July 13, 2006

Who Killed the Electric Car? investigates how the plug got whacked by the pump

by Jason Anderson

Like every murder mystery, Who Killed the Electric Car? contains a death. And like every death, this one deserves a funeral. A deftly argued and surprisingly engrossing study of a new wave of automotive technology's brief and brutal spell in the American marketplace in the '90s, Chris Paine's documentary begins with scenes of that sad event, which is both tragic and utterly absurd. "It was like something out of Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One," says Paine in a recent interview. "I thought, 'Here we have a bunch of Hollywood celebrities having a funeral for a car.'"

Paine was not just an observer -- he was a mourner, too. A Los Angeles-based film-biz veteran who worked on documentaries on motorcycle racing and William Gibson, Paine was one of the early owners of the EV-1, an electric car that General Motors introduced in 1997 after the state of California brought in a new mandate to promote zero-emission vehicles. Sleek, quiet and clean-running, the EV-1 could be driven 80 miles on a single charge from a standard electrical outlet.

"When those cars came out on the market, I ran down and got one just to see what it was like," says Paine. "I thought it would be like this backup car, because the range sort of sucked and I didn't know much about electric cars. Within two months, that thing turned me around -- I just couldn't believe what an advanced piece of machinery it was."

Other drivers (including Mel Gibson, Alexandra Paul and Peter Horton, all of whom convey their EV-1 love in the movie) had the same conversion experience and this new community would become an integral part of an almost unbelievable saga. Nine years later, hardly anyone -- besides the designers who created them, the salespeople who promoted them in spite of GM's counterproductive marketing campaigns and the happy owners -- knows that the car ever existed. Though there was nothing wrong with the vehicles, GM reclaimed the cars (which could only be leased) and quietly scrapped them once the legislation was repealed. Hence the funeral, which Paine planned as the starting point for an on-camera investigation.

"We did that funeral as a press stunt," he says. "I also wanted to tell people what this electric car was because my friends on the East Coast never heard about it. Then when the media reported it, it was presented along the lines of: 'Electric car drivers, say goodbye to your electric cars and get ready for fuel-cell cars!'"

The media's industry-generated enthusiasm for hydrogen fuel-cell technology, which is decades away from mass-market readiness, is only one of the sinister aspects of the tale. Narrated by Martin Sheen, Who Killed the Electric Car? is rich with intimations of cover-ups and conspiracies that led to the death of the EV-1 (and several equivalent models by other companies). Forced to introduce a technology that threatened the rest of their product line, the automotive industry saw the future and flinched. As Paine says, "The carmakers made them and marketed them kicking and screaming."

Yet, as in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (one of Paine's inspirations), there was more than one culprit. Paine carefully presents all the evidence and introduces a colourful gallery of potential suspects and expert witnesses that includes bureaucrats, designers, scientists, consumers and Phyllis Diller. (Paine discovered that the comedy legend had ridden as a child in an electric car back in the days before gas-guzzlers first forced them off the road in the '20s.)

Touching on numerous aspects of American culture, the movie is about much more than a car. "It turns me on to have science intersect with politics and entertainment and all these things," says Paine. "It appeals to how my brain works. And that's why the story got more and more interesting. We're all in this mishmash together. And the more information people have about how it works, the more empowering it is, even though it can seem overwhelming."

It can also seem totally dispiriting -- political will and consumer activism were not enough to save the electric car from its big-money enemies. But Who Killed the Electric Car? is ultimately optimistic, Paine emphasizing the new possibilities born out of the demise of the EV-1, including the next generation of hybrid cars. "I got a little bit of flak for that from the left-wing press," he admits. "They said, 'Well, you slap a happy ending on the movie.' I don't see it like that. If any of our key people were saying, 'We are all doomed and going to hell,' that's where I would've ended it. But I really felt like my film ends on an up note because it's the innovators and the creators who get our species out of these messes. And I'm going with them."