Who killed the electric car?

(Canyon County Democrats)

          Earth Week offered a good excuse to view Who Killed the Electric Car.  The DVD version from Sony Pictures came out in November and several friends recommended it—if you can call, "I'm so angry I don't want to talk about it," a recommendation.

          I really thought I knew what the film was about.  Urban legends about the oil companies keeping some great gas-saving device off the market have been around for 50 years.  And 50 years before that half the cars on the road were electric.  With gas prices high and rising, somebody had decided the time was right to take another look at that technology.

          If you've seen the film you're snickering by now.  The car featured is a GM EV1 on the road in California from 1998 to 2005.  Tom Hanks raved about his on the David Letterman show.  Mel Gibson swears he loved his.  Not history, not legend, but 2005.

          General Motors not only discontinued making the EV1, the company repossessed and destroyed them--crushed and shredded new and nearly new cars into pieces smaller than thimbles. (The cars were leased, never sold.)

          The auto company gave plenty of reasons.  It was an expensive car to build.  It was costly to distribute parts.  The EV1 only had a range of 100 miles on a charge.  Nobody wanted them.

          The trouble is somebody wanted them—wanted them a lot.  When 78 of the EV1s were sighted in an impound lot in Burbank, supporters offered GM $1.9 million for the lot.  GM's answer—a caravan of big rigs to haul the cars away.

          Why would a company turn down a no-strings $1.9 million for cars they were going to scrap?

          Maybe for the same reason they'd buy the rights to the battery (now improved to provide a 300-mile range) and to the magnetic strips that could provide solar power on sunny days?

          During GM's recent financial troubles a friendly oil company bought the rights to the battery and solar strips.  It's not marketing them either—claims they're an outdated and inefficient technology.  Strange that stockholders aren't demanding that heads roll over such an expensive and wasteful purchase.

          Okay, corporations aren't in business for the benefit of the American public.  That's why we have public controls.  State governments set and police the requirements for incorporation.  The Federal government can break up companies that have monopolistic control of a market.  A free press informs the public of corporate transgressions.

          Why didn't the controls work?  Why didn't we all hear about California's electric car?  Why weren't we given the chance to give input to the California Air Resources Board?  Who decided that the Federal government would argue that the Constitution gives it exclusive to regulate gas mileage of cars?

          Who Killed the Electric Car raises a lot of questions, questions that have as much to do with democracy and its future as with a zero-emissions car and global warming.