EV1 at a charging station Photo by Chris Paine, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics, all rights reserved.
Air pollution, global warming, oil addiction—all are now quotidian facts of life in the twenty-first century. It seems like everyone and their great aunt is starting to grasp that something must be done to preserve the health of the planet and the future of its inhabitants.
In California, in 1990, something quite significant was done. The state's Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate called for the sale of zero-emission cars, with sales targets increasing gradually from 1998 to 2003. From this mandate emerged the development of viable consumer electric cars, among them General Motors' EV1.
But the EV1 was scrapped before it could really catch on, supposedly because there was no demand for it.
If that was the case, why did EV1 drivers band together and plead with GM for the right to buy the car? Why were they denied? Why, at the time that the car's production was halted, did the waiting list for an EV1 extend into the thousands? Why were EV1s not only reclaimed by GM, but destroyed? Why was the original zero-emission mandate revoked? And why, just last month, was the EV1 removed from the Smithsonian, where it had been for more than a year, and replaced with an SUV?
Advertisement
Documentary filmmaker Chris Paine examines the plight of the EV1 in his passionate and informative film, Who Killed the Electric Car? The film tells a powerful story with the car as its doomed hero. "You made me cry over a car!" one viewer told Paine after a screening.
You had an EV1, correct?
I leased one. It was the first car I ever leased. I did it as sort of a lark. I didn't really know anything about electric cars. And I was just blown away by what a terrific vehicle it was. It was super fast, you could charge it at home, it never needed repairs, etc.—so, I fell in love with my car.
How did you discover the car?
I'd read an article about Paul MacCready—he designed the Gossamer Condor, which was the first human-powered aircraft, and then the Gossamer Albatross, which crossed the English Channel by human power in the seventies. I read that he'd designed an electric car for GM. So I wrote GM and tried to be really early in line.
You really sought it out.
I did. And one of the takeaways from the movie is: Consumers have to ask for what they want. As becomes clear in the film, the company wasn't necessarily going to offer this car eagerly.
In the end, GM refused to let leasers buy their cars. It seems bizarre that a corporation would refuse ready buyers.
I've never heard of another situation where a car company doesn't let you keep a car at the end of a lease. You buy it—usually, they're begging you to buy it. Here, they said, "You can't have it."
There was also no precedent for General Motors putting its own name on a car. And that's where the film becomes, in my view, sort of a "great American tragedy"—they took their own branded car off to the crusher.
Was there an official reason given for the destruction?
They said they couldn't get spare parts for them. And they said they were worried that if the cars were on the road, it wouldn't be indemnified—that they'd get sued if anything happened. But the drivers who wanted to keep the cars gave GM complete jury-trial indemnification. They offered them the price of the car, the buyout price. And they said, "Don't worry about spare parts, we'll figure out how to do it. We can make our spare parts, or get them from other people—just please don't crush the cars."