Who Killed the Electric Car for you!

Last night I watched a video from Netflix.com that my uncle recommended a few months ago. It’s called “Who Killed the Electric Car?” I urge everyone to watch it, but also take note that the film is in the light of one side.

I will admit that I didn’t even know that the electric car technology had existed since the beginning of the car. Back in the early days of automobiles, I doubt that the electric cars were able to offer the same specifications as gasoline cars and that is why the world took on oil dependency. Who’s to say, as not many of that era survive.

The film documents the life of an electric vehicle (EV) that was developed through the 1990s named the EV1. EV1 was developed by General Motors, and starting in 1997, GM started a leasing program to test the EV1 in California, mainly to comply with a California law circa 1990 which stated that to sell cars in California you would have to sell a zero emission vehicle. The EV1 was a product that satisfied all of the leases interviewed in the film, to also include actors such as Mel Gibson, and politicians Ralph Nader.

In a downturn of events, GM recalled the lease of the EV1, and all EV1s were destroyed and the program scraped. A lot of the original leasers fought GM with protests to not destroy the cars, and to just let them keep their cars, and at one point, the protestors even offered GM close to two million dollars. At the same time, the major manufacturers protested against California to lower the standards mandated by the zero tolerance policy due to ‘lack of demand’ among other things. The big dog car companies also got the US federal government to sue California for the zero emissions policy. ( I’m not a lawyer, so I won’t go into the details because I wouldn’t be able to understand them all.)

The reason I wanted to write about this story, is that there is a conflict of interest amidst the smoke and mirrors of the EV1 story. My first observation is that GM destroyed a car that ran off electricity rather than oil and gasoline. This is immoral due to the fact that this car significantly reduced pollution in the world. The conflict is that capitalism allows such an atrocity to occur. I fight in the armed forces to allow capitalism to flourish in America. I believe in capitalism. Therefore I can say that GM had the legal right to act the way they did. If I was the CEO of GM, I would have been morally obligated to sell the EV1, even if the car was high maintenance. It’s the right thing to do, and clearly there is a demand for it, even if gas prices were cheaper back between 1997 and 2003.

Along the same lines of capitalism, I will never buy a GM vehicle just for this fact. And that’s hard for me to say, as I believe in supporting American made. I also hope that the smaller companies who are already offering electric vehicles, or solutions for your current vehicle like electric conversions, flourish and take a significant stake out of big autos reign on the American auto market just as the foreign auto companies did when America demanded higher gas mileage.

I think the big picture that I am trying to convey is that the electric vehicle is already out, and we should stop listening to the dreams of the hydrogen vehicle that the oil companies are pushing for. Support capitalism, small businesses, morality, and make your next car purchase in mind of the earth.