Who Killed / Inconvenient — Reviews on their Way
In a recent post I said I hadn’t watched an Inconvenient Truth or Who Killed the Electric Car? because I was worried about them being more persuasive than informative. A reader emailed me to say that assumption was wrong about Who Killed the Electric Car? and even offered to buy me a copy so I could figure it out. Ouch.
So, I’m watching it today, and I’ll let you know what I really think. I’ll also watch an Inconvenient Truth, just to be sure I haven’t been unfair.
A big thanks to everyone who keeps me on my toes.
Who Killed the Electric Car? is a crockumentary that avoids even the most obvious of reasons why the EV-1 was recently named by Time as one of the 50 worst cars ever built. Too expensive ($43,000, plus $20,000 every five years for a new set of batteries), too inconvenient : 8 hours to recharge, inability to reach and return from destinations a mere 40 miles away; held two passengers with no luggage; useless for anything other than commuting and grocery getting – no trips, no vacations, another gas powered vehicle required,
whether you need one or not; can’t move to another residence unless it has a place to plug the car in to recharge. No fast during cold weather operations. Impossible to predicrt just exactly how far the car could travel on a full charge – it became less with age, and with terain, A/C usage, etc. A TOTALLY impractical car. Notice that GM is building an electric car right now, and notice that it is nothing like the
EV-1. Nor is anyone of the other 12 electric car companies building anything that even remotely resembles the EV-1 that the film claims was a wonder car. The wonder is that GM was stupid enough to build it in the first place. The EV-1 was a piece of crap. And Honda and Toyota both cancelled their electric car programs as well (Honda after the first year!), yet the film strangely gives GM the credit for killing the electric car. THAT electric car deserved to die
and was simply not a viable alternative to the gasoline powered automobile. Chris Paine, you see, is this big stupid liar …
I don’t think he’s stupid at all. The movie might not have highlighted what you feel is important about the EV1, but it’s been very effective in bringing electric cars to people’s attention.
I did watch it yesterday, and a review is coming. (It’s already written and loaded up via MarsEdit … now we’ll have to see if I figured out how to prepost.)