I'm pretty sure economics and lack of range "killed" the electric car.

The "kill" mentioned in the movie has more to do with the forcible removal of the cars by Gm from satisfied drivers. Roughly $2 million was raised to purchase approximately 80 cars, a request which was ignored by GM. Also, 85% of drivers in the US drive less than 60 miles per day. Even the earliest model EV1 had a range of at least 70 miles. Try again, Anonymous.

>>Also, 85% of drivers in the US drive less than 60 miles per day

So should they own a whole other car for the times they go more than that?

Jake Baker, how much did these early electric cars cost? It looks like the EV1 car cost an average of 38 thousand ten years ago.

That's a high price for a car that travels less than 100 miles. Most of America would think that's a very expensive price, and think the range would be too short, even if they only live in the suburbs.

So, yeah. I think this movie is making a big deal out of nothing. Electric cars are not "dead", they're right where they have always been: in the hands of the people with a lot of money and wanted an electric car to begin with. eg: George Clooney and his Tango.

You'll all have a chance to judge for yourselves -- our new TreeHuggerTV piece on the film premieres on Monday.

How can the boogeyman of "big oil" kill the idea of electric cars? Anyone is free to build one now as far as I know. Heck, build 2 and give one away to a friend. ;-)

Chris
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/

What of the impacts of vehicle batteries? These are recycled well in the US, but nevertheless, there is a large impact, just like the production of massive numbers of solar panels to decrease greenhouse emissions. The true implication is that the US needs a massive livestyle change, which will come, one way or another. How we choose to behave now will change how gracefully we accept this.

Anonymous: No, that's when a car-sharing service or rental car makes sense.

Other anonymous: It may seem like a lot up front, but consider the savings in fuel costs when gas is upwards of $3 a gallon. And, as with any emerging technology, costs start high, but as the technology advances, the price goes down. Unfortunately, GM did not allow the technology to be refined, choosing instead to take the EV1 from "the hands of people who wanted them" and destroy them.

I understand that people have been conditioned to believe that cars are a requirement of modern life. But if you look at the modern life of a N.Y.C. local or a Londoner or New Dehli resident you may find that it is a lie produced by the forces that run the auto industry. Look at how cars are sold. Every advert shows cars not stuck in traffic, climbing mountains, breaking the laws of physics as well as federal and state driving laws.
The electric car was an opps moment for the auto industry and they corrected it as quickly as possible by immediate removal.
The electric car has been around as long as the gas car and actually held a larger market for a time before the was an 'industry.'
Now as usual, those in financial control are hiding history and technology from the public to increase profits. If you've ever read Popular mechanics, they publish year after year discovered advances in Combustion tech that can get us 100 mpg and so on. What happened to all of those patents and gadgets? You really think companies spend research money for it to end up with nothing? No, they figured out the profit loss industry wide.
EVs have proven to be reliable and luxurious and fast. These are emotional qualities that people haven't yet made the leap in believing. The few owners and leasers of EVs will tell you all of the above is true.
I've seen the movie. I studied mechanical engineering.
The flipant suggestion that the EV1 killed itself from lack of capability is preposterous. Pick ups didn't have amenities that sedans had when they first came out. They had a niche market. Sometimes niches grow. The pickup market is now huge. So is the organic food market. But when it wasn't should we have just killed off the products and pissed of purchasers who were left around?
Does anyone who believe they couldn't find benefit of an EV believe that they should have been removed from willing buyers and destroyed? Legally speaking, liability can be waived by a manufacturer with a contract signature... and even without, which is what Microsoft is doing with their older software. They aren't giving anymore support to Windows 98. Should they seek out every PC still running it and crush it?

Anonymous: No, that's when a car-sharing service or rental car makes sense.

OK, so now I need an electric car and easy access to carsharing, which is actually not very economical for long trips. This is sounding more and more convenient.

"This is sounding more and more convenient."

Ah - now you understand the implication in Gore's movie title. Being sustainable is not convenient. But it is the right thing to do.

Ah - now you understand the implication in Gore's movie title. Being sustainable is not convenient. But it is the right thing to do.

If you're banking on extreme sacrifice to save the planet, then we're doomed.

Also, I'm pretty sure the "inconvenient" refers to his assertion that acceptance of climate change theory will be inconvenient to the bottom line of interests whose livelihood is dependent on continuing as if global warming isn't real.

He mentions it in pretty much every interview I've seen.

Do you really think that using an electric car, and occasionally having to deal with the inconvenience of renting a car qualifies as "extreme sacrifice?"

Unfortunately, the really extreme sacrifices are not voluntary, and are being made by those who can least afford to make them - subsistence farmers in Africa who are facing droughts of increasing severity, Bangladeshis losing cropland and lives to worsening flooding, arctic species losing habitat.

So, yes, I am willing to make sacrifices on their behalf. Now if only GM would say the same.

Do you really think that using an electric car, and occasionally having to deal with the inconvenience of renting a car qualifies as "extreme sacrifice?"

Now you're putting words in my mouth. You brought up the notion of inconvenience (inappropriately, I might add) and the main thrust of your argument is that we all need to start bending to your specific solutions, all of which entail more work and less convenience than how we live now.

What I told you is the truth -- that that will never work. People just don't respond to that in a positive way.

So, yes, I am willing to make sacrifices on their behalf.

Good for you. Now look around at the actual world you live in. Is there any indication whatsoever that people will, en masse, accept the terms of your preferred reality?

http://blogs.edmunds.com/karl/239

1. Rumor: There were 5,000 people who wanted an EV1, but GM wouldn't let them buy it.

Fact: There were 5,000 people who expressed interest in an EV1, but when GM called them back and explained that the car cost $299-plus a month to lease, went between 60 and 80 miles on a full charge, and took between 45 minutes and 15 hours to re-charge, very few would commit to leasing one (not too surprising, is it?). The film likes to quote a figure of 29 miles as the average American's daily driving needs, but that is a national figure and the EV1 was only sold in California and Arizona, primarily in Los Angeles. Anyone wanna guess what the average L.A. resident's daily driving need is? I'm betting it's higher than that national average.

As a comparison I actually ran the numbers on a 1997 EV1 against a 1997 Volkswagen Jetta Turbodiesel based on electricity and fuel charges at the time. Between lease charges and fuel/electricity charges, the EV1 cost at least $500 more a year to operate than the Jetta, and the Jetta could hold over twice as many people (five versus two), 50 percent more cargo (15 cubic feet versus 10) and would go almost 600 miles on a tank of fuel versus 60 miles on a charge. And when the Jetta did need filled it took 10 minutes -- not 45 minutes for a partial re-charge and 15 hours for a full re-charge. Ask me again why the electric car died.

2. Rumor: The California Air Resources Board (CARB) originally required automakers to produce electric vehicles, but political pressure from the automakers and oil companies forced them to abandon this law.

Fact: Actually, CARB simply wanted the automakers to produce zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) and, in 1990, the only way to accomplish that was with electric vehicles. But in the past 15 years computer processing and fuel injection technology has allowed internal combustion engines to burn so cleanly that they are the equivelant of ZEVs (such as the Toyota Prius). Actually, some might argue gasoline-powered ZEV's are better than electric vehicles because they don't have to be charged by an electric power station, most of which have coal stacks that spew far more pollution than ZEV exhaust pipes. As an example, the average 1965 automobile emitted 2,000 pounds of hydrocarbons over 100,000 miles. Modern ZEVs (that still run on gasoline!) emit two pounds of hydrocarbons over 100,000 miles. Read more about ZEVs here. If you need further proof that the modern internal combustion engine has come a long way, consider the air quality in Los Angeles in 2006 versus 1976 -- despite having far more cars operating in the city today. And this air quality improvement came even with the death of the electric car!

3. Rumor: Many EV1 drivers and fans wanted to purchase their EV1 when the lease ended and GM killed the program, but GM crushed the cars instead to keep people from discovering how great they were.

Fact: All U.S. automakers are required to provide parts and service on a vehicle for a given number of years after it is produced. To support the 1,000 EV1s GM had made would have cost the company a lot of money because of its advanced technology and totally unique nature (it shared almost no parts with other GM products). This is not the case with, for instance, Toyota's electric RAV4, which shares the majority of its parts with regular RAV4s. I'm sure GM also worried about the potential for lawsuits if owners bought the cars and started modifying them (something that surely would have happened -- look at what's already happening with the Prius). "But Karl, these EV1 fans were willing to sign waivers against future liabilities if they could buy the cars." Waivers are great in theory, but any lawyer knows there is always a path around them -- especially if the payoff is big enough (which will always be the case when GM is the defendant).

4. Rumor: GM purposely made the EV1 perform poorly so that it could never succeed.

Fact: Before I define how "good" or "bad" the EV1 was let me first say that GM was given plenty of funding from the government to develop this car. They can cry about spending over a billion dollars, but much of that cost was covered by your and my tax money. That said, if GM was trying to make the EV1 fail, they did a poor job of it. The company tried to offer a vehicle that had every modern creature comfort (air conditioning, power windows, high quality audio system) and they offered free roadside assistance. They also developed a second-generation EV1 that used nickel-metal hydride batteries to get far better range on a charge (though these batteries were even more expensive, and hard to keep cool). They could have sabotaged the EV1 much more effectively by offering no creature comforts and no roadside assistance and spotty dealer training, yet most EV1 customers were thrilled with GM's support of the car. However, the company knew the vehicle would never offer the combination of utility and functionality demanded by 99 percent of U.S. consumers, and they knew it was a money loser for that other one percent. GM's biggest mistake was letting the R&D (largely funded by the government) from the EV1 program go to waste by not immediately transitioning it into hybrid drivetrain development. The film touches on this mis-step by GM, and it's the one point I completely agree with.

5. Rumor: The oil industry is evil because it's making a profit.

Fact: The American economy is based on capitalism. If you're doing business in America you're supposed to make a profit.

As a side note, what are the makers of "Who Killed the Electric Car?" hoping to achieve with their movie? Do they want it to make a profit? Did they pick this specific time to release the movie because they think it will make the most money now? The electric car died years ago, so why did it take this long for the movie to arrive? Maybe all proceeds will go to developing a new electric car or developing a cheap battery that has massive storage capacity and can be charged in a very short amount of time.

I personally believe the technology exists in 2006 to produce a far more effective electric car than was possible in 1997. But I make no promises on what it would cost to produce. If these filmakers want to subsidize this research for a new electric car, or subsidize the purchase of this new electric vehicle by consumers to offset the initial costs of producing it, I'd be all for that!

This is exactly why we need all cars to be Plug-In Hybrid Electric (PHEV). I was at the Renewable Energy Fair in Stevens Point, WI this weekend and there was an excellent presentation on them, as well as why the hydrogen economy continues to be "ten years out."

While it is true that half of all trips nationalwide are around 29 miles roundtrip, it's more staggering to see that 90% of trips are under 80 miles roundway.

Also of interest was one of the keynote speakers was James Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency. He is promoting rebuilding America's railways. Which seems like such a no-brainer. Europe has awesome railways, even Bolivia has something good going on.

"I'm pretty sure economics and lack of range "killed" the electric car."

If that's true, then one can only wonder why GM was in a BIG hurry to stomp (or crush) every last EV1.

The truth is they were in a panic to cover up what they had created. Why? Because they saw something that scared them.

This is nothing new in the automotive industry. It's not the first time they've tried to cover things up..

In 1948, a guy by the name Preston Tucker created a fanatastic car with seat belts and many other safety features we now have in cars today. His car company was a threat ot the big three. The goverment moved in to help protect the 3 major auto companies.. Yes it was illegal, bought off, paid off, rigged etc.. They ran him out of biz with fake law suits.

Yes, this really happened.. Look it up on the net.

The crushing of the EV1 is a reaction to obvious fear of some sort.. Who knows.. Maybe big oil companies made them a deal or something. All I know is that the crusing of these cars is not a usual thing.

Another mystery is that the EV1 car that was in the National Museum of American History museum disappeared June 16th 2006!! They say it's all a coincidence, but I don't think so.

Please read

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/15/AR2006061502052.html

I'm pretty sure when the first car came out, it would have been comparitavily alot more expensive then the elctric car at 100k is in todays.
Also just because the car needs to be recharged after 80 miles, that makes it completely impossibel to take on long trips ? it would be impossible for service stations to have battery exchange for a fee ? unplug the old, switch it to a a charged one? maybe have to batterys at home and swap them ?
I used to have a crappy datsun 180b, and i'm pretty sure that there not making parts for that now. i don't remember anyone telling me i had to hand it in cos the parts were unavailable (so it was unsafe ?).

I have not seen the film yet, so forgive me if it is mentioned there, but I find it curious that no one has mentioned the prospect of a solar panel on the roof of the car. Many campers have them, and it is increasingly common in boats too. Even if it was an aftermarket addon, slapping either a panel on the roof for constant trickle charging into the system, or a foldout array stashed in the trunk for charging in the boonies seems a practical way to extend the range. It might even be possible to arrange a switched system where the panel is the primary power source and the battery is drawn from as a supplemental as needed. Under direct, bright sunlight you could conceivably drive off just the panel while recharging the battery at the same time! Of course I'm not an engineer so I might be completely wrong saying that, but a guy can dream, cant he?

I can, however, offer evidence of legislation designed to stomp on EVs. I was looking into electrifying my bike in the state of NY, and the DMV told me no in a very roundabout way. Basically powered vehicles, even electric bikes, couldnt use the sidewalk. But on the other side, an electric bike could not be ridden on the road, however one with a combustion engine bolted on could, classified as a moped. The reason against electric bikes was "lack of proper safety equipment" and that they were "prone to breakdown", though I could not find specifics. Something does indeed smell rotten here.

Oil prices are low but yet gas prices are still up.the future is hybrid cars and electric cars. we have polluted the world enough.Lets do the right thing.

Watched "Who Killed the Electric Car" recently (great documentary), then i heard that GM and Tesla are making another run at the electric car (yay for progress!) hopefully development of this technology can go on unhindered by the corporations that depend on oil consumption.