Originally Posted Here
June 21, 2006

Reincarnation
GM's electric car may be dead, but start-up automaker Tesla is betting that pump-weary Americans are ready for a rebirth.

by Brad Stone

The topical and transfixing new documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" opens with a funeral. It's both appropriate and, given the new enthusiasm for electric-car technology in Silicon Valley, a tad too pessimistic. The mourners, a crowd dotted with environmental activists and Hollywood luminaries, are paying their respects to a remarkable automobile: General Motors' sleek, silent, emissionless EV-1, which the company pulled off the market in 2003.

The film, which premiers on June 30, investigates the rise and fall of electric cars over the last decade. In 1990, the state of California attempted to scrub its smoggy air with the "Zero Emissions Vehicle" mandate, which ordered automakers to make electric cars a rising percentage of their sales if they wanted to continue doing business in the state. The automakers responded, not unexpectedly, by lobbying against the initiative. Publicly, they played along and introduced cleaner vehicles to the marketplace. The cars, such as GM's EV-1 (introduced in 1996) and Toyota's RAV4 EV, plugged into wall outlets, ran on electricity and could go 70 to 80 miles before they needed a recharge.

The new breed of car inspired some die-hard fans—including celebs like Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson and Ed Begley Jr. who appear in documentary. But the love affair was both unrequited and doomed. By 2001 a coalition of automakers had succeeded in killing the zero-emissions mandate, and then they proceeded to take their green machines off the market. In the film's most powerful moment, director Chris Paine treats us to aerial video of GM's test facility in Mesa, Ariz., where dozens of scrapped EV-1s have been crushed and piled onto flatbed trucks. Paine intercuts the gotcha moment with a GM publicist pledging that the company would recycle every part from the electric fleet.

The film evenly apportions blame for the death of the electric car. Clearly the auto companies never quite committed to the technology—though GM says it spent more than $1 billion developing its car. They made only a few hundred vehicles, forced interested customers to sit on long waiting lists to lease the vehicles (they were not sold) and then complained about lackluster demand. Battery technology also handicapped the cars: regular lead-acid car batteries, converted for use in EVs, limited vehicle range to what isn't even a day's drive for many commuters. Meanwhile, the oil companies ferociously lobbied against the zero-emissions law and the Bush administration helped out by joining the auto industry's lawsuit against California, which claimed that the mandate overstepped the state's regulatory authority. Finally, the film suggests that Americans just weren't all that interested in replacing their long-range gas guzzlers with what some viewed as souped-up golf carts.

The filmmakers lace the movie with bagpipe dirges and eulogies. They are plainly pessimistic about the future of electric cars. "[The technology] is dead until the government creates an environment that generates an open marketplace," says executive producer Richard Titus. "It took a law to get seatbelts. It took a law to get catalytic converters. It will take laws to raise fuel standards and force experimentation out of the petrochemical world, before anyone takes this seriously."

But not everyone is so glum. Even without new fuel standards, a few dozen auto start-ups are trying to tread where GM and its brethren failed. One of the most intriguing, a well-capitalized Silicon Valley firm called Tesla Motors, is set to debut its high-end, electric sports car next month in what is sure to be one of the most well-publicized product launches of the summer. "Who Killed the Electric Car?" presages this new afterlife. Toward the end of the film, the movie briefly and tantalizingly shows a Tesla car zooming around a country road. It's a sleek, two-seat convertible that borrows its classic American design from the Chevy Corvette and Dodge Viper.

Eighty-employee Tesla, with offices in both San Carlos, Calif., and Norfolk, England, is a rare breed: a venture-backed American automobile start-up. Founder Martin Eberhard, a Silicon Valley veteran who created and sold Rocket eBook maker NuvoMedia in the late '90s, says he registered the TeslaMotors.com domain name on the same day in 2003 that Sacramento defanged the zero-emissions mandate. He started the company to build his dream car: an economical, ecofriendly car that's also a ton of fun to drive.

Eberhard doesn't blame GM or the other automakers for killing the electric car. "If I was on the board of directors of GM and we are making money hand over fist stamping out SUVs, why do I want to make a car that sends a different message to the marketplace?" he says. Pointing a gun to the head of the automakers was the wrong way to nurture the electric vehicles. On the other hand, he says, Tesla represents capitalism at its finest. It has raised money from high-profile investors such as PayPal founder Elon Musk and the venture capital firm that backed telecommunications innovator Skype. And, the fledgling automaker has targeted an established market segment—the same wealthy greenies who now have a Toyota Prius sitting in their driveway.

Details about the Tesla car are still scarce. Eberhard hints that the car will use lithium-ion batteries instead of lead-acid batteries—basically same battery technology that's inside your iPod or laptop. Instead of 70 to 80 miles between charges, a Tesla car should get more than 200 miles before it needs to be recharged.

The company's timing is impeccable. Gas was cheap when GM and Ford released their electric vehicles. Now, the price of gas keeps climbing, along with fears about climate change and the impact of foreign oil dependence on U.S. security.

Tesla's biggest challenge will be to entice the consumers that the major auto companies failed to reach with their electric vehicles in the '90s. "Can I sell a great-looking, high-performing sport car that is also the most efficient car on the road and burns no gasoline in a time when gasoline costs $3.25 per gallon and we are at war over oil?" Eberhard asks. "I sure think so. [We won't sell] to everyone, but we'll sell enough to make Tesla Motors succeed, enough to put another Tesla model on the road to continue our growth."

If he's right, Tesla Motors could well be the company that performed a miracle: reincarnating the electric car after its well-documented demise.