Future Cars of the Past

In 1997, General Motors released the car of the future – a sleek, electrically powered car that drivers loved – the EV1. Twelve years later, nothing of the sort seems to exist. What happened?

This is the question posed by the 2006 documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" The film celebrates the creation of the EV 1, a zero-emissions two-seater sedan that could run for 125 miles on a single charge and was enjoyed by the likes of Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson during its test run in California. More importantly though, this documentary raises the question of just why, after spending over a billion dollars on development, GM had its prototypes recalled from drivers and literally smashed to pieces in secluded locations. While the company claims to have pulled them from roads to ensure driver safety, many believe that its true motive was to appease big oil companies while attempting to keep anyone else from using their design. Helicopter footage of the crushed and well-hidden EV1 corpses in the movie (played to sentimental music) certainly seems to suggest that there is some truth to this "conspiracy theory."

GM's justification for discontinuing the project, according to company spokesman Dave Barthmuss, is that the car only appealed to a small number of drivers. He says that GM needs "extremely large numbers" to survive, and that after California repealed their zero-emissions standards, the company had no choice but to cut their losses on the project.

In class, we discussed the fact that in order to see widespread popularity, the electric car would need extensive infrastructure comparable to the vast number of locations at which fossil fuels are currently available. Oil companies and their buyers, however, simply aren't interested in cutting their profits by providing a cheaper fuel solution for drivers. Furthermore, other alternative fuels such as corn-based ethanol have failed due to their extreme inefficiency of production (in terms of energy) as well as the fact that they actually pollute the air more than do conventional fossil fuels.

After seeing an excerpt of the documentary in class, I am tempted say that electric cars are or should be the future and that all it will take is a society willing to pull it through. This may not be true, however, because there are other problems associated with battery-powered cars that could prove difficult to solve. For example, it could take hours to charge a battery at a filling station; for some of us Americans, the five minutes it takes to get gas can seem like an inconvenience as it is. One possible alternative, which I saw proposed on a Yahoo! Answers forum, would be to swap used batteries for fully charged ones at the station. This, however, does not take into account that any used battery will have a lower capacity than a new one based on how old it is or how many charge cycles it has been through. Also, different battery types may not be compatible between cars. Perhaps multiple batteries could be privately owned and alternated between charges, but such a task could prove daunting due to the sheer size and weight of the batteries involved. Even with all of these problems, though, I would feel better if I thought anyone was really working on solving them!

-JMA

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