Who Killed the Electric Car? (Answer: GM, etc.)

"'Who Killed the Electric Car?' makes a compelling case that the current discussion of hydrogen cell technology, as the successor to the internal combustion engine, is a way of keeping America hooked on gasoline for at least 20 more years. The hydrogen cell is decades away, while the electric car is close to being practical."
-Mick LaSalle, SF Chronicle (7/7/06)

On Friday night I went to see the Chris Paine documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" It is a great companion film to Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." I would say both are required viewing if you care about issues such as global warming or corporate greed. Of course we are all guilty (at least most of us) in the department of driving gas-powered cars and adding CO2 to the atmosphere. One statistic in the film is that every gallon of gasoline burned by a car engine adds 15 lbs. of CO2 into the air. The tragedy of the electric vehicle story is that we in the U.S. could be so much farther along now than we are. As it is, the Japanese hybrids are selling like mad and GM and the other American automakers who've been pushing things like the HUMMER (for god's sakes) are now looking like idiots (and losing money, which is apparently all they really care about). It is hard not to leave the theater pissed off, let's just put it that way!

Link