Who Killed the Electric car?

Bill Georgevich

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What is the problem America has with electric locomotion?

In the mid 70's, I drove an electric car to college every day during the energy crisis. It was no more than a glorified golf cart; it was perfectly functional but lacked basic amenities that car drivers today absolutely insist upon. But then, as now, I believed that the electric car -- any electric car -- was superior to the fossil-fuel guzzling variety.

So nearly 30 years later, with great enthusiasm, I test drove the EV1 electric car, which is the basis for the movie "Who Killed the Electric car?" In the movie, film makers ask why the GM Saturn division, who spent a billion dollars bringing the first modern electric car to market, would then take them away from their clinging owners, even when some of them were movie stars willing to give millions of dollars to keep the car from going to the crusher.

That's right, GM took the cars away from the rich and famous who adoringly drove them and secretly crushed them flatter than a pancake. This would be like owning the 1st front-wheel drive Olds Toronado in 1966. You loved it's traction in the snow and how the car followed the front wheels on slippery wet roads, yet GM comes to your house and takes the car away from you and destroys it. This would mean that Jay Leno would not have his tricked out '66 Toronado that has brought such great praise and fame to him and the GM crew that tricked it all out.

And it would have stopped the progress of front-wheel drive from being the default design approach for automobile transportation in the last 20 years.

Is that what GM was afraid of with the EV1? Saturn stops leasing the cars after 2 years and hobbyists keep the 1,200 electric cars (like they hung on to early 80's Deloreons)? They modify these electric cars with newer batteries and other upgrades and because electric cars have few moving parts and generate a fraction of the heat of their internal combustion siblings, the vehicles remind Americans (years later, like now), that electric cars are a viable zero-emissions alternative?

I guess GM was scared. Scared that Big Oil would punish them. Scared that their little experiment would actually catch on in the future. When asked about maintenance on their electric cars, EV1 owners said there was no maintenance. All Saturn did was "rotate the tires".

Rotate the tires? We can have a car that's maintenance-free? What about the billion dollar spare parts industry? And replacing all those little things in the internal combustion engine that break down because of the heat? We can't have that. So I guess they killed the electric car because it worked...it worked too well. Even the 2 remaining models in the Smithsonian have had their working guts removed just in case a youngster might take a look under the hood at the museum and get any ideas about saving the planet from global warming and a fossil fuel economy.

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