Who Killed the Electric Car?
The year is 1990. California is in a pollution crisis. Desperate for a solution, the California Air Recourses Board (CARB) targets the source of its problem: Car exhaust. Inspired by a recent announcement from General Motors about an electric vehicle prototype, the Zero Emissions Mandate (ZEV) is born. It requires 2% of California's vehicles to be emission free by 1998, 10% by 2003. It is the most radical smog fighting mandate since the catalytic converter.
Eager to satisfy the largest car consuming market in the world, GM's EV-1 electric vehicle is launched in 1997 with great fanfare. It was the first perfect car of the modern age, requiring no gas, no oil, no mufflers, and no brake changes (a billion dollar industry unto itself.) A typical maintenance checkup for the EV-1 consisted of replenishing the windshield washer fluid and a tire rotation.
Fast forward to 6 years later... The fleet is dead. EV charging stations dot the California landscape like tombstones, collecting dust and spider webs. How could this happen? Did anyone bother to examine the bodies? Yes, in fact, someone did. And it was murder.
The electric car threatened the status quo. The truth behind its demise resembles the climactic outcome of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express: multiple suspects, each taking their turn with the knife.
Member Reviews
did you know - nasu
Did you know that a 0 emissions car was on the market in California 5 years ago and widely lauded as affordable, dependable and fast by its drivers? And then, under pressure from GM, federal government (Mr. Bush, Condi and others who have strong ties to car manufacturers/oil companies), and oil companies. This is an eye-opening movie on the tactics of GM - how they crushed an excellent technology and created a red herring to confuse and distract legislators and consumers.Who rules the world? - RoddyPiper
[WARNING: Not recommended for environmentalists, and power-to-the people types, especially if they suffer from high blood pressure.]
This documentary is not a conspiracy-theory film like ones saying LBJ killed JFK, or 9/11 was a Bush job. In this film you get to see the smoking gun that would prove the super-rich make key decisions for the whole world. The smoking gun is the electric car.
A switch to the electric car would change incalculable numbers of things about the lives of everyone in the world – such as: we would probably not be facing the same urgency in climate-change decisions, if 15 years ago we had started turning away from the internal combustion engine; millions fewer people would be dead or suffering from pollution-related diseases like asthma and cancer; there is a good chance that the oil wars in the Persian Gulf and Iraq would not have occurred; but also . . . oil would have become worth less, a lot of existing internal-combustion-technology-based manufacturing plants and attendant infrastructure would have essentially become obsolete, and GM (etc) might have gone bankrupt.
As shown in the film, the 1990’s GM electric car project put up 800 practical models for lease, and customers snapped up every one of them, with thousands going on waiting lists. So GM stopped building them, terminated the leases, and crushed them all.
Can a small number of very rich people really exercise such world authority? You could Google the following: The three richest people possess more financial assets than the poorest 10% of the world's population (half a billion people), combined. Imagine the power of the richest three thousand or the richest three hundred thousand . . . look at the smoking gun in the film, and you can decide for yourself.A Historical Milestone in the History of Enviromental Collapse - Matador
This documentary exposes the consortium of players who successfully worked towards ending the electric car vehicle program in California.
Many outside of California are not aware of the California law that was brought in place which demanded zero emission vehicles. Although the motor companies, American and Japanese, delivered a practical electrical vehicles that were leased to consumers, they sued the California government to bring an end to this law.
But there were other players that contributed to the end of the program, including oil companies, pro-Hydrogen lobbyists, etc.
This documentary clearly shows that an EV program is very viable and makes the viewer wonder why the motor companies are still toying with hybrids today. It shows how financial interests and fear of change hold our future hostage.
Member Reviews
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did you know - nasu
Did you know that a 0 emissions car was on the market in California 5 years ago and widely lauded as affordable, dependable and fast by its drivers? And then, under pressure from GM, federal government (Mr. Bush, Condi and others who have strong ties to car ...Who rules the world? - RoddyPiper
[WARNING: Not recommended for environmentalists, and power-to-the people types, especially if they suffer from high blood pressure.]
This documentary is not a conspiracy-theory film like ones saying LBJ killed JFK, or 9/11 was a Bush job. In this film ...A Historical Milestone in the History of Enviromental Collapse - Matador
This documentary exposes the consortium of players who successfully worked towards ending the electric car vehicle program in California.
Many outside of California are not aware of the California law that was brought in place which demanded zero emission ...