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Who Killed The Electric Car?

Review:

June 28, 2006
MOVIE REVIEW

'Who Killed the Electric Car?': Some Big Reasons the Electric Car Can't Cross the Road

By MANOHLA DARGIS

A murder mystery, a call to arms and an effective inducement to rage, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" is the latest and one of the more successful additions to the growing ranks of issue-oriented documentaries. Like Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" and the better nonfiction inquiries into the war in Iraq, this information-packed history about the effort to introduce — and keep — electric vehicles on the road wasn't made to soothe your brow. For the film's director, Chris Paine, the evidence is too appalling and our air too dirty for palliatives.

Fast and furious, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" is, in brief, the sad tale of yet one more attempt by a heroic group of civic-minded souls to save the browning, warming planet. The story mostly unfolds during the 1990's, when a few automobile manufacturers, including General Motors, were prodded to pursue — only to sabotage covertly — a cleaner future. In 1990 the state's smog-busting California Air Resources Board adopted the Zero-Emission Vehicle mandate in a bid to force auto companies to produce exhaust-free vehicles. The idea was simple: we were choking to death on our own waste. The goals were seemingly modest: by 1998, 2 percent of all new cars sold in the biggest vehicle market in the country would be exhaust-free, making California's bumper-to-bumper lifestyle a touch less hellish.

Given that some companies, including G.M., were already creating prototypes for electric cars that could be mass produced, the mandate didn't seem unfeasible or unreasonable. Electric cars have been around about as long as the automobile and, believe it or not, Phyllis Diller. Mr. Paine's résumé is peppered with Hollywood credits, which may explain why, in addition to the usual expert talking heads, he has tapped so many celebrities and pseudo-celebrities.

Presumably Mr. Paine thinks audiences listen to the famous and almost famous, which is certainly the case with Ms. Diller, who delivers a nostalgic ode to the first electric vehicles while in front of an ornately framed painting of Bob Hope. Both the comedian and the filmmaker certainly know how to grab your attention.

Henry Ford and cheap oil helped keep electric cars off the road, leaving the fast-growing highway system to the spewing, sputtering internal-combustion engine. Oscillating between interviews and an array of punchy visuals, including industrial and nonfiction films, Mr. Paine lays out how the country's romance with gasoline-thirsty cars quickly turned into the craziest kind of love. By the 1950's, the zoom years of Jack Kerouac and James Dean, Los Angeles pedestrians who braved the city's streets could be seen covering their mouths with handkerchiefs, trying to filter the air. Many decades and smog alerts later, the state took bold action. What happened next, Mr. Paine explains, is a familiar story of corporate greed and governmental corruption, mixed in with flickers of idealism and outrage.

It's a story Mr. Paine tells with bite. In 1996 a Los Angeles newspaper reported that "the air board grew doubtful about the willingness of consumers to accept the cars, which carry steep price tags and have a limited travel range." Mr. Paine pushes beyond this ostensibly disinterested report, suggesting that one reason the board might have grown doubtful was because its chairman at the time, Alan C. Lloyd, had joined the California Fuel Cell Partnership. Established in 1999, this partnership is a joint effort of the federal and state agencies, fuel cell companies, car manufacturers like G.M. and energy peddlers like Exxon to explore the potential (note that word, potential) of vehicles powered by hydrogen-cell fuels.

Why would a company like Exxon back a zero-emission vehicle technology that — according to some of the authorities interviewed in the film, like Joseph J. Romm, an assistant secretary in the Department of Energy during the Clinton administration and author of "The Hype About Hydrogen" — is a long way from real-life roadways? The answers may not surprise you, particularly if you are predisposed to watching a film titled "Who Killed the Electric Car?," but they're eye-and-vein-popping nonetheless. As Mr. Paine forcefully makes clear, the story of the electric car is greater than one zippy ride and the people who loved it. From the polar ice caps to Los Angeles, where many cars truly are to die for, it is a story as big as life, and just as urgent.

"Who Killed the Electric Car?" is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). Revelations of big-business and government collusion may provoke shock, shock.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Opens today in Manhattan

Directed by Chris Paine; edited by Michael Kovalenko and Chris A. Peterson; narrated by Martin Sheen; produced by Jessie Deeter; released by Sony Pictures Classics. Running time: 92 minutes.

Source
 
Who Killed the Electric Car?

** (Cert U)

Geoffrey Macnab
Friday August 4, 2006
The Guardian

If Chris Paine's film were half as well designed as General Motors' super-sleek, super-quick EV1 (the electric car whose demise it laments), it would be a film to cherish. Unfortunately, this documentary has been put together in such a clunky fashion that it mutes its own arguments and frequently risks stalling.

This is the story of how big business stifled the attempts to introduce an electric car programme in California in the mid 1990s. Paine has assembled an impressive array of interviewees. These range from former EV drivers such as Mel Gibson (relaxed, witty and not in the slightest belligerent) to journalists, environmental activists, politicians, engineers and even ex-CIA boss R James Woolsey.

What they have to say is often fascinating. The problem is that Paine hasn't found a way to organise his talking heads. The whodunit conceit is didactic and contrived. There is a suspicion, too, that many of those drivers who lobbied to stop GM crushing their beloved EVs in landfill sites in Arizona weren't doing so out of eco-altrusim. The real reason was simply that they had fallen in love with their beautiful cars and wanted them back.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic ... 34,00.html
 
Although events like this aren't going to help Tesla sales very much!

Tesla drivers left unable to start their cars after outage​


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59357306
That's a bit of a coincidence. Last night I was walking past my old house, where the owners have fitted a charging point and gone out and bought a brand new electric car. I was quietly musing what would happen if (as sometimes happens in our rather beleagured little village in the depths of winter) the power went out for several hours. If the car still HAD charge in it, I guess it could be driven somewhere else to recharge - although there are no public charging points within twenty miles of us, but if it were almost completely flat, I guess they'd be confined to home until the power came back on again.
 
The AA/RAC/Green Flag operate vehicles that carry either battery recharge packs or diesel generators to rescue electric vehicles that run out of charge.
 
Although events like this aren't going to help Tesla sales very much!

Tesla drivers left unable to start their cars after outage​


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59357306
The friend who I recently reconnected with has a Tesla. I was amused to find that if the sat nav gets confused - which it did - you have to reboot the whole car. As in, stop, turn everything off, and turn it on again.

I don't know who killed the first incarnation of electric cars, but I'm pretty sure Chrysler/GM killed the second generation steam car by buying up the patents and not using them.
 
Today's announcement that the ban on new petrol and diesel cars in the UK has been postponed from 2030 to 2035 seems to be an acknowledgment that setting up a nationwide charging infrastructure will take longer than expected.
 
Today's announcement that the ban on new petrol and diesel cars in the UK has been postponed from 2030 to 2035 seems to be an acknowledgment that setting up a nationwide charging infrastructure will take longer than expected.
It'll take longer than that, so expect another date revision.
 
It'll take longer than that, so expect another date revision.
You might be right on that, but in another 12 years, I may not be too fussed about what car I can buy!
The other issue I took from today's announcement was the whopping great £7,500 grant towards heat pumps.
How I wish that had been on offer 3 years ago!
 
It'll take longer than that, so expect another date revision.
This exactly. I doubt if it will happen in the next 20 years if that. Then what? I suspect most electric stuff will be leased at huge cost, not least because the cells seem to have a very limited life and are very costly to replace, making the vehicle in effect uneconomic to repair. You would hope that manufacturers will come up with better battery tech, but who knows.
 
Hydrogen power? Alcohol fuelled steam cars? Tiny nuclear cells? There's got to be a better technology than electric cars with all their environmental costs.

Bit like light bulbs - the first and second generations of eco-bulbs were expensive to produce, costly in materials, and didn't in fact last all that long (although very variable in life span) Now being replaced by much better LED bulbs.
 
Hydrogen power? Alcohol fuelled steam cars? Tiny nuclear cells? There's got to be a better technology than electric cars with all their environmental costs.

Bit like light bulbs - the first and second generations of eco-bulbs were expensive to produce, costly in materials, and didn't in fact last all that long (although very variable in life span) Now being replaced by much better LED bulbs.
On a phone in yesterday a technician working in the electric car industry said that it’s still developing & that with the amount of research currently going around the world into new batteries there’s likely to be big improvements in range & battery life in the next few years.

Although he’s in the industry he doesn’t own an electric car himself but currently runs a petrol one. His view is that it’s worth waiting a few years for improvements to filter through to the market. The ‘next generation/s’ will be substantially better & that current models could become a bit obsolete.

Whether he’s right remains to be seen but it’s a bit like your LED bulbs example..
 
Just in the last few months a change is taking place in delivery and repair services in our town.

These new electric delivery and service vehicles are more narrower, but they are longer and taller.

To me, it looks like someone took a regular delivery van and squished it flat.

Amazon, not the jungle, has really gone into electric vehicles.
 
You might be right on that, but in another 12 years, I may not be too fussed about what car I can buy!
The other issue I took from today's announcement was the whopping great £7,500 grant towards heat pumps.
How I wish that had been on offer 3 years ago!
Have they explained how heat pumps can be retrofitted to old houses? Particularly terraces with no basement? I'd love to have something like this fitted to my house, ecologically far more friendly, but I don't think it's physically possible.
 
Have they explained how heat pumps can be retrofitted to old houses? Particularly terraces with no basement? I'd love to have something like this fitted to my house, ecologically far more friendly, but I don't think it's physically possible.
Why do you need a basement for a heat pump?
All the commercial heat pumps I have worked on over the years have been on roofs. They used to work on a gas that was so cold it could draw heat out of the air in the middle of winter.
Lot of years since I worked with heat pumps so maybe the technology has changed.
 
Why do you need a basement for a heat pump?
All the commercial heat pumps I have worked on over the years have been on roofs. They used to work n a gas that was so cold it could draw heat out of the air in the middle of winter.
Lot of years since I worked with heat UFO’s so maybe the technology has changed.
All the ones I know of have been ground source heat pumps, fitted into newly built houses, and I don't know of one older house that's been able to have one fitted apart from a house with a basement.
 
All the ones I know of have been ground source heat pumps, fitted into newly built houses, and I don't know of one older house that's been able to have one fitted apart from a house with a basement.
We use that type of technology with piles these days. You can lose your heat into the ground and cool water flow at 60 metres down.
 
Have they explained how heat pumps can be retrofitted to old houses? Particularly terraces with no basement? I'd love to have something like this fitted to my house, ecologically far more friendly, but I don't think it's physically possible.

My sister-in-law's house is a typical French one, where you live on the first floor and the ground floor is the garage/basement.
As she doesn't drive, the heat-pump, which is the size of a large, upright fridge-freezer, is in her mostly unused garage, with a load of pipes coming out of it.
The whole installation cost €12,000 but the French government contributed €2,000 towards that.
I gather there are options for smaller units to be fitted to an external wall if you don't have room inside.
 
This may not be an option for people who live in listed buildings.
I recently saw a case where a woman had solar panels installed on the roof of her 200 year old house, which is a grade 2 listed building.
The council were telling her to remove it because it's not in character with the other houses in the area.
Imagine the trouble she'd get if she had a heat pump clagged onto the outside wall of the house.
 
All the ones I know of have been ground source heat pumps, fitted into newly built houses,
The old boy in the end house of the terrace I live in (built 1895) had one on the gable end wall, This would have been fitted some time before 2012. He's since passed on and one of his young relatives now has the house and I see they have removed it and not replaced it with a modern one as yet. I guess he'd discovered it was either not working very well or not at all. We don't have basements hell we don't even have foundations!
 
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We've a (regularly flooded) cellar in our house, no gas connection, and only electricity.
It's hard enough heating the water with an emmersion heater, let alone heating the flat.
Ah, the joys of rental life.
 
Whether he’s right remains to be seen but it’s a bit like your LED bulbs example..
Yes, there could be a breakthrough of that kind. But the potential problem is that battery technology depends on chemical reaction, and the bulk of chemicals needed is related to the amount of power required. There obviously have been discoveries in that way that have reduced the size of batteries. But chemistry is a somewhat inflexible science, and we already are using rarer and rarer materials - not sure there is much further to go.

My banging on about alcohol fuelled steam is not just my nostalgia for steam power. The alcohol could come from oceanic plantations, and the emissions would be low.

Anything we discuss on conservation has to be coupled with the need to limit our population - hopefully voluntarily. A finite planet cant cope with a constantly increasing population of one species. If we hadn't given up on space exploration it might be different - or maybe I watched too much Star Trek.
 
Hydrogen power? Alcohol fuelled steam cars? Tiny nuclear cells? There's got to be a better technology than electric cars with all their environmental costs.

Bit like light bulbs - the first and second generations of eco-bulbs were expensive to produce, costly in materials, and didn't in fact last all that long (although very variable in life span) Now being replaced by much better LED bulbs.
I've now run out of the old halogen incandescent bulbs and have a few of the first generation 'energy saving' ones to use that were given to me (the ones that don't give much more light out than a candle and last about 5 minutes despite the seven/eleven year promise on the box).

I do use led's in a couple of places - under the kitchen worktop in a lamp for one as they don't make the cupboard red hot like an old style one would - but I've already had to replace it after only a few months (and it's not on for very long each day).

The first pack of three led's I bought lasted no time at all.
 
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