WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? (92 PG)

"So you've just pulled away from the gas pump some $50 lighter and you're
scanning the international headlines, despairing at the oil that seeps through
every other news story, and you think: Wouldn't it be nice to have a car --
maybe a little electric runabout -- that frees you from the petroleum-junkie
mainline?

In 1996, you could have leased one. It was called the EV1 , from
General Motors, and the hundreds of Californians who drove them fell in love
with the fervor only a human being can feel for a car. Eight years later, GM
took the cars back -- bucking protests in every case -- and had them crushed,
shredded, and otherwise expunged from Earth. Toyota scrapped its similar
RAV4 EV , citing poor sales.

The auto industry has since concentrated its
research efforts on hydrogen fuel cells, a technology that by common consensus
is decades from drive-away reality. The little car that could -- right now --
was put down in its infancy.

Filmmaker Chris Paine wants to know: Who killed the
electric car? The answer is like the solution to Agatha Christie's `Murder on
the Orient Express' -- just about everybody had a hand. As this fierce, deftly
entertaining work of muckraking journalism shows, the EV1 rolled off the
production line only because carmakers were forced to make it available. The
minute they didn't have to, they pretended it had never existed.

Those who signed the lease -- and Paine corrals Hollywood names on the order
of Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks , actress Alexandra Paul , and 'thirtysomething' star
Peter Horton to testify -- found themselves with a qualified dream car.

The first wave of EV1s only ran up to 80 miles a charge, but second-generation
cars featured an improved battery that took that figure up to 120. (Lithium-ion
batteries, currently in development, goose it to as much as 300 miles a charge.)

But automakers had no reason to support the new cars -- with EV1s needing far
fewer repairs, the multimillion-dollar parts industry would have languished --
and PR efforts were grudging and minimal.

After a few years, the landscape changed. GM and other auto manufacturers
sued to repeal the CARB mandate, with the Bush administration filing a friend of
the court brief. The board's new chairman, Alan C. Lloyd , was a hydrogen fuel
cell advocate who effectively gutted the 1995 rules.

WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR taps the
pampered-Hollywood-celeb angle for color only; more compellingly, we hear from
CARB and GM board members, electric-car scientists, oil industry gurus,
alternate-fuel experts, the sweet old couple who developed the second-generation
EV1 battery, members of the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations, and
Ralph Nader.

'Goliath won the first round,' someone says here, acknowledging
that the landscape may be tipping yet again. Gas-electric hybrids are becoming
more and more popular; the Iraq War and rising fuel prices are creating a sense
of desperation that may yet translate into a culture-changing momentum. Or maybe
not: Paine properly includes the oil-addicted American consumer in his lineup of
the guilty. The only question his movie doesn't ask is 'What do you want your
next car to run on?' That's up to you." (Ty Burr, Boston Globe)

http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/