Who Killed the Electric Car?
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Rated: PG-13
Cast: Martin Sheen, Dave Barthmuss, Jim Boyd (II), Alec N. Brooks, Alan Cocconi
Director: Chris Paine
WorkNameSort: Who Killed the Electric Car?
Our Rating: 4.50
There’s nothing like a documentary with a sense of self. Take Who Killed the Electric Car?, an eco-aware postmortem that benefits from all the savvy salesmanship its title auto never received. As the rumbling, comforting tones of narrator Martin Sheen come pouring into your ears, a giddy question insinuates itself: What is this, a car commercial? Indeed it is ‘ albeit one for a model that wasn’t just discontinued but buried, for a host of shameful reasons. The Edsel never had to overcome obstacles like this. In response to the tightening California emissions laws of the mid-’90s, we learn, some of the major automakers tasked their R&D departments with developing vehicles that could use electric current for fuel. General Motors led the way with its EV-1, a sleek nonpollutant capable of running up to 80 miles per day on a single overnight charge. Unlike the poky, boxy stereotype most of us associate with the term ‘electric car,â?� the EV-1 was fast, good-looking and fully in line with the transportation needs of 90 percent of Americans ‘ yet it’s today a forgotten relic, the victim of a mass assassination that made the whacking of Julius Caesar look like a friendly game of canasta.
Director Chris Paine assembles a damning case against everybody who was involved in wiping the car from the market almost as soon as it arrived. The oil companies, of course, are right up there, having marshaled awesome PR and lobbying forces against a product that would obviously hit them square in the wallet. Shortsighted politicians and cowardly clean-air officials are to blame, too, shown as retreating from their advocacy positions at the first signs of customer resistance and/or corporate muscle. And even GM itself is named as a co-conspirator for consistently undercutting its own EV-1 project (which, after all, had been forced on it by the government) via boardroom self-sabotage, including a drearily futuristic ad campaign that trumpeted few of the car’s best selling points.
Eschewing glitz is a mistake the movie doesn’t make. Instead, it trots out a horde of high-profile cuties like Peter Horton and Alexandra Paul to wax nostalgic over the responsible-but-sexy attributes of a vehicle they were among the first to lease. No EV-1s were ever sold outright, and as soon as the lease periods were up, GM representatives showed up at drivers’ homes to take their beloved rides to the scrap yard. Horton is shown suffering through one such forced separation; in another, suddenly inappropriate segment, none other than Mel Gibson fondly recalls how driving fast in his EV-1 made him feel just like Batman. (The joke here is obvious, so I’ll instead point out that the long, gray-streaked beard Gibson sports in his interview footage makes him look â?¦ well, awfully Semitic. Now let’s move on.)
The movie makes only one minor mistake, focusing so intensely on the EV-1 that it’s sometimes jarring to be reminded that other manufacturers had similar models in showrooms, too. Otherwise, Who Killed â?¦ is just about a perfect doc, railing authoritatively against a disgraceful chapter in the annals of American business. Forget the conservative blather about the ‘magic of the marketplaceâ?� ‘ as seen here, the corporate/legislative axis can crush any innovation it wants to, no matter how beneficial that innovation might be to society or to an industry’s long-term gain. And that’s the real inconvenient truth.
(Opens Friday, Aug. 11, at Regal Winter Park Village Stadium 20)
This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2006.