'Electric Car' an ode to a missed opportunity

Documentary pumps out fuel for thought

Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Published July 14, 2006 at midnight

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Cruising into theaters on the heels of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, Who Killed the Electric Car? puts more pedal to the environmental metal. The focus here is the electric car, a vehicle that has gained little traction among American motorists. Director Chris Paine wants to tell us why.

Entertaining and slickly produced, Paine's documentary concludes that a variety of factors conspired to kill EV1, an electric car that General Motors leased to California enthusiasts in the '90s.

As it turns out, the demise of EV1 - a vehicle that generated ferocious attachment among those who drove it - involved a constellation of factors: oil-company maneuvering, government opposition, pliant consumers and automakers who insisted that demand for electric cars was insufficient to justify mass production, a claim the movie refutes.

Paine, by the way, doesn't tell us much about what it might have cost for Detroit to produce electric cars on a large scale or how much money would have been required to build the support infrastructure for e-cars. But that's probably beside the point in a documentary that wants to warn us that we're driving ourselves toward environmental disaster even when we're given alternatives.

GM took all the cars back and crushed and shredded them. One made it into an automotive museum. Case closed.

To add a bit of sparkle, Paine interviews a variety of celebrities who leased EV1s. Mel Gibson, looking wackier than usual in an oddly cut beard, had one. Tom Hanks had one, too. Not a weird beard but an electric car.

Drivers of e-cars seemed to regard them with a fondness that rivals the affection usually reserved for pets, but these folks obviously remain devoted to the notion that cars can be quick and stylish and do no harm to the environment.

And as with any devotional attachment, e-car mania can look a little overblown to the rest of us. I've known people who were less upset about losing their honor than these folks were about having e-cars yanked from their garages.

Protests failed, of course, and Paine tells us that, in essence, California and the country missed out on a good bet.

Paine's movie can be a bit repetitious, but whether you regard the story as a footnote to automotive history or as a record of a tragically lost opportunity, you'll find plenty of interesting material here, not to mention some cause for hope.

The movie seems to think the future belongs to plug-in hybrids that will get more than 100 miles to the gallon. That's good news, especially at a moment when it doesn't take more than a trip to the gas pump or a look at news from the Middle East to remind us that when it comes to the cars we drive, the word urgent has taken on new meaning.

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