Motor Mystery

Getting a boost: One of General Motors's long-lost EV1 cars in the documentary Who Killed The Electric Car? Photo Matt Bohling. Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics/Mongrel Media.

Filmmaker Chris Paine once owned an electric car. In interviews, he’s described his EV1, built by General Motors, as “super fast, quiet, tune-up free and fun.” When his lease expired, he considered not returning it. “I thought about stealing it,” he admits, “but the contract made that a nightmare proposition.”

Sadly, he doesn’t divulge any of that in his new documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car? Constructed like a whodunit, the film tracks the short life and suspicious death of the EV1, tracing how the models were developed, marketed and leased, then repossessed, scrapped and, finally, shredded. While the 80-minute film is a persuasive piece of advocacy on behalf of an evidently viable technology, Paine’s argument is lessened by his failure to reveal his own stake in the film, as well as that of its financial backers, which includes one longtime electric-car advocate. Of course, objectivity appears to be even deader than the electric car; but even in these subjective days, it remains important to reveal your biases up front.

A lack of transparency is just one instance of Paine’s amateurish approach. A Hollywood insider who cut his teeth as a production assistant on several features, most notably Robert Altman’s The Player, Paine draws on a host of celebrity talking heads, including Ed Begley Jr. and Mel Gibson (here sporting a two-tone beard, like a biblical prophet). Begley and Gibson at least owned EV1s. But what is Phyllis Diller, who’s never driven an electric car, doing here? Paine’s focus on star power often diverts from his argument.

When the EV1 arrived on lots in 1996, it was indeed nifty, sportily shaped and — best of all — emitted no exhaust. Paine calls it the “perfect” car, failing to address the fact that in order to recharge their EV1, drivers obviously had to tap into the electrical grid, much of which relies on notoriously dirty coal-fired power plants.

A Paine in the neck for Big Auto: Filmmaker Chris Paine. Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics/Mongrel Media.

Paine also downplays one of the car’s major shortcomings, from a consumer’s point of view: its limited range. On average, the car could only travel between 70 and 150 miles (110 and 240 kilometres) per charge. Still, as a town car, a daytrip automobile, the EV1 was ideal, and tune-ups usually involved little more than glugging in windshield wiper fluid.

At first, California regulators jumped on board, stipulating that car companies sell ever-increasing percentages of electric vehicles. But almost as soon as GM introduced the vehicle, the automaker began to have second thoughts. Apparently, the electric engine was too viable an alternative to the traditional combustion version, in which oil companies and car manufacturers have so much invested.

According to the film, by 2000, GM was doing everything possible to undermine its pioneering vehicle. It undercut its own sales division with anemic marketing (the ads for the car were inscrutable) and belligerent, condition-laden leases. Execs called consumers on waiting lists for the EV1, informing them of the vehicle’s alleged faults. Other high-ups lobbied extensively to get the state regulators to back away from electric car quotas. The suits decided to promote, instead, a hydrogen fuel cell engine program, which is years away from being market-ready. By 2002, the company repossessed and destroyed almost every EV1 in existence.

In the grace period between the repossession and shredding of the model, Paine rented a helicopter and flew over a GM desert compound, where, like a Wild Kingdom cameraman locating the last herd of some exotic and endangered beast, he spotted the extant EV1s. It’s a satisfying act of gonzo journalism, and the filmmaker is visibly exhilarated by the ride. But after opening the door to gonzo, Paine returns to the film’s previously sober reporting style.

Somehow, the film’s amateurism is more charming than irksome. Having laid out a bizarre mixture of interviews with real authorities and celebrities, the doc proceeds to its Hercules Poirot moment. Like Agatha Christie’s peculiar sleuth, Paine assesses the culpability of the various suspects in the EV1’s premature death: big auto, big oil, consumers, the government. Cheesy graphics abound: After laying out the case against each possible culprit, a big “Guilty” or “Not Guilty” flashes on the screen.

The argument in favour of electric cars is, finally, persuasive. One expert dismisses the much-vaunted hydrogen fuel cell by likening it to the mechanical rabbit at greyhound races, always receding further into the distance. On the other hand, the electric car is a viable alternative now, not at some distant point in the future.

Who Killed the Electric Car? illustrates one of the main points in Thomas Homer-Dixon’s influential treatise The Ingenuity Gap (2000), which argued that a chasm is growing between the environmental problems that beset us and our ability to solve them. Homer-Dixon points out that, as often as not, the technical solutions exist; what’s missing is the political will to deploy them.

Paine makes a good case for getting government to push auto companies into bringing back the electric car. Despite its somewhat shambolic style and Paine’s undisclosed personal interests, this doc focuses welcome attention on a technology that might lessen our addiction to oil.

Who Killed the Electric Car? opens July 14 in Toronto and Vancouver.

Alec Scott writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.