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 And then in 2002, when Republican took over the California legislature and rescinded the electric vehicle requirements, they were all recalled, and all but a few dozen were destroyed.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.

General Motors and Electric Vehicles

The first mass-produced modern electric car was the EV-1, made by General Motors beginning in 1996. Over a thousand EV-1's were leased -- not sold -- to customers primarily in California. Then in 2002 and 2003, all of the EV-1 leases were ended by GM, who collected all of the vehicles and destroyed them. 

 

Then, in 2006, GM began development of the electric Chevy Volt, which went on sale late in 2010, and from then until the present day, General Motors has been selling electric vehicles -- with less than complete enthusiasm, although so far, after the EV-1, they have not gone so far again as to destroy any of their own cars.

Last Sunday, GM ran a Super Bowl ad in which Will Ferrell hears the news that Norway bought more EV's than ICE (Internal-Combustion Engine) vehicles in 2020, and goes on a rampage, vowing that the US will outdo Norway in this. Also on Sunday, commentaries appeared saying that, although the commercial is wonderful, GM itself is a big part of the reason why currently EV's account for only about 3% of new car and truck sales in the US, compared to 54% in Norway, pointing out that GM lobbies heavily against fuel-economy regulations, which a company set on pivoting to EV's would not do. And recently, GM has announced its intention to produce only zero-emissions vehicle by 2035. 

Many people, in the light of all of this, have described GM's attitude toward EV's as schizophrenic. But "schizophrenic" implies one mind which is in conflict with itself, whereas GM consists of hundreds of thousands of employees who have routinely held sharply conflicting opinions about all sorts of things, EV's being just one example. GM is a very different company than Tesla, which is basically a cult built to do the Will of Elon. Was the EV-1 designed and built by very enthusiastic GM employees? Yes indeed. Was it at the same time viewed with horror by other GM employees, further to the Right politically, who saw it as a hippy monstrosity? Without a doubt. I also have no doubt that many at GM are very happy that their company has committed to zero emissions by 2035, and that many others believe that global warming is a hoax, perhaps Chinese in origin.

Like the rest of the world generally, GM is moving toward a more enlightened stance on the environment, while being hindered by many individuals dragging their feet, some out of conviction and others out of greed. The situation is complicated, and some parts of GM are fighting other parts.

Speaking of complication: that same Norway which is doing such a fine job of switching over to clean energy usage domestically, is also one of the world's biggest exporters of oil.

The US Automotive Market From a Global Perspective

Before Tesla, there were only 3 major American automakers: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Apart from some very small companies, every other automobile manufacturer in the US had either gone out of business or been bought up by one of the Big Three. And even Chrysler had been owned for a while by Daimler-Benz, turning the American Big Three into a Big Two. Chrysler is an independent, American-based entity again, and the Big Two became the Big Three again. 

The inability of any other corporation to challenge the Big Three led many to predict that Tesla wouldn't last, and some, although fewer, are still predicting that Tesla will either go broke or be bought out by one of the Big Three. Also, many people give other new American automakers such as Rivian, Bollinger and Lucid little chance of surviving. Some disagree, saying that EV's have changed the game, as demonstrated by Tesla. To that, some reply that the game is still making automobiles and that it hasn't changed all that much, despire Tesla having made a huge splash.

If we change our focus from the US to the global automotive industry, suddenly things are much more complex: there are currently more than 50 different countries who each have their own indigenous automobile brands. I'm not talking about all of the countries where automobiles are manufactured, because a company based in one country will very often have manufacturing plants based in other countries. If we count every country where there is an automobile factory, the count goes well up into three figures. No, what I mean is that more than 50 different countries have their own independent companies making their own separate brands of automobiles.

That number might seem very high to some Americans, because most of those countries have never tried to import cars to the US. From the 1980's to the present, the only countries who have imported cars to the US in large numbers have been Japan, Germany, France, Italy, South Korea, the UK, Sweden, Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic and the former Yugoslavia. In the 1980's both Yugo from the former Yugoslavia and Hyundai from South Korea began importing automobiles into the US. At first, both brands, while undercutting every other automaker in the the US in price, were also very inferior in the quality of their products. Yugo disappeared again from the US market, while Hyundai improved its product quality to an amazing degree in a remarkably short time and are now thriving in the US along with their South Korean subsidiary KIA.

China's enormous automotive sector will very soon be trying to make a go of it in the US, with three brands importing cars: XPeng, Nio and Kandi. The US imports from these companies will be electric only. And other Chinese brands will be following, most likely importing EV's only. 

It seems that the whole wide world is in love with crossovers and SUV's. I'm not. But apparently the whole world is. In India, wealthier customers have been buying the same cars as wealthy people elsewhere: Rolls Royces, Mercedes, BMW's, Jaguars and so forth. They've been buying the same electric SUV's, The Jaguar I-Pace and the Audi e-tron. But there's a brand-new all-Indian electric SUV, the Tata Nexon EV, 

 

and the Indian automotive press is going more than a little bit nuts over it. Reviewers say it's just as good as the I-Pace and the e-tron, some say it's better. There's obviously a lot of Indian patriotic pride here over a domestic product which can stand comparison with the finest luxury SUV's in the world, but there's obviously also a very special new vehicle here. 

And although I haven't heard anyone else say anything about it, I have wondered whether Tata might bring the Nexon EV to the US, as the first Indian attempt to enter the US automotive market.

The Pontiac Aztek's Looks, And its Sales

Over on another part of the Internet right now, they're gathering to make fun of the Pontiac Aztek. (Perhaps, if you don't know what an Aztek is, you remember the unusual-looking SUV driven by Walter White in "Breaking Bad." That was an Aztek.) Someone over there claims that the Aztek is a thoroughly mediocre SUV, and that if it functioned better, its looks would've been accepted and it would have been a commercial success.

I'm not a car guy. I'm not competent to respond to the accusation that the Aztek's performance is mediocre. (Although the place where this discussion is taking place, the comments section under a story about how used Azteks [none were made after 2005] are currently prized by Colorado off-roaders, makes me think that its performance couldn't be all that awful.)

However, my brother is not only a car guy -- he was one of the engineers at GM who created the Aztek, and so I happen to know a couple of things which maybe most people don't know:

The Buick Rendezvous was quickly put together after it was clear that the Aztek was not selling nearly as well as GM had hoped. The Rendezvous is essentially an Aztek with some minor changes in sheet metal and interior. However well or poorly the Aztek performs as an SUV, the Rendezvous performs the same. And about 4 times as many Rendezvous were sold.

Sorry if that makes some proud Rendezvous owners feel icky. It's true though. It's also true that my Saturn Ion has exactly the same chassis as a whole bunch of other GM cars made over the course of several decades.

I myself have always liked the Aztek's styling. This is one of many, many indications that I am not the guy to go to to learn how the general public will like something. I had seen pictures of Azteks before they were on sale to the public. I don't know if I would've noticed those picture if I hadn't known that my brother was one of the engineers on the Aztek project. The first time I saw one in real life, my brother was driving us on a multi-lane highway to or from the Detroit airport. It zoomed past, standing out from the surrounding traffic in 2001 much more than it would have in 2017. I said wow, and that I thought it looked really great. My brother answered grouchily that I and the man who'd created the exterior design were the only ones, and that the edgy styling had led to a sales disaster.

A couple of years years after that, my brother was driving again, and we passed a GM dealership whose lot was absolutely crammed with Azteks. I remarked that the huge number of Azteks in that lot must mean that it was selling well after all. My brother informed me that it meant exactly the opposite: GM couldn't unload the Azteks they had already made and they were piling up in lots all over the place, destined for huge price cuts. That's when he told me that the Rendezvous was an Aztek with a face-lift and that it was outselling the Aztek 4 to 1.

The pain of knowledge...

Electric Vehicles From General Motors

I would like to think that information and education can be very important, that they can change people's minds and that changed minds can lead to changed behavior.

Stop me if you've heard this one: In the 1990's, California, dominated by Democratic legislators at the time, passed some laws, and one result of those laws was that if General Motors wanted to continue to do business in California they had to manufacture a certain number of plug-in electric cars. GM made their first electric car, the EV-1, launched in 1996, leased every one they made and had a waiting list of customers years long. That's right, they leased them, they refused to actually sell any of them.

Then in 1999 Republicans took control of the California legislature and repealed the legal requirement that these electric cars be made. Rather than continue to manufacture this wildly-popular vehicle, GM recalled and destroyed every single one of them. This was much easier to do since the cars had been leased instead of sold, and so legally remained the property of GM the entire time. When the recall was announced, many drivers offered to buy their EV1's. All of these offers to buy were turned down. It was more important to GM to make it completely clear that they weren't going to be pushed around by California liberals, than to make lots of money continuing to do what the liberals had forced them to start doing. (And presumably the environment was much further down the list of things which were important to GM.)

In 2010, GM started selling its 2nd electric car, the Volt. The Volt has only recently passed the 100,000 mark in worldwide sales. The Volt seems not to be well-liked by GM execs. Bob Lutz has been the most prominent supporter of the Volt within GM. Lutz is one of the most well-known "car guys" in the history of Detroit. (A "car guy" is an executive at an automotive company who also is an engineer and actually takes part in designing and manufacturing the cars. Opposed to the "car guys" are the "bean counters," specialists in finance.) The fact that Lutz has supported the Volt project seems to have hurt his image in some circles of the auto-exec world. It has also made him popular among environmentalists -- or at least it did, until he actually spoke with some environmentalists, and made it plain that he regards global warming to be a myth, and that his enthusiasm for electric vehicles is purely financial, stoked by fears of a future where gasoline costs $30 a gallon.

Toyota began selling the Prius around the time that the EV-1 was, literally, scrapped, and has sold 1.7 million of them in the US and over 5 million worldwide. It seems that different companies have different business models.