Who Killed the Electric Car? Part III

So… I saw it!! And WOW, it's an extremely well crafted and effective film that manages to blend informative wit and solid documentary work. I really hope as many people get to see it as possible once it's released on the 28th.

The viewing was held at the Motion Picture Association of America's Washington office on Eye Street, in their fabulous 50 seat screening room. The event was co-hosted by the national Resource Defense Council, Public Citizen and Sony Pictures Classics. OMG the food was pretty awesome, didn’t expect that at all, I had at least two of everything that had been brought out. Open bar to boot! At one point someone, whom later was introduced as Michael Barker, president of Sony Pictures Classics, jokingly observed that it looked as though I were having dinner. I told him, “the food is certainly welcome; however I’m really excited about this film”. He replied that, “we are all extremely excited about the film and hope that it does well.” Those egg rolls and crab puffs were yummy!

Upon receiving the gentle push from MPAA staff and hearing that the film would be starting soon, me and the friend I had come with, who had just earlier in the day taken a position as a deputy policy director at Public Citizen, found our way into the small theater and sat in the second row. Not before slamming another drink from the open bar mind you, lol.

Before the film began a couple of people had a few things to say including the movie’s director Chris Paine, Michael Barker and the President of Public Citizen, Joan Claybrook. Mike welcomed everybody to what he described as one of the best screening rooms in America. He was followed by Joan who took the opportunity to acknowledge the several different organizations that had worked together to make this screening possible. Chris spoke for a couple of minutes about some of the work that went into the film, thanked everyone for coming, stressed the seriousness of the issues involved and with that the lights began to dim.

The first thing you hear is Martin Sheen’s excellent narration explaining the awful effects that air quality is having on the health of people living in Los Angles. Asthma, lung lesions and chronic bronchitis in LA County are attributed to the poor air quality created by the millions of cars clogging the LA freeways. The fact that 19 pounds of C02 enters the air for every gallon of gas burned in an internal combustion engine is reinforced through the dramatic image of a fogged over camera lenses following several feet behind a tailpipe as the car accelerates and turns a corner.

Explaining the obvious need to do something to improve air quality the films focuses next on the factors leading up to the ZEV mandate, a series of regulations enacted by the California Air Resources Board(CARB). This measure required that auto manufactures selling vehicles in California produce a certain percentage of cars that are Zero Emission Vehicles(ZEV). To conform to the terms of the mandate several auto manufactures began leasing and in some instances selling electric vehicles to the public in California and also in Arizona where a comparable state agency had adopted similar guidelines modeled after the California ZEV mandate.

GM for a time was the electric car volume sales leader of the whole world, its EV1 car was far and away the most respected and competent entry to emerge from the auto manufactures in response to the ZEV mandate. People lucky enough to obtain a lease had few complaints; it was fast, sleek and silent and didn’t use any gas whatsoever. Listening to the interviews with former EV1 drivers it’s quickly apparent why these people had such a close attachment to their cars. Interspersed between these customer testimonials were clips of the car racing around highways, peeling out in a parking garage and in a clip I had never seen before going head to head with a Mazda Mata and a Nissan 300zx and beating both vehicles in a zero to sixty test. I had heard the car was fast, but this particular clip proved to constitute dramatic evidence of the real world car credibility this vehicle had so rightly earned amongst enthusiasts.

An interview with Mel Gibson in this segment details the difficulties that many people experienced while simply trying to obtain leases for these futuristic cars. He mentioned that his application form contained sections requesting such personal information as tattoos and birthmarks, wtf? What possible motive might GM have in requiring potential customers to provide such information? It seems these measures were put in place to make it difficult for someone to abscond on the lease and keep the car as these identifying features would possibly aid police in tracking down the “stolen” property.

Next the focus turns back towards CARB and details the lobbying activities undertaken by the auto manufactures, oil companies and even the White House. Under intense pressure from these lobbying efforts CARB eventually succumbed and severally weakened the ZEV mandate, allowing the auto makers to get out of their obligations to continue producing ZEVs for sale or lease to the public.

This section of the film has interviews with several people who worked on the EV1 project at GM and other industry representatives who potentially may have been able to steer the project in a different direction. Watching these interviews is painful as each person attempts to deflect criticism away from them selves while denying that GM or the auto industry as a whole had setup these electric cars to fail in the marketplace. The one mantra that is tirelessly repeated is that there simply wasn’t any consumer demand for an electric car and that GM could no longer afford to produce the vehicle. According to Chelsea Sexton, an EV1 sales specialist featured in the film, GM was sitting on a waiting list of 4,000 interested parties and for some time denied the existence of such a list.

So now absolved of responsibility under law to produce electric vehicles the auto manufactures ceased making them. When the 3 year leases began to run out on the 800 or so cars that had made it to the road, GM1 took the cars back offering no option for lease holders to purchase them and had every last one crushed save for a few examples which were then donated to universities and museums after having key drive train components disabled.

There are some really poignant moments as EV lovers protest outside GM’s Burbank California storage depot asking for the opportunity to purchase the remaining 87 cars, the only ones left, before they were turned into scrap. Baywatch actress Alaxander Paul is interviewed several times during the film and is seen using the wall charger in her home to demonstrate how simple it was to top-up with one of these amazing cars. She was arrested by Burbank PD for refusing to get out of the path of a semi loaded up with EV1s headed for crushing. That’s dedication!

The rest of the film focuses on interviews from different parties that potentially could be to blame for this public policy disaster. Under careful examination are five suspects. These were batteries, oil companies, automobile manufactures, the government, CARB, hydrogen fuel cell technology and consumers. After watching as each case was made I have to, in my opinion, place the blame with the CARB. Their decision to allow the rules to be relaxed, in response to industry pressure, to the point where the auto makers were no longer required to produce electric cars made the program largely ineffective and served to completely undermine the spirit behind the mandate. These public officials shouldn’t have acted in such a spineless fashion in the face of powerful interests.

The film manages to end on a positive note, showing many of the new electric car technologies that are on the horizon giving hope to the viewer that the tide will eventually turn and the auto manufactures will have little choice but to produce electric cars that meet consumer demand. The film provided me with my first look at the Tesla Roadster. I have looked all over the internet for a picture of this much talked about ultra performing electric sports car which has been partly financed by one of the Google founders, and have come up empty handed. The company behind this new vehicle is rather secretive and hasn’t to my knowledge released an image to the public up until now. It’s pretty sweet looking! With zero to sixty times under 4 seconds and a per charge range of 250 miles its sure to cause a commotion once it’s unveiled officially on July 12 in Santa Monica, California.

As the lights came up Joan Claybrook began to announce the panel they had assembled for the discussion session. First to be seated was Chris Paine, the director of the film. He was followed by Chelsea Sexton, the EV1 sales specialist featured in the film. Next we were introduced to Joseph J. Romm, the author of “The Hype about Hydrogen” whom had been quoted several times in the film during the fuel cell discussion. Next to be seated was R. James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the Clinton administration. The final panel member was introduced as Deron Lovaas, Vehicle Campaign Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The first series of questions from the audience seemed to focus on things that others felt had been left from the film. Someone asked why hadn’t the investigation focused it’s scrutiny on the utility companies? Chelsea Sexton and Chris Paine answered that of all potential suspects the utility companies were probably the most eager to see electric vehicles prosper. Utility companies across California and Arizona had invested heavily in the necessary infrastructure to support the fledging vehicles, chargers in public parking lots, education campaigns and PSAs proclaiming the work they were doing to prepare for the proliferation of electric cars that advocates were sure would follow in the footsteps of the groundbreaking ZEV mandate. Well, we know how that turned out and as a result it is going to be more difficult to ramp up their infrastructure efforts again once the ball is rolling once again with this poor taste left in their mouths.

Everybody on the panel seemed to have a deep disdain for the hydrogen fuel cell technology, James Woolsey spoke most harshly about the technology saying that the billions of research dollars that had gone into developing the hydrogen fuel cell were a complete waste of peoples trust, innovation and time. He said that while fuel cells do have useful applications in several fixed single purpose installations, using them in transportation makes no sense whatsoever. I was aware that fuel cell technology had a long way to go but it seemed as though each panel member, especially Joe Romm, felt that the goal of hydrogen research was to serve as a deliberate distraction from research that should otherwise be focused on improving ZEVs. They talked about Alan C. Lloyd who accepted a position as the chairman of the California Fuel Cell Partnership while he was still serving as chair of CARB, while at the same time strangling the ZEV mandate. The California Fuel Cell Partnership receives funding from a variety of sources including oil companies and automobile manufactures.

Another question from the audience that sparked a response from the panel that was heartening to hear was about possibly creating legislation to restrict the size of SUVs. Across the panel everyone seemed to agree that that wouldn’t be a good idea and that the focus of any legislation should be targeted towards fuel economy standards and creating opportunities for ZEVs to be introduced into the marketplace. Woolsey went out of his way to stress that there was nothing inherently wrong with large vehicles, it is and has always been the fuel economy standards that need to be improved in order to decrease our use of non-renewable energy sources. For these vehicles to be adopted by the public at large they shouldn’t be terribly different from the gas powered cars they are to replace.

One of the points I came away with was that there really isn’t one single silver bullet that you can point to and blame for the death of the electric car in America. It was a combination of factors aligned against its success that ultimately doomed it. The panel seemed unified however in the opinion that GM set the car up to fail from the beginning and never seriously marketed it in a way that would have resulted in its widespread adoption. That combined with the cowardly abandonment of the California ZEV mandate and there you go, witness the death of the electric car.

Ralph Nader was in the audience but not seated on the panel, he was in the last row and fielded several questions posed to him from the panel which I thought was odd. This made it awkward for everyone in the theater to hear him speak, we would crane over our shoulders towards the back of the room while listening to him speak and then turn back towards the panel to hear the response. He was rather harsh towards the film and sounded disappointed as he felt that the film wouldn’t inspire the critical activism in the public due to the films, as he worded it, the “technological euphoria” with which the film ends. He would have preferred that the film focus on the real problem, the 531 members of Congress that are the only way this technology could ultimately be proliferated. Industry will not champion change by them selves, that’s been proven time and time again. Joan Claybrook agreed and related her experience trying to get airbags into passenger cars, which ultimately took an act of congress to bring to the market place. Chelsea and Chris chimed in as well citing GM’s reluctance to put reliable batteries into the first series of EV1s, opting to use lead acid batteries instead of the more road worthy Nickel Metal Hydride technology that eventually found their way into the second generation models. Everyone seemed to agree that the major auto manufactures will resist change as much as they can up until Congress forces them to implement features that the consumer demands. So perhaps Nader’s comments weren’t so much a slam of the film but an expression of what we know to be true. He would have preferred to see a film that would inspire action instead of “technological euphoria”.

This about wraps up my notes from the night, if I have anything else to add I will, thanks for reading!