Who Killed the Electric Car?
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DVD details
Actor: Martin SheenBrand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 93 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-11-14
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures
DVD Reviews of Who Killed the Electric Car?
DVD Review: conscientious cars should exist everyday
Summary: 5 Stars
An incredible achievement in documentary storytelling, this film should be seen by everyone. Why did automakers discontinue producing electric cars? And, more importantly, why did GM pull the perfectly-functioning existing electric cars off the road? And what's the future: Is it the overhyped hydrogen duel cell vehicles or the more reasonable electric plug-in hybrids that are already on the road?DVD Review: GM -- Now Reaping What They Have Sown
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent, thought-provoking, revealing film detailing the truth behind what really drives the auto industry (and all big business in this country). Contrary to what most Americans believe, we are NOT a democracy. Unfortunately, our country is dollar-driven and short-sighted; guided by greedy CEO's who want to eke out every last penny they can from every last drop of oil they can suck from the earth before even entertaining the thought of pursuing alternative, renewable energy resources. Shame on you, GM! You had an opportunity to make a difference; to be on the cutting edge--the forefront of a new era--and you blew it! You got what you deserved and never should have been bailed out. DVD Review: A must see
Summary: 5 Stars
You must see this to beleave it, and people don't understand why GM is in such trouble. They have there own answer to there problem yet do nothing about it. I wonder if President Oboma knows about this????DVD Review: They killed the Electric Car. And "WE" Let them did it...
Summary: 5 Stars
Back in mid 90s when I was in elementary school, there were newspaper articles about researchers working on electric cars and batteries. My dad was an engineer and told me about all the wonderful stories about running vehicles on electricity without any pollution or noise. At the time I didn't know any better, but accepted it a viable alternative at the time. Within several years however, almost all researches were discontinued and nobody heard about them until recently.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out about EV-1 as I started watching this documentary. I didn't even know that EV-1 existed as early as 2001. At the very first sight of the car, I was totally into it. It was the first time I ever fell in love with a car. Soon they killed it, and we let them did it.
Why are these people so crazy about buying regular hybrid cars that cannot even go over 50 miles per gallon and paying thousands of dollars for it? We have a superior technology that offers much high efficiency and pollution free driving experience.
I really wish I had learned about EV-1 earlier. It would have made so much difference.
DVD Review: Give me my bailout money back!
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently saw this great documentary at an EarthDay event in Cocoa, Florida. I was suprised to learn all the negatives about electric cars were thought up by the auto industry, themselves. I was shocked at how GM took all the cars back (to the dismay of the people who had leased them) and CRUSHED them! It was a stupid and sad move by General Motors. I'll never think of them in the same way again. If that's the way our American car makers are handling consumer demand these days, I say, Let them Sink!
Description of Who Killed the Electric Car?
In 1996, electric cars began to appear on roads all over California. They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline. Ten years later, these futuristic cars were almost entirely gone. What happened? Why should we be haunted by the ghost of the electric car?It begins with a solemn funeral.for a car. By the end of Chris Paine's lively and informative documentary, the idea doesn't seem quite so strange. As narrator Martin Sheen notes, "They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline." Paine proceeds to show how this unique vehicle came into being and why General Motors ended up reclaiming its once-prized creation less than a decade later. He begins 100 years ago with the original electric car. By the 1920s, the internal-combustion engine had rendered it obsolete. By the 1980s, however, car companies started exploring alternative energy sources, like solar power. This, in turn, led to the late, great battery-powered EV1. Throughout, Paine deftly translates hard science and complex politics, such as California's Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, into lay person's terms (director Alex Gibney, Oscar-nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, served as consulting producer). And everyone gets the chance to have their say: engineers, politicians, protesters, and petroleum spokespeople--even celebrity drivers, like Peter Horton, Alexandra Paul, and a wild man beard-sporting Mel Gibson. But the most persuasive participant is former Saturn employee Chelsea Sexton. Promoting the benefits of the EV1 was more than a job to her, and she continues to lobby for more environmentally friendly options. Sexton provides the small ray of hope Paine's film so desperately needs. Who Killed the Electric Car? is, otherwise, a tremendously sobering experience. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Stills from Who Killed the Electric Car? (click for larger image)
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Writer/Director Chris Paine Blogs About Who Killed the Electric Car
When Who Killed the Electric Car premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (on the same weekend as An Inconvenient Truth), we wondered whether movie goers were ready for a new kind of 'action film'. Fortunately people jumped onboard and this seems even more true today.
We put this DVD together after the release of the film to include a dozen short scenes we couldn't quite fit into our story. My favorite is one with Stan and Iris Ovshinsky who developed the revolutionary battery technology that powered GM's electric car (and today's Prius). These two brilliant octogenarians took our small camera crew on a Willy Wonka style tour of their inventions including the world's largest thin film solar cell factory. As we stood under a football field size machine in Troy Michigan, I blustered "Is solar power back?" Stan exclaimed " What?! Solar never went away... What was back was backward thinking!" And as his machine cranked out miles of solar cells above us, we knew he was right.
I'm especially glad that the optimistic last scene of Who Killed the Electric Car has proven that we weren't just wishful thinkers when we finished our edit. The clips feature the first glimpse of the ultra fast Tesla electric sports prototype as well the Zenn neighborhood electric vehicle. Both cars are starting to roll off production lines today. And while the State of California (and some car companies) are still gambling on hydrogen fuel cells, plug-in cars are proving to be more environmentally efficient and popular. Early adopters deserve a lot of the credit. Oil companies and the internal combustion engine monopoly may have "killed" thousands of electric cars (EVs) in the 1990s, but EVs are coming back. (Stay tuned for next film...)
I hope you'll find our documentary takes you on a wild ride out of the 20th century and into the 21st. --Chris Paine, Writer/Director
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