Who Killed the Electric Car? | 
 enlarge | Actor: Martin Sheen
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
Buy New: $8.11
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Avg. Customer Rating:  264 reviews
Sales Rank: 355
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Subtitled)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 93
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 15286
UPC: 043396152861
EAN: 0043396152861
ASIN: B000I5Y8FU
Theatrical Release Date: 2006
Release Date: November 14, 2006
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Product Description
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?SPECIAL FEATURES:12 Deleted ScenesDocumentary: "Jump-Starting the Future"Music Video: Meeky Rosie's "Forever"System Requirements:Run Time: 91 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: PG UPC: 043396152861 Manufacturer No: 15286
Amazon.com
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) 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 259 more reviews...
 Who Killed America's Future August 5, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I will crawl on my hands and knees in 5 feet of snow before I buy, lease or borrow another GM product!!!
Who Killed the Electric Car, and 5,000 American Soldiers ? August 4, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This video shows, to what depths, the automobile manufacturers and the oil companies will sink, in order to maintain and improve their PROFITS.If America,and the world, had "Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles" there would be very little need for imported OIL.
Nearly 5,000 American soldiers would not have been killed , more than 30,000 wounded. Plus the Iraqi civilians, killed or wounded. What a sad, terrible, unnecessary waste, of people and the world's resources.
The cost of the war in Iraq, for ONE month, would pay for the supply
of a free PHEV to every American citizen. This Video is a "must see", for those
interested in the background, to what goes on in BIG business.
 Good Historical Perspective August 4, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
A very good coverage of the history of the car companies activities against the electric car and of recent electric car developments.
GM's Electric Car would get 250 Miles on Todays Batteries August 2, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've watched the movie several times trying to cath the little things. Dr. Ovshinsky wasn't happy about GM selling his battery to Texaco. The car went 120 miles on a charge with that battery. The first cars came with defective GM Delco batteries and were only replaced with Ovshinki's battery when he made an unathorized press appearance highlighting his metal hydride batter for the car. GM scolded him for it. But really folks, the car today would get 250-300 miles on a set of lithium batteries, those nice new ones that don't burn or explode when crushed or pierced, lithium polymers I believe they are called. Exxon has been very engaged in trying to corner the market on Lithium batteries, for at least a decade.
The award winning author who, in the movie, claims that GM would sell you a car that runs on pig manure if they can make a dollar, misses the elephant in the room. The elephant is that with no engine and transmission, only an electric motor with 3 moving parts, GM and its dealers would be hard pressed to charge so much money for the car. A regular engine has thousands of parts in its engine and transmission, thousands of operations more to make those parts, and a tearful amount of maint. costs for consumers. The electric car got around all of that. That's why they killed it, thats also why the "award winning author" is completely wrong about what GM would or would not sell you.
Keep in mind that the hydrogen car Bush has in mind will keep us going to his friends gas stations to fill up on hydrogen which they want to make from nuclear or natural gas. The cost? More than gasoline.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that if the nations car fleet were converted to electric overnight, our current power plants could supply 75% of the electricity demand if the cars charged at night.
This movie is important for you to see. Its perfect evidence for the case against corporations running America. Treason for them is often, just good business.
 It Tolls for....... August 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Very funny but sad look at how the invisible hand of Mr.Smith works in the market place--NOT!!!! Please give us the car I begged for 20 years ago that you could make 30 years ago! Inc. America blows. India is buying Jag and maybe the Hummer. GM is BILLIONS in the hole. Ford sold it's winning car to a Norwegian worker owned car company that will start selling it in 2010 to unemployed factory workers in America that now have jobs at Starbucks...maybe.While Toy moves from killing fords truck line into hybrids on a mass scale.Inc.America needs government regs before it chokes itself with Smith's invisible hand.Who killed The Electric Car? The Free Market and people that do not see this movie!
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