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 And then in 2002, when Republican took over the California legislature and rescinded the electric vehicle requirements, they were all recalled, and all but a few dozen were destroyed.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

Who Keeps Screwing Up the EV Experience?

The average daily commute in Murrka is under 30 miles. It's probably more in Canada and less in Europe.

The documentary movie Who Killed the Electric Car? released in 2006, tells the strange tale of the EV1, an electric car made by General Motors, leased  -- never sold -- from 1996 to 1999, then recalled and destroyed.

 

The subject of range anxiety -- the awful fear on the part of the driver of an electric vehicle that his machine will run out of juice at any moment and leave him stranded in the middle of high-speed Interstate traffic in the middle of a rainy night -- came up in Who Killed the Electric Car? but in a very different way than we're used to hearing about it today. Today, any EV with less than 200 miles of range per charge is judged by most reviewers to be very deficient, and those with 400 miles or more are received with great joy, even though great range is thus far only attained with a great quantity of batteries, meaning great weight and great expense. A few reviewers see through the hype about range and understand that most people will get by just fine with a range of 150 miles or less, and that most EV buyers are being sold a bunch of unnecessary batteries. Just as, traditionally, car buyers are sold huge engines which they never begin to need.

General Motors advertised a range of 70 to 90 miles for the EV1. Leasees reported a practical range of 50 or 60 miles. But none of the customers were complaining, or waiting until a newer model with longer range came out. On the contrary, demand for the EV1 far outstripped supply, the leasees were delighted with it, they wanted to buy the vehicles, they protested when the cars were recalled. Early on in the movie Ed Begley mocks the idea that the EV1 didn't go far enough on a charge, saying that it met the needs of "only about 90% or so of all drivers."

70 to 90 miles advertised range, 50 to 60 reported practical range.

It was GM who suggested that drivers of the EV1 were unsatisfied with its range. The earliest use of the phrase "range anxiety" I have been able to find is by a GM executive in Who Killed the Electric Car? claiming that EV1 drivers suffered from it, and that this was a major reason why the car was recalled. He referred to it as "so-called range anxiety," as if he himself had not invented the term with the intent of inserting the concept into consumers' minds. Some of the guys from Detroit are pretty slick.

There's also a scene in the movie where two former EV1 drivers talk about how big corporations will keep telling you things until you start to believe that they must be true. Such as that you want a nice big SUV.

Surely you've noticed how many car and SUV and truck commercials show vehicles driving through the western US desert and on highways twisting through California mountains, and say to the viewers, C'mon -- you know you want to get one of these and drive the tires off of it, drive it all day long every day. Until those of us who don't live out West forget that we don't, and those who would rather not drive all day every day start to believe that we would.

And now in 2021, here come a whole great big bunch of brand-new great-big all-electric SUV's with great big long ranges deriving from literal tons of batteries per vehicle. And you want one of those $90,000, 3-ton electric SUV's that can go way over 300 miles on a charge, don't you? You need one of those, because you're an Arizona rancher -- even if you're not. You need to drive 500 miles a day in a huge pickup through the frozen Yukon, to feed the mighty moose! You don't, of course, but you see so many of those damn commercials telling you what a rugged outdoorsman you are that it sort of feels as if you do. You must feed the majestic moose! If not you, who?!

It's sort of nice to see the President test-driving an electric prototype. Sort of. It'd be really nice to see him in an electric compact car and not just in an electric F-150.