Who Killed the Electric Car?

In the mid nineties California introduces a zero emission vehicle requirement and General Motors produces an electric car called the EV1. The cars are leased, not sold. The people driving them are pleased. Then the regulation is rolled back and the company recalls every car; footage of them being taken to a yard and crushed is the documentary's starting point. Chris Paine directs. The structure is an investigation. The film draws up a list of suspects and assesses each: the car companies, the oil industry, the federal government, the California regulator, battery technology, the consumer and the hydrogen fuel cell. At the end it says how responsible each of them was. Its strongest element is the people who drove the car. When the company demanded them back some owners refused to hand them over and held a vigil outside the yard; that passage is the emotional centre. It appeared in 2006, when the argument about electric cars had almost closed in America, and counts as one of the films that reopened it. Its limit is that it takes a side. Little room is given to counter arguments and technical problems such as range are treated lightly. Chris Paine made a second documentary continuing the subject in 2011. Who it is for: anyone interested in the motor industry and documentaries on environmental policy. Who it is not for: the telling is one sided, the technical argument is shallow, and some of its predictions have aged.