WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?

     For director Chris Paine, the answer to “Who killed the electric car?” echoes “Sympathy for the Devil” from the Stones: “after all, it was you and me.” In his new political documentary--think Michael Moore-lite--director Paine explains that electric cars actually book-ended the 20th century and mourns their loss.
      Until 1911, America’s roads were filled with more electric horseless carriages than combustion- engine models. Eighty years later, a model electric car was introduced at an L.A. auto show, and by 1996 General Motors brought out a viable modern electric vehicle (EV) to meet California’s Zero Emission Vehicle mandate. GM’s EV--a modern miracle car requiring no gas, no oil changes, and only rare brake maintenance--is Paine’s tragic hero, with the requisite fatal flaw.
      Since the EV could be leased only from GM, not privately owned, GM could refuse to renew leases and could recall the EVs at will, which it did by 2001. Paine was one of those lessees, which lends this personal saga its somewhat diffuse perspective.
      In 2003, a mock funeral was staged for the last EV, and by 2005 all but a few of all EVs ever manufactured have been recalled and destroyed--crushed or turned into metallic mulch by their very makers. Part of the reason: After buying Hummer from American Motors, GM decided, “There is no particular need to continue building EVs.”
      But Paine's title question raises larger issues for a nation whose government seems already complicit in out-of-control gas prices. The film shows serious duplicity in the missed opportunities for a very real solution to America’s energy crisis. President Bush and assorted oil cronies lurk in the background, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure the “fix was in"; there is no profit in a vehicle that needs neither fuel nor maintenance. In 2002, President Bush called for the development of the "hydrogen car," a far more costly but ultimately profitable concept. Currently, hydrogen remains even more expensive than gasoline.
       Paine’s wide range of usual suspects--via interviews and/or film clips--includes everyone from former President Carter and Ralph Nader to myriad politicos, scientists, corporate spokespeople, and several civilian EV drivers who adored their cars. This will surely be the only time audiences can see right-wing (and weirdly white-bearded) former EV owner, Mel Gibson, on the same side as the well-known tree hugger, Ed Begley, Jr.

                                                     Leslie (Hoban) Blake