Anatomy of a Murder

TAP talks to Chris Paine, director of the new documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, about the chief culprits in the act.
By Elizabeth Henderson

From 1996 to 2000, 800 electric cars were leased by General Motors in California. By the end of 2005, almost all of these cars had been hauled to the crusher, against the ardent protestations of electric car owners throughout the state. In his directorial debut, Who Killed the Electric Car?, Chris Paine investigates the creation and demise of the electric car, America’s addiction to foreign oil, and the need for consumers to finally stand up. TAP recently spoke to Paine by phone.

For the sake of our readers who have yet to see the movie, who, exactly, killed the electric car?

It’s a murder mystery. The movie is like Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express -- there’s a dead body in a room and first of all we have to find out who this character is. Most people have never heard of the electric car, so we’re kind of bringing everyone up to speed with what a plug-in car is all about. The clichéd view of it is that it’s like a souped-up golf cart. People usually ask: Well, why would anyone want that? Is it safe? Is it fast? Is it reliable? Can it work into my life? The second half of the movie looks at what happened and why these cars were taken off the road and destroyed. The primary culprits are the car industry and the oil industry. But, the other suspects in the room that all play contributing forces are the California Air Resources Board, which is a state regulator; the federal government, in terms of joining the car maker’s suit against California; consumers’ reluctance to stop driving their SUVs and drive something else; and then, of course, we have batteries and hydrogen fuel cells.

In other interviews you’ve mentioned that the electric car is a symbol of the 21st century. Can you elaborate on that?

The 20th century is really the oil age and so much of our economy and mode of life is based on cheap oil. As oil becomes scarcer and more in demand and the price goes up, we need to look at new ways of doing things. The electric drive train for a car turns out to be the most efficient way to push something around on the road…[With the electric car] you basically have a vehicle that has no maintenance because there’s no transmission, there’s no carburetor, and you can charge a car, in theory, completely renewably, off of solar, or wind, or hydro. Even if you have a semi-dirty grid with 55 percent coal, you’re charging your car with 55 percent less CO2 emissions. It’s where we’re headed. The Chinese are already on this, and the Japanese are moving toward this as well. Plug-in hybrids might not be pure electric cars, but it’s certainly where we’re headed.

What do you think about GM’s recent announcement about looking into developing plug-in hybrids?

Well, car companies are very good at making announcements.

Anything else?

When they announce that they’re now talking about plugging in the GMs, that’s great, but let’s see them on the road. GM could have done this 10 years ago, so what are they [doing] talking about something that might happen in a few years?

What about some of the initial drawbacks of the electric car? Don’t you think the fact that it had a 60-mile range, only two seats, and a small trunk affected its commercial viability?

Well, the trunk is actually pretty fabulous. It’s a huge trunk. But it was a two-seater. It was based on a sports car GM made, and people said, "Hey, you have this great drive train, why don’t you try it in some other cars besides just a two-seater car." So they did have a Chevrolet S-10 electric version of the car and they had a pickup truck. Toyota had a four-seater, the RAV4 EV, and Honda had a four-seater, so they weren’t absent from the marketplace. They tried to make the first cars that came out very cheaply and they used lead acid batteries that would give them a margin if they could get them in this car. Now, I got that EV1 and I thought: "Sixty miles? That’s gonna suck, that’s not gonna work for me." But you quickly find out that the statistic that most people drive 30 miles a day is really true. And soon you’re hardly ever driving the gas car. But until you’ve had the experience, and I think that this is one of the reasons that they went ahead and crushed these cars, you don’t know that. People just think, "Oh, [there are] limitations -- I don’t want to risk it."

You mentioned that you originally purchased the EV1 as a secondary car. Not all Americans can afford to make that kind of purchase.

That’s an excellent point. And that’s why it was so sad to see GM walk away from this when they could have built the first plug-in hybrids. Because, suddenly, the plug-in hybrid means that your first 50 miles of the day are fueled by electricity, which is 90 percent of your day’s driving. Then, for that day when you’re doing more, that little gasoline or ethanol or bio-diesel engine kicks in and takes you on that 200 mile trip to Grandma’s house and back. And this is really the future. It was going to be American companies leading the way, and now American companies are completely distracted by hydrogen fuel cells, which is a boondoggle on so many levels. But it will take consumers to follow, you’re absolutely right.

If GM genuinely wanted the car to fail, then why did they invest over $1 billion in it? Why did they produce the EV1s at a substantial financial loss?

GM loves this $1 billion number. In fact, that number started out at $300 million and then recently I’ve heard them say $1.5 billion. Nowhere on any annual statement is this money broken down. A lot of people feel that a good chunk of that money was money that they spent trying to fight this car legislatively and legally. But, certainly that is a big number. However, car companies routinely spend $1 billion on things. Right now, GM has spent well in excess of $1 billion -- I think it’s probably at the $2 billion mark -- on this hydrogen fuel cell, which is arguably a fantasy technology. And when they re-tool the Pontiac, and all these things, car companies have to make big investments. If they had actually capitalized on that $1 billion, they would have the most advanced hybrid car on the market right now. They got so wrapped up in fighting California on the regulation that they decided the electric car was a threat to their core business line and they shut it down…

There are so many competing interests within a car company, the engineering group’s doing this, the bean counters are doing that, and, you know, car companies traditionally are very much short-range players -- they look at their quarter, they look at their numbers. The movie makes the point that if the oil companies saw the alternatives to oil cars as a long-term threat, the car companies saw them as a short-term threat. Because they’re not used to investing in new technology and having the patience to wait for it, even this hydrogen fuel cell is largely, well, not largely, but greatly funded by federal grants. And they couldn’t see that they could make money on the electric car in the short term. Toyota didn’t make money on a hybrid for the first couple years, but GM never gave the electric car a shot, I mean, maybe they did for one quarter, but … the sad thing is that GM couldn’t have someone in the board room say, "Hey, you know, oil prices could go to $4 … maybe we should have a Plan B." [There was] no Plan B.

The application process to buy one of the 800 EVIs seemed pretty arduous.

Any of our friends who would go on this waiting list for a car, they never heard from GM. And when you tried to lease a car you’d have to fill out these huge applications, proving that you were somehow worthy enough to get one of these cars.

It had to be understood by the applicant that the car had to be charged, and that you couldn’t go to a gas station. They made all of the limitations of this car very clear. It’s like, "Oh, gosh, I hadn’t thought there were that many limitations, but, when you put it that way, I guess maybe I don’t want it."

There were only 800 EV1s produced, but there were 4,000 electric cars in California at the peak of all this. What made you decide to focus on GM instead of other automakers?

GM was the only company that made an electric car from the ground up. All the other car companies just took the existing model, pretty much, and put an electric drive train in. And GM’s was also two years ahead of the competition at a minimum. They pioneered regenerative breaking, and the AC system, which is where instead of having a DC, which is more of a golf cart experience, you have this super smooth acceleration. Also, as a filmmaker, GM becomes kind of a tragic figure. Other car companies, like Toyota, ended up saving some of their cars, and Ford actually sort of let people buy some of their cars. GM was the only one that was just so absolutist about what it wanted to do.

If zero-emission mandates are pursued again, what can be done to prevent automakers from pressuring state governments to abandon their efforts, as happened in California?

Oh, absolutely nothing. This is why people need to stand up and let their legislatures know that they support government being involved in the regulation of cars. There’s been this idea since the Reagan years that government is always bad. And it isn’t always bad. It’s bad when they commit us to war in the Middle East for 10 years that costs $2 trillion -- that would be a bad call. But in terms of asking, "Hey, car companies, how about seat belts?" That’s good. "How about air bags? How about cars that make less pollution?" And this takes regulation because otherwise no other car company wants to be in front of it if they think they’ll lose money.

What was is like holding the debut of the film in Detroit?

Detroit was very receptive. Consider this: Automakers tell everybody in Detroit that the reason they’re losing their jobs is because they’re paying the union too much money and they have too generous pensions and the medical plan is too free. Well, these may be factors, but the fact is that Detroit is not making cars that people really want. They’re talking people into buying cars by giving them rebates for buying gasoline. Meanwhile, Toyota goes from being No. 3 to the No. 2 car maker. The senior managers at these car companies are at the top of the list for culpability, and the people of Detroit understand that. I hope that we can go have another big screening in Michigan because I’d like to be counted as a friend of Michigan. If you consider what we’re really asking for is for the fleet to be replaced by plug-in hybrid vehicles, this is potentially a new car for every American in the country. Now, I don’t advocate production for production’s sake, but from a car company’s point of view, this should be a good thing.