"Who Killed Electric Car" director admits bias

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I don't know how many of you heard about the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car", but it was basically a GM bashfest over their failed Saturn EV1 electric car program. I found an interesting article this morning about that movie. The idea for the article came when the author was speaking to a Toyota exec who leaned across the table and animately criticized the movie, defending GM.

Quote:


"The movie 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' was terribly one-sided," Ernest Bastien, Toyota Motor Sales vice president for vehicle operations, said intensely. "It was not balanced at all."




The film director, upon being questioned, admitted the film's bias.

Quote:


"We let Toyota off the hook for how they subverted the program" to sell electric cars because GM had a higher profile, director Chris Paine told me over the phone Sunday.




The fact of the matter is that no one wanted to buy them. Toyota, in fact, heavily subsidized their RAV4 EV and sold a whopping 342 over a two year period. So GM's just getting picked on because of it's high profile. Sounds just like another high-profile computer software company a few years ago. Any thoughts?

Here's the article.
 
Of course there is bias...everyone has issues of bias. Looking at your location (Metro Detroit), the first thing I think is "this guy has an axe to grind against non-American cars." Is that fair? Of course not, but then I read your post and it reinforces my quick judgement about what your bias is.

As for the movie: It was interesting, but I knew going into it how the situation would be portrayed (duh, it's in the title "Who Killed..."). Why is the director's bias surprising to you? And who are you preaching to? The people most likely to buy into the electric car "myth" have gladly given Toyota and Honda their money for hybrids. Meanwhile, what has GM done besides miss another opportunity to capture market share? Am I supposed to feel somehow bad for them because they got the raw end in a phony documentary about a golf cart? Please.

It's really quite simple: If Detroit built the "everyday" cars people really wanted, we wouldn't be having this discussion. It's not a conspiracy...
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No real surprise. I guess it's "what were you expecting?" - anyone who takes these kind of movies as fact is a fool.

I mean when the BIG national press pretty much ignores a National Security advisor stealing top secret documents from the National Archive and later destroying said docs - you are surprised by a cheesy director being anti-USA business? What, exactly, were you expecting?
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I suppose you're all missing the point of my posting. I was hoping for this to go more in a direction of discussion about the electric car and why exactly it's not currently viable, given that we've just dispelled the myth that GM "killed" it. I also found it shocking that GM and Toyota sold as few as they did, especially given Toyota's VERY HEAVY subsidies described in the article. I'm sure GM did something similar.
 
Seems to me that one would need a conventional car for longer trips if they had an EV.

Unless one never made longer trips or didn't mind renting a car everytime they do.
 
Most people buy cars not for their typical daily use but for their expected or dreamed of use. Thus we have people driving 35 miles to work in stop and go traffic with a V-8 powered Suburban and feeling oh so good about it. They might be driving to work, but they could be taking five friends to the mountain for a ski holiday! Never mind that a small electric car would make sense for the daily grind and that a Suburban could be rented if indeed they did take gang to the mountains once this year
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People buy vehicles first and foremost for what the vehicle says about them. Even the modern Prius buyer is buying the car at least in part because it makes them look hip and concerned. The Prius is really the only hot selling hybrid and is also the only one which is instantly recognizeable as a hybrid.
 
Well this story actually has quite a bit of history to it. Back in the early 1930s most cities east of the Missisippi were in various stages of developing electric rail service, at first it was just localized, but then engineers soon realized that all could be linked. People in cities like Detroit and Chicago saw a lot of these INTER-URBAN rail lines and I suspect that land was more readily available in those areas vs. a New York or a Boston. Well the big guys at GM were developing diesels for buses and they also saw a major pool of buyers for their cars if they could just get rid of that "rail idea". So in all major cities they began setting up phoney companies to buy up all the electric traction lines they could. This is one reason we sit in traffic in most major cities as our rail service is inferior. Not all, but a sizable portion of drivers would like the capability of plugging in their cars at night albeit for limited use the next day. Don't count the Big Oil cos. out of this one either as most electricity is generated by coal. So I would say that GM has experience in "executing ideas" if you get the drift.
 
I think you are way off base. I think people by what they like if money is no object. If money is an object then they have to chose to either buy and drive what they can afford or they must lease to live above their means.

I hate all fwd car's period! If it is not a rwd or awd sports car I would just as soon not be any where near it. I like trucks and suv's and from the time I was about 12 until I was 29 years old I went four wheeling every weekend and dureing the week when I had a day off. SO why do I own a car a fwd car at that??????? Money!!!! Wifes workplace went out of business and we had just had twins wich left only my income and three little mouths to feed. It was not a problem with two incomes but on one it was a problem. Could not reduce any of or other expensences since kids need to eat and need to have diapers. So the 4X4 Dodge Dakota Quad Cap had to go. I still owed on it so I had to preety much trade it in on something cheaper. THe market was soft at the time so I could not sell it outright to a private indivudal as the interest rates on used vechile were much higher then OEM financeing. So I drive a Camry. I am sure their are plenty of people in this same boat with me!!I still see more Car's on the road then trucks or SUV's and I live about 6 miles from GM FLint Truck and Bus Plant.

The eletric car failed because it was not what the consumer wanted!!! Sure give them a 200-300WHP car that can go 600 miles on one charge and recharge in less then 10 minutes for the same cost or less then what they are driveing now and it would be a different story. Get rid of the costly to replace heavy batter packs andit might be a different story. The only way Toyota got around the price of battery packs was warrantieing them for 8 years.

To add insult to injury the only way an all eletric car makes sense is if the energy used to charge your battery pack comes from a non-poluteing renewable energy source. Sure it would work with a Nuke power blant but who want's one of those in their back yard? Just yesterday I think it was a tractor trailer turned over spilling 7000lbs of plutonium on the road. Sure they claimed nothing leaked out but again who wants that in their back yard????? If you use coal then all you have is pollution displacement. Sure noting is comeingout of tailpipe but it is still comeingout of a smoke stack miles away.

Look how long it takes to recharge on of those over priced golf carts!!!!
 
Not to mension there are still plenty of us gear heads that like to swap cam's,reflash ecm's,install larger injectors, forced induction and oxidizers like propane and nitrious oxide etc.....I also think that fuel cell's are a waste of time and money!!! Nothing like puting in gasoline so you can crack some hydrogen from it and waste the restof the fuels energy potenisl int he form of heat!!! Now useing nuke power plants to split hydrogen from sea water or fresh water makes plenty of sense especialy if the waste heat can be used to heat homes or business. But again it comes back to "not in my back yard" or nimby for short. I can only imagine how much less effiecent a fuel cell is as compared to simply burning the base fuel in a normal internal combustion engine. I can also only imagine how much it must cost to replace a fuel cell when it goes bad!!! You think catalytic converters are expensive!!

People who are truly interested in less pollution go for either Hybrids,small economy car's like a Carolla or Avieo etc.......

It would be too simple to force mass recyleing of waste cooking grease to make biodiesel localy and cheaply available. It would be too easy to give spirt distlers tax write off's plus additional revanue to use their excess production capacity to make ethanol for suplemental fuel use.Sugar can would make the most sense to grow specifiicaly for this purpose but that is another discussion.It would be too easy to mandate that all motor oil had to be recycled.Their are so many things that are not costly to implement that could save alot of waste!
 
Quote:


This is one reason we sit in traffic in most major cities as our rail service is inferior.




In the DC area, they spent a large portion of money on Metro that would have otherwise gone to highways.

I don't think rail will solve the traffic jams that now happen with regularity on weekends even on parts of I95 well away from DC.

That's simply the result of a highway infrastructure that has not kept up with a growing population.
 
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