Chelsea Sexton for the EV1 makes her the star of the movie. One can only imagine what the engineers who designed the EV1 felt when their babies were being crushed.
But the movie ends on a hopeful note. We may never see the EV1 again, but vehicles using electric drive systems, either as full EVs (which are coming from several start-up companies) or plug-in hybrids, must inevitably roam the roads. The upward trend in gasoline prices, the effects of global warming, the inherent efficiency of electric drive trains, the continued improvement of battery technology, and the upcoming reevaluation of the ZEV Mandate guarantee it.
A good look at a good idea. July 16, 2006
116 out of 128 found this review helpful
This documentary provides a fascinating look at how big corporations can get away with murder. The electric cars were quite popular a decade ago but are now non-existent, this explains why. There were less breakdowns in the electric car and of course no gasoline. The result was that GM could not have people driving around in reliable transportation, where would they make money on repairs? The other factor is oil companies, with no legitimate competitor they could do whatever they wanted and have. Strange that the owners (or leasees since they were not for sale) were not allowed to keep their cars after the California law was repealed. Check it out.
 A Murder Mystery That Affects Us All February 23, 2007
43 out of 56 found this review helpful
I really do try to keep up with the news, but somehow I missed this little nugget of recent history. And it is a pretty darn interesting nugget if I may say so. GM, pretending they actually care, put out on the road high quality electric cars. Then, just as quickly, forced them out of the hands of those who had leased them and destroyed them. This film puts on its liberal do-gooder hat and tries to get to the bottom of just why these cars are no longer on the road. Suspects such as the oil companies, the auto industry, and consumers are all tried and found guilty. The documentary itself is on task and never resort to cheap shots (I'm looking at you "Super Size Me"). Martin Sheen provides the narration and does a pitch perfect job of it as he conveys a calm yet serious tone.
With the combination of great ideas and great editing "Who Killed the Electric Car" is a powerful and educational film. Add to that the great footage that they have and you realize that the film is also a hoot to watch. We get clips of George W. Bush (Mr. Wrong Side of History himself) showing up to shovel some dirt onto the grave of the electric car. There is a flyover of GM's testing grounds in Arizona that showed all of the electric cars that had been secretly smuggled away from the public eye so they could be demolished. My personal favorite was that of an old news reel from back in the day when oil was initially discovered in Iraq. The clip hypes all of the great things that are to come to the people of Iraq because of this discovery. I guess if you count civil war, foreign bombs, and George W. Bush's military as great things then they were right on the money. Near the end we get to watch as protestors try to block the remaining EV1's from the grave, but luckily for GM the fuzz arrives to take the side of the monied interest. It should serve as a reminder that the system wants you and me to be as dumb as Dax Sheppard's character in "Idiocracy," and if we let them know that we are smarter than that then their reaction is always to sick the cops on us.
The film makes the point that people can be convinced to buy anything and that the auto companies should use that for good not evil. Just because people are sort of stupid and have been known to pound their chest and demand more speed doesn't mean that they should have a Hummer marketed to them. The interviews were informative and energetic. Not that I needed more reason to hate Ronald Reagan, but I had fun listening to how he found it necessary to take the solar panels off the White House that Jimmy Carter had placed there. Even if he wasn't going to use them wouldn't it just be easier to leave them there and pretend that he cared about the environment? At the end Sheen tells us that not all is wrong in the world. GM is obviously killing itself by only thinking short term and those consequences will be starting sooner rather than later. This film gets a high recommendation from me, nobody should refuse to watch it. ***1/2
 Political garbage - take a physics course instead November 23, 2006
27 out of 100 found this review helpful
This is the typical Micahel Moore who dunnit nonsense? It does make you think, however. A load of tripe, overall.
This movie. GUILTY. The world does not revolve around California. The ME state. All about ME.
No data is ever mentioned in this documentary. BTW, NiMH batteries, nor any other technology is sufficient for the energy (duration) needed to run a pure EV for 300 mi. No mention of how much this technology costs for what little it does vs. conventional alternatives. Last time I checked, this a free market and this does not compete economicaly.
Has anybody mentioned the cycle life of batteries? They more you recharge and discharge the sooner you shorten the life of the batteries. Lead acid batteries need to be replaced every 3 years at a cost of ? Not mentioned. There's a whole field of them in the back of the EV1.
NiMH batteries? $1500-5000 per pack. Life span? 8-10 years per calendar life, 3 years with daily use. Average car life cradle to grave: 15 years. Not my problem, let's blame someone else when they are old. Lithium ion? even shorter and more expensive, plus like Sony's laptop batteries, explode when uncomfortable. Then you have to recycle them or will people?
How about a manual transmission car driven properly with either biofuels and driven properly? Enviros are too lazy to learn the whole picture and understand physics and learn how to drive properly and efficiently like Europeans do. The automatic transmission throws away 8% efficiency off the engine power because it is not direct drive. The CVT wastes the same at highway speeds. A Prius would be more efficient if it was a manual clutch gearbox, but greenies are too lazy to learn how to drive properly and efficiently. They want a remote control and the ability to blame the manufacturer when it does not get 50 mpg.
Why on earth would the oil companies not support a business model that makes them sustainable? Electric does not do that. Why would they support it? Common sense. Do you really expect otherwise?
Does the car industry see a business model that can make them money even with economies of scale. No, not until battery technology improves.
An automatic Volvo gets the same mileage as an SUV, are these attacked? No. What's the difference, both are owned by smug, wasteful people. Oh, one had good intentions that don't matter.
Daytime running lights waste fuel, are annoying to other drivers, have absolutely no quantified benefit through any study that was not funded by safety activists, car companies, or lighting manufacturers. in fact, they are proven to increase safety issues, as they distract drivers focal points. Are there any efforts against this? No, this movie is worried too much about intentions rather than actions.
No mention of ethanol and biofuels and their benefits and issues. Too convenient.
Get a clue then make a movie.
A good example of people will believe anything from Hollywood.
BTW, I drive fuel efficient cars and find most of the automotive greenness to be uneducated. Take a Skip Barber course and learn how to drive, before pontificating.
Objective Review from The detroit Free Press & Facts From GM January 21, 2007
25 out of 45 found this review helpful
MARK PHELAN: Electric car killer? Don't blame GM, Toyota exec says
December 20, 2006
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
"Who Killed the Electric Car?" caused a furor when it was released this year. The movie hammers away at GM and its EV1 electric car. (Sony Classic Pictures)
It's the kind of thing you hear over dinner every week in Detroit, but it comes as a surprise when a top executive with Toyota leans across the table to make the point.
"The movie 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' was terribly one-sided," Ernest Bastien, Toyota Motor Sales vice president for vehicle operations, said intensely. "It was not balanced at all."
We were talking in Charlotte, N.C., a couple of weeks ago. I was there to drive Toyota's new 2007 Tundra pickup, and the change in topic was completely unexpected.
If it's not surprising enough to hear Toyota defending GM, try this on for size: The film's director pretty much agrees.
"We let Toyota off the hook for how they subverted the program" to sell electric cars because GM had a higher profile, director Chris Paine told me over the phone Sunday.
The automakers, of course, don't think they subverted anything.
GM's Saturn EV1 electric car and Toyota's RAV4-EV electric SUV failed for the same reason - customers didn't want them - said Bastien, who was point man for Toyota's short-lived effort to sell the RAV4-EV in California.
GM delivered about 800 EV1s to customers from 1996 through 2000, while Toyota delivered 342 RAV4-EVs in 2002-03.
The film, which suggested GM sabotaged a promising technology that could reduce fuel consumption and pollution, caused a furor when it was released earlier this year.
The movie also intentionally ignored Toyota's experience to make its case, Bastien said.
"We shared all our experience with the RAV4-EV," but the filmmakers intentionally omitted it, he said.
He said the movie's suggestion that GM "chose not to make money on a car people wanted to buy in California" is ridiculous.
"They spent a huge amount of money advertising that car in California," Bastien said. "People wouldn't buy them."
Toyota did everything it could to attract buyers to the RAV4-EV, too. It subsidized the price, so customers paid $279 a month - the same price as the company's hit Prius hybrid. The price included an expensive home charging station.
Toyota used the same savvy Internet-intensive marketing model that fueled the Prius craze. It even gave its dealers a sweetheart deal so they could make twice as much selling a RAV4-EV as a Prius.
To no avail. Toyota sold about 300 RAV4-EVs in 2002, compared with 20,119 Priuses. Buyers waited in line for the hybrid. They avoided the electric car like it was a downed power line and Toyota, like GM, pulled the plug on the project.
"Customers are not willing to compromise on things they need," Bastien said. "They need cruising range. They don't want to worry about running out of fuel, and they don't want to wait five hours to recharge. The movie didn't give any consideration to that fact."
Filmmaker Paine bought a RAV4-EV, but he's not buying Toyota's explanation.
"I don't agree that they made a good-faith effort to sell the car," he said. "Their priority was the Prius. The EV1 and RAV4-EV were never properly marketed.
"Toyota was no better than GM."
Which brings us back to the original question: Why was the movie so much harder on GM?
It made a better target.
"GM handled it so poorly," Paine said.
His crew filmed protesters outside Toyota's offices, but the company's security guards came out and gave them bottled water and Toyota key chains.
GM, Paine said, turned the water sprinklers on protesters. GM insists they were timed sprinklers, and the protesters just happened to be there at the wrong moment.
Whatever the case, the GM footage was more dramatic, entertaining video. It made it into the movie. Toyota wound up on the cutting-room floor."I don't want to say that we picked on GM," Paine said. "The EV1 was the iconic electric vehicle. That's why we focused on GM."
Let me translate that: GM ended up in the crosshairs because it invested the most time and effort into its electric vehicle. The futuristic EV1 was designed from the start to be a revolution. It was the poster child for electric vehicles. The sedate RAV4-EV looked like just another small SUV.
GM declined to comment.
The nail that sticks up will be hammered down, as they say. GM was the nail. "Who Killed the Electric Car?" was the hammer.
And Ernest Bastien deserves credit for sticking up for the truth, regardless of hammers.
Contact MARK PHELAN at 313-222-6731 or phelan@freepress.com.
Original FYI column by Dave Barthmuss on the EV1.
June 23, 2006
Who Ignored the Facts About the Electric Car?
By Dave Barthmuss
GM Communications
The film EV Confidential: Who Killed the Electric Car? showcased the intense passion for GM's out-of-production EV1 electric vehicle. I understand why. It was great technology for its day, a great concept and a great car. GM was and is proud to have brought the electric vehicle concept as far as it did and further than any other electric vehicle project attempted by any other automaker around the globe. Sadly, despite the substantial investment of money and the enthusiastic fervor of a relatively small number of EV1 drivers - including the filmmaker - the EV1 proved far from a viable commercial success.
But the story for GM does not end with the final credits on the movie. I've been the person who has spent the last few years answering the questions of why GM discontinued the program. Although I have not seen the movie or received an advanced DVD as others have from the film's producers, I can tell you that based on what I have heard there may be some information that the movie did not tell its viewers. The good news for electric car enthusiasts is that although the EV1 program did not continue, both the technology and the GM engineers who developed it did. In fact, the technology is very much alive, has been improved and carried forward into the next generation of low-emission and zero-emission vehicles that are either on the road, in development or just coming off the production line. For example:
GM's two-mode hybrid system designed for transit busses have been placed in more than 35 cities across the U.S. and Canada. Perhaps many have seen these cleaner-burning diesel-electric mass transit vehicles. The buses use technology developed for the EV1, such as the regenerative braking system.
The Saturn Vue Green Line, which will hit showrooms later this summer, incorporates a new, more affordable gas-electric technology. The Saturn Vue Green Line will be priced at less than $23,000 and offer the highest highway fuel economy at 32 mpg of any SUV, hybrid or otherwise.
GM is co-developing with DaimlerChrysler and BMW Group a new two-mode hybrid system for passenger vehicles. This new two-mode hybrid technology will debut next year in a Chevrolet Tahoe full-size SUV, which will offer a 25 percent improvement in combined city and highway fuel economy when joined with other GM fuel-saving technologies. Technology born in the EV1 is incorporated into this new two-mode hybrid system.
GM's fourth-generation hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, which enhances the technology found in today's HydroGen3 fuel cell vehicle, (currently in demonstration fleets around the world), will be introduced later this year and will represent a leap forward toward a production ready version of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. For the longer term, GM sees hydrogen and fuel cells as the best combination of energy carrier and power source to achieve truly sustainable transportation. A fuel cell energized by hydrogen emits just pure water, produces no greenhouse gasses, and is twice as efficient as an internal combustion engine. Although hydrogen fuel cell technology was cast as a pie-in-the-sky technology by the moviemakers, GM is making great progress in fuel cell research and development and is on track to achieving its goal to validate and design a fuel cell propulsion system by 2010 that is competitive with current combustion systems on durability and performance, and that ultimately can be built at scale, affordably.
Add to all this GM's leadership in flex-fuel vehicles that run on clean-burning bio fuels such as corn-based ethanol and our new "active fuel management" system that shuts down half the engine's pistons at highway speeds to improve fuel economy, and we feel we are doing more than any other automaker to address the issues of oil dependence, fuel economy, and emissions from vehicles. And we are committed to do more.
Lastly, because the movie made some harsh criticisms of GM for discontinuing the EV1, let me set the record straight:
GM spent more than $1 billion developing the EV1 including significant sums on marketing and incentives to develop a mass market for it.
Only 800 vehicles were leased during a four-year period.
No other major automotive manufacturer is producing a pure electric vehicle for use on public roads and highways.
A waiting list of 5,000 only generated 50 people willing to follow through to a lease.
Because of low demand for the EV1, parts suppliers quit making replacement parts making future repair and safety of the vehicles difficult to nearly impossible.
Could GM have handled its decision to say "no" to offers to buy EV1s upon natural lease expirations better than it did? Sure. In some ways, I personally regret that we could not find a way for the EV1 lessees to keep their cars. We did what we felt was right in discontinuing a vehicle that we could no longer guarantee could be operated safely over the long term or that we would be able to repair.
In turn, GM engineers used EV1s for cold-weather testing to continue the technology transfer to hybrids and fuel cells. We also donated them to universities and museums. In fact, we donated an EV1 to the Smithsonian and are now being wrongly accused of a conspiracy with the museum because they removed the car for renovation of the National Museum of American History. I can assure you that this is nothing more than unfortunate timing.
So as right and as good as our intentions were, we understand that the moviemakers see them as wrong. We'll accept that criticism, but don't punish GM for doing a good deed. Rather, work with us and give us credit for taking a necessary first step in developing technologies that hold the potential to change the face of automobile transportation. That's what GM engineers are doing everyday.
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