Who Killed the Electric Car?
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend In 1996, electric cars began to appear on roads all over California. They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline. Ten years later, these futuristic cars were almost entirely gone. What happened? Why should we be haunted by the ghost of the electric car? Product details and pricing info |
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285 Customer Reviews Posted
- Closer to the end...
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"Who Killed the Electric Car?" sounds like the title of a documentary produced by people with too much time on their hands and no place to go.
A friend dropped off this dvd from his library asking that I view it. Realizing that I had lived through a period in the late 80's and early 90's in Southern California when a lot of noise was being made about this very subject I finally submitted to his request, albeit with a bowl of popcorn.
No personal interest had ever brought me any direct contact with the controversy, and I would have been quick to point out to anyone that asked that there had been some effort to develope an electric car but nothing of importance had ever taken place.
Watching my own stupidity and lack of attention dissolving before me on the screen, I uncomfortably settled in to watch the remake of "Tucker II."
Drifting through scene after scene were flashbacks to "The Paralax View." The stinging caveat being the LA Times reporter naively held in that miasma of 'true life,' mouthing what in effect would be the 'no conspiracy' line, when he should have been strapped in the chair like Warren Beatty, fighting the brainwashing. But indoctrination is far more subtle now, isn't it?
Even the director falls prey to system thinking, hammering 'global warming' as a plank into his platform to resurrect brilliance from the catacombs of politico-industrial backwash.
All the usual suspects are brought to the line-up. Representatives of those private-jet aficionados panhandling in Washington are raked over the coals with responses worthy of a congressional hearing. Politicians, like actors they're grateful for any kind of notice, make their bows. Even the American public is ringed in, to give the film an air of democratic objectivity.
Timeliness drips from the film as viewers continue to massage their wallets from the recent spikes in gas prices. Yet a greater story is being filmed.
The viewer sees it in the helplessness of the heros and heroines as they fight for their earth-saving, money-conserving, clean and healthy runabouts. It shows forth in the hardened faces of the police lines brought in somewhere outside of beautiful downtown Burbank.
It resonates in the adumbration of prophetical proclamations of a time when individuality will submit for the greater good. When common sense will begin to play as radicalism. When those in power will be fewer in number, yet greater in control.
Truth will begin to be an opinion. Reality will be shaped by those who know better and can explain things with a joke.
Like Clinton joking about the electric car to the auto-makers who are grimly squirming in their seats, unable to look anyone in the eye.
Is a one-world system all that hard to conceive?
Is man evolving to better and greater heights?
WKTEC is an important film. Far too important to be ignored.
The film not only chronicles yet one more travesty in modern American history, unwittingly, it documents the direction in which this world is traveling by oil.
And that power is ordered.
TL Farley,
author,
When Now Becomes Too Late,
Distant Reaches
When Now Becomes Too Late Futurist Perspectives on The Rapture.
Distant Reaches True-Life Adventure in Ireland, Boston, and on The North Atlantic. - 2008-11-29, 0 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Even more important now that we're in the middle of an economic crunch!
- Not long ago a relatively small group of people were able to participate in a lease-only option to drive some of General Motors' fleet of EV-1 cars. The EV-1 was a prototype all-electric car. The EV-1 was developed mainly to meet a growing need and market in California. At the time California was developing a plan to require lower emission rates and more environmentally-friendly personal transportation options.
GE was working with Californian power companies to install infrastructure needed to support the EV-1. Everything seemed to be going great. The people who leased EV-1 cars absolutely loved them. The EV-1 looked and handled great, had plenty of power, and had effective range for the urban driver. If you owned an EV-1 you plugged it in when you got home, unplugged it in the morning, and drove to work where you could plug it in again, and so on...
Then, one day, all the people leasing EV-1 cars were contacted and instructed that their leases had been terminated, and, in acordance with their lease agreements, were to make their EV-1 cars available to collection. No one was given any explanation about the reason for the termination of the EV-1 pilot program, and no one was allowed to purchase their EV-1 car. People were loathe to give up their EV-1s, but, alas, they were legally obligated to do so.
After some of the cars were picked up a network of EV-1 drivers and friends tracked the car carriers and found that the cars were being systematically destroyed. What!? Why? That is the mystery!!!
This video explores what non-GE proponents of the EV-1 program were able to learn about the development and then termination of the EV-1 pilot program. While this video is quite obviously spun in favor of EV-1 proponents, it nevertheless provides an interesting set of observations and insights into market and political forces that almost certainly led to the demise of the EV-1.
What makes this story even more compelling today is the appearance and marketing of GE's Volt...a hybrid-electric car that runs entirely on electricity, and then, when the battery charge drops far enough, a small gas-powered engine kicks on to assist with recharging the batteries as the car is driven.
Hm...
OK, main players referred to in this DVD include senior GE execs, the Gov of Calif and the Pres of the USA (Bush), and others.
if you are interested in politico-environmental issues, then this story is definitely for you. When you watch this DVD it's a pretty sure bet that you too will ask, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" - 2008-11-24, 0 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Absolutely excellent documentary!
- "Who killed the Electric Car" is absolutely great and reflects a microcosm of politics that occur on a national scale. Anybody and everybody that is concerned about the environment, clean energy and the security of the U.S.A. should watch this and see how Corporate Greed has taken over politics and the practical applications of principles that work. With the electric car, we had accomplished a goal: a non-polluting vehicle that got up to 300 miles per charge, and we were forced to abandoned it because of Corporate politics and greed. This documentary also tells you how the big oil companies lead you on and now they talk of the hydrogen cell car which the experts in the documentary state is not economically feasible and cannot work.
This documentary is truly an eye opening experience. It is one of these films that remind me of a statement of a famous person (who I cannot recall at this time, and the saying is not verbatim): "A mind once expanded, cannot return to it's former state"
I highly recommend this documentary and hope all reply with a call to action to your representatives.
Brian - 2008-11-10, 1 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- DVD lauched my interest not to buy another gas car.
- Share it with as many people as you can. I shared my copy with a US Senate candidate.
- 2008-11-03, 0 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Corporate malfeasance once again exposed
- On its surface, Who Killed the Electric Car? is an excellent but ultimately disturbing and depressing documentary about what happened to GM's EV-1 and Toyota's RAV4. What the film is really about, though, is how pervasive and nefarious the influence of corporate America is on most of our domestic policy decisions.
We all know that corporate America has infiltrated our lives in various ways (from non-stop advertising to the push to use more pharmaceuticals), but this documentary will disturb you anyway, because it also shows how easily politicians and scientists fold under pressure from corporate interests -- even when those interests are clearly not in the best interest of our population.
What's interesting about the electric cars featured in this documentary is that they worked so well GM and Toyota had to remove them from the marketplace lest they disturb the balance sheets of the hundreds of companies that depend on combustion-engine vehicles -- auto makers, big oil, auto parts manufacturers/distributors, fueling stations, etc. Now they sell us on hybrids and hydrogen powered vehicles, and you'll understand why that's largely bunk after watching this movie.
I would laugh at what's happening to the auto industry today -- they're reaping what they've sown, let's face it -- if it weren't for the fact that thousands of people will continue lose their jobs and soldiers will continue to die in the Middle East as auto and Big Oil executives skate away with millions.
There is one glimmer of hope, and it's the same thing we've come to expect re: change in our society. It's not the politicians, bureaucrats or corporations that invite change, it's individuals with a passion/drive for change. From Rosa Parks to the engineers and activists who are working on alternative fuel solutions, it's the little people who somehow break through and say, no more. - 2008-11-02, 0 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
