Reply to my detractor- The continuing mystery of the electric car's demise

Apparently I've been pissing some people off with my blog posts on various issues, which of course means that I'm doing something right. In the most recent instance, it was over my post "You killed the electric car, didn't you?", which consisted of my thoughts after viewing the film Who Killed the Electric Car? In fact, I seemed to make this particular person so flustered over the issue they signed up to get a ProgressiveU account JUST to try and take me down a peg (I noticed that the account had been open only 2 hours with the reply to my post being the only activity), so I should get a cookie or something for causing someone to sign up right? Maybe not, but in any case, here's my reply to the comment "kerry beauchrt" made yesterday.

First off, the reply starts off as something of a polemic. I suppose this person has very strong feels on the subject, but I don't think the name calling is necessary.

"In order to succeed, this particular film's con requires
two essentials : 1) a gullible (typically young) audience
that believes in the power of conspiracy to control events,
and 2) an audience that knows practically nothing about the
EV1 electric car, or electric cars in general."

Well I guess I'm just a conspiracy hungry man with Down Sydrome in that case, and although I may not be the #1 expert on this issue (evolution takes up much of my time) I have been following it with interests, looking at the arguments from both sides. The film, although not un-biased in many respects, did give detractors of the electric car time to parrot maby of the same ideas mentioned in the reply, so although it's not a documentary in the sense of "Life of Mammals" is, it does document (hence the name) a controversial issue.

One of the first mistakes of the reply is to try to appeal to logic than actually use evidence, as seen in this quote:

"For example, the film's concept of a manufacturer consciously trying to torpedo his own new and winning revolutionary technology. That simply doesn't compute, so the film feels obliged to throw in big oil, big money, big bribe."

I am not an expert on the inner workings of car companies, but I think it would be foolish to say that GM (or any of the other companies) really pushed this "revolutionary technology." I vaugely remember one commerical for an electric car a few years back, but I haven't seen any advertising whatsoever for electric vehicles other than this. Until I started to look into the controversy, I didn't even know there were several electric cars available, and the few adverts I did find were terrible. They made the car look as small as possible and seemed to be the opposite of what you'd want to do to interest someone in a car (look at double-page SUV spreads for comparison). For whatever reason, companies that developed electric cars seemed to sabotage the vehicles. Why this is exactly, I do not know, but I'm not willing to give car companies the benefit of the doubt in this case. Also take into account that since the film has been released GM asked the Smithsonian Institute to remove the EV-1 from display, and GM is a contributor to the museum's funds. Why they would do this, I don't know either, but they apparently aren't standing behind their cars. Also keep in mind that this was one of the few cars that escaped destruction by its manufacturer after being taken back from customers; the majority of the EV-1s were destroyed and not distributed to research organizations or museums like the spokesman in the film claimed.

The writer also claims that several car companies stopped work on all internal-combustion vehicles to work on a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle. I find this hard to believe, and there does not seem to be any evidence to support it. Further, hydrogen fuel cell cars just seem to be a carrot on a stick held out in front of consumers to bait us into thinking car companies are actually doing something good for the environment. If electric cars were being made and worked, then why put forward a more volitile technology that pollutes more and costs more?

There's also this little tasty tidbit of "holier-than-thou" authority: " Fortunately, this film's typical audience is, as noted, big stupid."

The writer spends a lot of time discussing the battery pack and other such things involved with the car in the next section. Where all the numbers and figures came from, they didn't say so there's no way for me to verify them. They do have a bit of a point that the EV1 was not the final solution to the air pollution problem, and the car did have some issues. For whatever reason GM included inferior batteries in the earliest models, which did cause problems. The cars also took a long amount of time to charge (usually done overnight since it took about 8 hours or so) for the limited range, useful only to those who live in cities or are driving to a place where the car can charge during the day. I don't agree with Ed Begley Jr.'s statement that the EV1 could have met the needs of 90% of Americans and I find the statistics a bit misleading, but the car would have found itself a niche in the city for people who do no travel very far, which would give developers time to improve the batteries and other issues that may have come up with the cars. It was a starting point that could have led to something better, and with the better battery technology available, I don't understand why no one seems to care about making electric cars and the focus is on the more-expensive, less-dependable hydrogen fuel-cells. This doesn't make any sense, other than the oil and car companies are trying to keep a successful alternative technology under wraps until the last minute as to make as much profit as possible. You just need to follow the money.

As for the issues of a customer base, I think a lot of people were interested in the EV1 and similar cars, but that didn't mean they'd buy one. I would be definitely be interested, but I can't afford one and the original model wouldn't meet my daily commute needs, but if the technology were improved I'd buy one when I had the funds to. I also wouldn't past the car companies that they'd try and talk about all the limitations kerry mentioned first instead of pushing the car, which isn't the way to sell a product. Also, a lot of people who may be prospective buyers might not have known such a car existed because GM didn't push it, so really GM didn't try and then said "Oh, no one's interested."

I also have found no evidence for the claim that the cars were lease-only because they were unsafe by federal standards. I heard this mentioned in the film when some electric cars were being crushed, but other than that I have never heard of such an idea. If a reference could be provided to me, I would be grateful and I would concede my mistake, but kerry offers no proof and parrots the same issues as the car companies, leading me to believe it's just another part of the myth that these cars were unwanted and unfit.

In any case, kerry seems to have a lot of facts, figures, and high-fallutin' statements about how unfit electric cars may be, but I don't buy it. Surely they were not for everyone and the technology needs to be developed further, but I find it puzzling why a vehicle that does work (and works well enough to produce and lease, and in some cases allow purchase) has been abandoned for a less-efficient technology that won't be viable for a number of years. The movie needs to be taken with a grain of salt, surely, but I don't think it's a propaganda piece either.