Nobody Killed the Electric Car!

I first saw Chris Paine's documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? over 15 years ago. I've seen it several times, watching very carefully, because I'm very much interested in electric cars. But only in the past few days has it occurred to me what a melodramatic, overstated and misleading title and outlook and approach the movie has. 

The movie has to do with the General Motors EV1, an electric car made from 1996 to 1999 in order to comply with California regulations. A total of 1,117 were made. They were leased, not sold, to customers in California. And then in 2002, when Republican took over the California legislature and rescinded the electric vehicle requirements, they were all recalled, and all but a few dozen were destroyed. Most of the remaining EV1's are now in museums. I think a few may actually be on the roads, but I'm not sure about that.

I still find GM's behavior with the EV1 to have been deplorable: refusing to sell this breakthrough electric vehicle, only leasing it, although there were customers begging to be allowed to buy them, and then taking them all back and scrapping them. I am in no way defending GM's scrapping of the EV1.

But Chris Paine's movie is, I repeat, a bit melodramatic. It consists for the most part of interviews with GM employees, some of whom worked on the EV1 project and were passionately in favor of the development of the electric vehicle, and some who seemed rather sleazy; and with some of those people to whom GM leased the EV1. 

As far as the viewer can tell by the movie, GM leased the EV1 only to movie stars. I'm guessing that GM leased some of them to people who weren't movie stars. But Paine didn't interview any of them. 

And one thing about actors is that we can get pretty dramatic at times. I say "we," although I haven't acted in a while, because I know I have the drama-queen gene. 

GM didn't kill the electric car, they discontinued the EV1 leases and recalled and scrapped the EV1's. That was not nice, and in my opinion it wasn't smart at all either, but there were still other EV's on the roads. You can see some of them in Who Killed the Electric Car? For example, the Toyota Rav4 EV. In the movie, in a melodramatically tense highway scene, one of the movie stars sees a truckload of these electric Rav4's and exclaims, OMG they're going to destroy all of THOSE too! (Nope. Toyota kept making the electric Rav4 until 2014.) 

Paine's camera shakes during that scene, as if he was getting caught up in the drama. I don't think he intentionally mislead anyone. I think he was caught up. Maybe most people who interviewed that many movie stars in that short a time would get caught up. Movie stars are very riveting, persuasive people. That's why they're stars.

But all this drama had to do with around 1,000 EV's. General Motors has sold about 200,000 Chevy Bolts. Recently, they announced they were going to discontinue the Bolt, and then they quickly reversed that decision. Maybe they've learned from the negative reaction of their handling of the EV1. Before the Bolt, they sold almost as many Volts. The electric Silverado, Sierra, Celestiq, Equinox and Blazer from GM are all already on the roads and showrooms, or coming very, very soon. The recall of the EV1 represents barely a hiccup in the overall scheme of EV production from General Motors. In his follow-up documentary, Revenge of the Electric Car, Paine represents the development of the Bolt as a change of heart for General Motors, but there's no real proof that GM wasn't committed to the most effective technology all along, and in case you didn't know it, EV's are the most technologically effective vehicles, and are rapidly pulling away from internal combustion in terms of their superior function.

And that's only GM. It's a very similar story at Ford, Hyundai/Kia, VW, Sellantis, BMW, Mercedes and almost every single other major automotive manufacturer. The transition to EV's is real, and Elon Musk didn't make it happen. He just jumped out in front of this parade and has pretended to lead it. And maybe, just possibly, he watched Who Killed the Electric Car? and saw how much fuss movie stars could stir up over a thousand EV's, and so decided to make them his first marketing niche and unwitting advertising department.