Who Killed the Electric Car? | 
 enlarge | Actor: Martin Sheen
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
Buy New: $8.00
You Save: $6.94 (46%)
New (48) from $8.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  259 reviews
Sales Rank: 434
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
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New and Factory Sealed Item Fast Shipping
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
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
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 254 more reviews...
 Great documentary proving that large corporations decide for the people! July 19, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Since Nikola Tesla's days have we had the technology to run cars on electricity but the reason we have yet to see this now is because it will make no money to the elite members of the Govt. and Corporations, all greedy and corrupt. This film shows that tha technology was released and when "they" realized their blunder, they pulled the cars away against the will of the American people. Wake up folks and get involved!
Who's Sorry Now? GM, I Hope! July 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I recently watched the Who Killed the Electric Car? DVD and must say, it is an eye opener. I was in California when the state mandated that car manufacturers produce vehicles with zero emissions. While it was in place, I saw all kinds of electric cars here in the Palm Springs desert - the EV1, Honda and others. That was a decade ago.
Apparently, the auto companies, with help from the oil companies and politicians, convinced California to drop the mandate, and the electric cars were immediately pulled from consumers who loved them! The EV1 electric car that is followed in this documentary is one hot little car, but GM killed it, recalled all of them (they could only be leased) and destroyed them rather than sell to consumers who were begging to buy the vehicles.
So, we've had the technology for a quiet, practical around town electric car for years. The Japanese got the message and started producing hybrids, while the USA car companies came out with gas guzzlers like the Hummer.
Now, we are paying for big business greed and politics.
This should be required viewing for every American citizen. I highly encourage everyone to watch this.
Who's sorry now? July 9, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This type of documentary is what corporations AND consumers AND government need to see to make the changes necessary before we kill our planet. Have you seen the recent "green" GM commercials with the plug-in cars? Hopefully, we are all learning the hard lessons. The first time I saw it (rented), I was depressed at the end. I bought a few copies as Fathers' Day presents to show "what might have been". Watching it again, I noticed all the things people are doing to make zero emissions possible. Finally, I'm glad someone documented the grass-roots activism that took place which doesn't make it into mainstream media. That specific battle seemed lost, but the war might yet be won.
 The Killers of the EV Remain Free Today July 4, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Perhaps now more than ever, there has become a renewed focus on finding more sustainable ways to live in terms of energy consumption. Though the soaring gas prices have indeed caused many of us to take note and become a bit more eco-conscious, when a similar movement began in the 1990's it was a myriad of competing factions that in fact pulled the emergency brake on such a movement.
Who Killed the Electric Car is an interesting documentary on the entire electric car life span for conception to production to dismantling in scrap yards just a few years later. The electric car phenomenon that swept the country amongst like minded individuals and in particular celebrity types in a way that perhaps predated the necessity of living a more sustainable life and rather focused on the desire to life in such a way.
Thanks to the EV movement that made driving an electric car fashionable and trendy, the demand for EVs began to peak and a push was on to increase production of electric cars to meet the demand that was creeping up ever so quickly.
But all of that came to a crashing halt. The film seeks to address some of the possible culprits guilty for killing the electric car. Though certainly no charges of murder could be brought, what certain individuals and organizations did to ensure the rapid demise of the electric car was comparable to stabbing the heart of the electric car movement and ensuring it would never breathe another breath.
The movie seeks to point the finger at the different individuals and organizations that killed the electric car movement. There is a spotlight shone upon the gasoline and oil companies just as brightly as there is one cast upon politicians who were more concerned about protecting the interests of Big Oil rather than the consumers' that were buying the EVs interests.
However, what is most interesting is the expose that highlights how the automobile manufacturers also had a hand in bringing down the electric car. It is amazing to think that even when a demand was so prevalent for EVs that the automobile industry would bend to outside pressures to ensure that oil dependent vehicles would live on past the EVs.
Imagine for a second the manufacturers of the EVs actually seizing back the EVs from the consumers and then shipping them off to be destroyed at a scrap yard. Sound a bit too totalitarian for your liking? Well, the truth is that happened right here in America.
The film does a fine job exploring as many different possible avenues for those that could be found guilty for killing the electric car. The documentary is done in such a way that certainly there is a bias shown toward the pro-EV movement and arguments but ample time is devoted to ensuring that both sides of the issue are in fact addressed.
Narrated by Martin Sheen, the documentary is well crafted in the sense that there are a lot of different interviews pieced together in a way that is methodical and cogent. Toward the end of the film when the players are identified as being either guilty or not guilty, a sort of mini-trial snapshot is translated to the film well.
Who Killed the Electric Car is a very good look at a decision made less than two decades ago that certainly now is having adverse ramifications on both the environment and economy. It would be interesting to learn whether or not had the EVs in fact been invested in and supported to the same level as petroleum dependent vehicles whether or not today we would be so dependent upon oil and so impacted by the fluctuations in the price of the oil we consume.
Though there are several parties outlined as being found guilty of killing the electric car, the one main thing to take away is that the parties involved in this senseless killing should to this day be held accountable. And when you are accountable for such an act, you too should be punished.
Big boys don't cry July 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I don't know why, exactly, but this film made me very sad. Sad, to the point of actually tearing up. While politically motivated trash like "An Inconvenient Truth" either makes me want to vomit or possibly laugh at the arrogant idiocy that spawned the film, this film moved me. Just thinking about the senseless crushing of EV1s, just to keep them 'off the street', makes me sad. If you have any doubt that America is being sold by the gallon, just watch this film.
|
|
|
