I watched “Who Killed the Electric Car?” this week and was outraged at the guilty parties for killing the electric car. This is a documentary exploring the birth, limited commercialization, and subsequent death of the battery electric vehicle manufactured by General Motor. The EV1 was quite a favorite of many owners. The cars, only leased, mostly in California, ran on battery power. The film explores the roles of auto makers, the oil industry, the US government, batteries, and consumers in limiting the adoption of this technology. In my mind by the end, GM and the US government were the main culprits of killing the electric car.
Personally, I remember the announcement of this technology and was interested in having one myself. Now the program, at least the EV1 program, is dead. Listening to a podcast today, the automakers are beginning to come back to this notion of electric cars. After seeing how GM treated this program I would opt to purchase a vehicle from Honda or Toyota. The American automakers are in trouble, have been for a long time, and haven’t heeded the warnings in their industry for decades.