July 5, 2006
Buzz Kill (EW Pick)
Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman
When
I first heard there was a documentary called Who Killed the Electric
Car?, it didn't take rocket science to divine the movie's theme (environmental
innovation squelched by oil profits), but I assumed that the electric
car in question would be some weird, bubbly, futuristic prototype
sitting in a lab somewhere. The movie's first revelation is that these
babies truly existed, and that they were right there on the open road
— hundreds of them, zipping down the highways of California
beginning in 1996, the result of a state mandate that said by 2003,
10 percent of all new vehicles had to be emission-free.
By all accounts, not just that of Tom Hanks (who we see proselytizing
for the cause on Letterman), the electric car, produced by General
Motors, was fast, attractive, and fun to drive. Its singular disadvantage
was that the battery needed to be recharged every 60 to 80 miles.
But imagine that you were judging the home computer based on, say,
a 1984 Macintosh. There's a word for what was needed to upgrade the
electric car — that word is ''progress'' — and the second
revelation of Who Killed the Electric Car? is that GM, in deciding
(at the probable behest of other forces) not just to stop developing
this revolutionary vehicle but to take every last one of them off
the road and destroy them, did something profoundly un-American: It
turned progress back on itself. Who Killed the Electric Car? makes
you angry, and also sad, to live in a country where innovation could
be contrived into an enemy.
EW Grade: A-
