Who Killed the Electric Car?

The environmental movement has always struggled with ways to arouse the passion of the general public for esoteric, seemingly invisible and incremental long-term environmental problems like global warming. This challenge is particularly magnified in recent energy/environmental documentaries such as Al Gore's "An Inconvienent Truth" and the story of California's first (but not the last!) flirtation with advanced fuel efficiency standards, "Who Killed the Electric Car?". While Al Gore's movie struggled to put a personal face on the issue, "Electric Car?" has a little more success in this area. In exploring the life and death of commercial electric cars in California, the movie tells the story from the perspective of those who experienced the cars - the dealers and the buyers. The story's impact is strongly felt through the experiences of a young woman who started selling electric cars for GM, but ends up fighting the company to return the cars to the roads after they are mysteriously recalled. The passionate supporters of the electric cars - despite the fact that they are a gang of SoCal crazies - are pretty endearing throughout the movie and give life to a story that might otherwise seem trivial and conspiratorial. Hopefully this format will help guide those environmentalist and other activistics fighting equally enigmatic public problems. Ultimately, the public will only be persuaded to address these problems when they can identify with the activists themselves.