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| Who Killed the Electric Car? | 
 enlarge | Actor: Martin Sheen
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
Buy New: $7.82
You Save: $7.12 (48%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $6.94
Avg. Customer Rating:  (285 reviews)
Sales Rank: 960
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Subtitled)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 93 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: COLD15286D
UPC: 043396152861
EAN: 0043396152861
ASIN: B000I5Y8FU
Release Date: November 14, 2006
Theatrical Release Date: 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In 1996, electric cars began to appear on roads all over California. They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline. Ten years later, these futuristic cars were almost entirely gone. What happened? Why should we be haunted by the ghost of the electric car?
Amazon.com
It begins with a solemn funeral?for a car. By the end of Chris Paine's lively and informative documentary, the idea doesn't seem quite so strange. As narrator Martin Sheen notes, "They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline." Paine proceeds to show how this unique vehicle came into being and why General Motors ended up reclaiming its once-prized creation less than a decade later. He begins 100 years ago with the original electric car. By the 1920s, the internal-combustion engine had rendered it obsolete. By the 1980s, however, car companies started exploring alternative energy sources, like solar power. This, in turn, led to the late, great battery-powered EV1. Throughout, Paine deftly translates hard science and complex politics, such as California's Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, into lay person's terms (director Alex Gibney, Oscar-nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, served as consulting producer). And everyone gets the chance to have their say: engineers, politicians, protesters, and petroleum spokespeople--even celebrity drivers, like Peter Horton, Alexandra Paul, and a wild man beard-sporting Mel Gibson. But the most persuasive participant is former Saturn employee Chelsea Sexton. Promoting the benefits of the EV1 was more than a job to her, and she continues to lobby for more environmentally friendly options. Sexton provides the small ray of hope Paine's film so desperately needs. Who Killed the Electric Car? is, otherwise, a tremendously sobering experience. --Kathleen C. Fennessy Stills from Who Killed the Electric Car? (click for larger image) Writer/Director Chris Paine Blogs About Who Killed the Electric Car
 When Who Killed the Electric Car premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (on the same weekend as An Inconvenient Truth), we wondered whether movie goers were ready for a new kind of 'action film'. Fortunately people jumped onboard and this seems even more true today.
We put this DVD together after the release of the film to include a dozen short scenes we couldn't quite fit into our story. My favorite is one with Stan and Iris Ovshinsky who developed the revolutionary battery technology that powered GM's electric car (and today's Prius). These two brilliant octogenarians took our small camera crew on a Willy Wonka style tour of their inventions including the world's largest thin film solar cell factory. As we stood under a football field size machine in Troy Michigan, I blustered "Is solar power back?" Stan exclaimed " What?! Solar never went away... What was back was backward thinking!" And as his machine cranked out miles of solar cells above us, we knew he was right.
I'm especially glad that the optimistic last scene of Who Killed the Electric Car has proven that we weren't just wishful thinkers when we finished our edit. The clips feature the first glimpse of the ultra fast Tesla electric sports prototype as well the Zenn neighborhood electric vehicle. Both cars are starting to roll off production lines today. And while the State of California (and some car companies) are still gambling on hydrogen fuel cells, plug-in cars are proving to be more environmentally efficient and popular. Early adopters deserve a lot of the credit. Oil companies and the internal combustion engine monopoly may have "killed" thousands of electric cars (EVs) in the 1990s, but EVs are coming back. (Stay tuned for next film...)
I hope you'll find our documentary takes you on a wild ride out of the 20th century and into the 21st. --Chris Paine, Writer/Director
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| Customer Reviews: Read 280 more reviews...
 Closer to the end... November 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
"Who Killed the Electric Car?" sounds like the title of a documentary produced by people with too much time on their hands and no place to go.
A friend dropped off this dvd from his library asking that I view it. Realizing that I had lived through a period in the late 80's and early 90's in Southern California when a lot of noise was being made about this very subject I finally submitted to his request, albeit with a bowl of popcorn.
No personal interest had ever brought me any direct contact with the controversy, and I would have been quick to point out to anyone that asked that there had been some effort to develope an electric car but nothing of importance had ever taken place.
Watching my own stupidity and lack of attention dissolving before me on the screen, I uncomfortably settled in to watch the remake of "Tucker II."
Drifting through scene after scene were flashbacks to "The Paralax View." The stinging caveat being the LA Times reporter naively held in that miasma of 'true life,' mouthing what in effect would be the 'no conspiracy' line, when he should have been strapped in the chair like Warren Beatty, fighting the brainwashing. But indoctrination is far more subtle now, isn't it?
Even the director falls prey to system thinking, hammering 'global warming' as a plank into his platform to resurrect brilliance from the catacombs of politico-industrial backwash.
All the usual suspects are brought to the line-up. Representatives of those private-jet aficionados panhandling in Washington are raked over the coals with responses worthy of a congressional hearing. Politicians, like actors they're grateful for any kind of notice, make their bows. Even the American public is ringed in, to give the film an air of democratic objectivity.
Timeliness drips from the film as viewers continue to massage their wallets from the recent spikes in gas prices. Yet a greater story is being filmed.
The viewer sees it in the helplessness of the heros and heroines as they fight for their earth-saving, money-conserving, clean and healthy runabouts. It shows forth in the hardened faces of the police lines brought in somewhere outside of beautiful downtown Burbank.
It resonates in the adumbration of prophetical proclamations of a time when individuality will submit for the greater good. When common sense will begin to play as radicalism. When those in power will be fewer in number, yet greater in control.
Truth will begin to be an opinion. Reality will be shaped by those who know better and can explain things with a joke.
Like Clinton joking about the electric car to the auto-makers who are grimly squirming in their seats, unable to look anyone in the eye.
Is a one-world system all that hard to conceive?
Is man evolving to better and greater heights?
WKTEC is an important film. Far too important to be ignored.
The film not only chronicles yet one more travesty in modern American history, unwittingly, it documents the direction in which this world is traveling by oil.
And that power is ordered.
TL Farley,
author,
When Now Becomes Too Late,
Distant Reaches
When Now Becomes Too Late Futurist Perspectives on The Rapture.
Distant Reaches True-Life Adventure in Ireland, Boston, and on The North Atlantic.
 Even more important now that we're in the middle of an economic crunch! November 24, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Not long ago a relatively small group of people were able to participate in a lease-only option to drive some of General Motors' fleet of EV-1 cars. The EV-1 was a prototype all-electric car. The EV-1 was developed mainly to meet a growing need and market in California. At the time California was developing a plan to require lower emission rates and more environmentally-friendly personal transportation options.
GE was working with Californian power companies to install infrastructure needed to support the EV-1. Everything seemed to be going great. The people who leased EV-1 cars absolutely loved them. The EV-1 looked and handled great, had plenty of power, and had effective range for the urban driver. If you owned an EV-1 you plugged it in when you got home, unplugged it in the morning, and drove to work where you could plug it in again, and so on...
Then, one day, all the people leasing EV-1 cars were contacted and instructed that their leases had been terminated, and, in acordance with their lease agreements, were to make their EV-1 cars available to collection. No one was given any explanation about the reason for the termination of the EV-1 pilot program, and no one was allowed to purchase their EV-1 car. People were loathe to give up their EV-1s, but, alas, they were legally obligated to do so.
After some of the cars were picked up a network of EV-1 drivers and friends tracked the car carriers and found that the cars were being systematically destroyed. What!? Why? That is the mystery!!!
This video explores what non-GE proponents of the EV-1 program were able to learn about the development and then termination of the EV-1 pilot program. While this video is quite obviously spun in favor of EV-1 proponents, it nevertheless provides an interesting set of observations and insights into market and political forces that almost certainly led to the demise of the EV-1.
What makes this story even more compelling today is the appearance and marketing of GE's Volt...a hybrid-electric car that runs entirely on electricity, and then, when the battery charge drops far enough, a small gas-powered engine kicks on to assist with recharging the batteries as the car is driven.
Hm...
OK, main players referred to in this DVD include senior GE execs, the Gov of Calif and the Pres of the USA (Bush), and others.
if you are interested in politico-environmental issues, then this story is definitely for you. When you watch this DVD it's a pretty sure bet that you too will ask, "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
Absolutely excellent documentary! November 10, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Who killed the Electric Car" is absolutely great and reflects a microcosm of politics that occur on a national scale. Anybody and everybody that is concerned about the environment, clean energy and the security of the U.S.A. should watch this and see how Corporate Greed has taken over politics and the practical applications of principles that work. With the electric car, we had accomplished a goal: a non-polluting vehicle that got up to 300 miles per charge, and we were forced to abandoned it because of Corporate politics and greed. This documentary also tells you how the big oil companies lead you on and now they talk of the hydrogen cell car which the experts in the documentary state is not economically feasible and cannot work.
This documentary is truly an eye opening experience. It is one of these films that remind me of a statement of a famous person (who I cannot recall at this time, and the saying is not verbatim): "A mind once expanded, cannot return to it's former state"
I highly recommend this documentary and hope all reply with a call to action to your representatives.
Brian
DVD lauched my interest not to buy another gas car. November 3, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Share it with as many people as you can. I shared my copy with a US Senate candidate.
Corporate malfeasance once again exposed November 2, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
On its surface, Who Killed the Electric Car? is an excellent but ultimately disturbing and depressing documentary about what happened to GM's EV-1 and Toyota's RAV4. What the film is really about, though, is how pervasive and nefarious the influence of corporate America is on most of our domestic policy decisions.
We all know that corporate America has infiltrated our lives in various ways (from non-stop advertising to the push to use more pharmaceuticals), but this documentary will disturb you anyway, because it also shows how easily politicians and scientists fold under pressure from corporate interests -- even when those interests are clearly not in the best interest of our population.
What's interesting about the electric cars featured in this documentary is that they worked so well GM and Toyota had to remove them from the marketplace lest they disturb the balance sheets of the hundreds of companies that depend on combustion-engine vehicles -- auto makers, big oil, auto parts manufacturers/distributors, fueling stations, etc. Now they sell us on hybrids and hydrogen powered vehicles, and you'll understand why that's largely bunk after watching this movie.
I would laugh at what's happening to the auto industry today -- they're reaping what they've sown, let's face it -- if it weren't for the fact that thousands of people will continue lose their jobs and soldiers will continue to die in the Middle East as auto and Big Oil executives skate away with millions.
There is one glimmer of hope, and it's the same thing we've come to expect re: change in our society. It's not the politicians, bureaucrats or corporations that invite change, it's individuals with a passion/drive for change. From Rosa Parks to the engineers and activists who are working on alternative fuel solutions, it's the little people who somehow break through and say, no more.
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