Dovetailing nicely with Al Gore's cautionary "An Inconvenient Truth", this is another solid documentary, this one playing out a bit like a detective story. Writer/director Chris Paine focuses on the birth and mysterious death of General Motors' pollution-free EV1 battery-electric car. What spurred its 1996 introduction was the 1990 Zero Emissions Vehicle Act (ZEV), which mandated that ten-percent of all new vehicles sold by 2003 must be completely emissions-free. The bulk of the 2006 film deals with GM's ambivalence and subsequent loss of interest in making the EV1 and concurrently, how the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the state's "clean air" agency, reversed their position on the ZEV legislation after receiving pressure from the major auto manufacturers, the oil industry and the Bush administration. Once the mandate was lifted, GM and its competitors like Ford wasted little time in recalling the electric cars on the market, all leased since outright ownership was not an option.
Paine paces the film well and regales in showing us the conspiratorial elements of the electric car's demise, wherein figure heads such as CARB chairman Alan Lloyd and GM's Dave Barthmuss come across as terse and self-protective. There are also extensive interviews with the engineers and technicians behind the car's invention, the most passionate spokesperson being Chelsea Sexton, who led the initial marketing effort for the EV1 and subsequently became a Norma Rae-like figure in the cause. Where the film gets a bit too glib is in the inclusion of a number of green-friendly celebrities who supported the cause, some even getting arrested for their participation in a Mexican stand-off with GM on the pending demolition of the last 78 EV1's.
Like a good Agatha Christie mystery, Paine itemizes the suspected murderers- consumers who were ambivalent and resistant about the new technology, the oil and car companies, the government, the CARB - and all are deemed guilty except the batteries themselves. The film also includes strong criticism leveled against hydrogen as a possible alternative energy source, epitomized by an amusing clip of Bush being shown how to fill up a hydrogen-fueled vehicle, but there is also a guarded note of optimism with the plug-in hybrid, seen as a more viable path of development. As one of the most valuable extras in the DVD, there is a fifteen-minute short, "Jump-Starting the Future", which goes deeper into these alternatives. Also on the DVD are fifteen minutes of deleted scenes, all understandably excised, and a rather disposable music video by the band Meeky Rose, who performed the main theme for the film.
Paine paces the film well and regales in showing us the conspiratorial elements of the electric car's demise, wherein figure heads such as CARB chairman Alan Lloyd and GM's Dave Barthmuss come across as terse and self-protective. There are also extensive interviews with the engineers and technicians behind the car's invention, the most passionate spokesperson being Chelsea Sexton, who led the initial marketing effort for the EV1 and subsequently became a Norma Rae-like figure in the cause. Where the film gets a bit too glib is in the inclusion of a number of green-friendly celebrities who supported the cause, some even getting arrested for their participation in a Mexican stand-off with GM on the pending demolition of the last 78 EV1's.
Like a good Agatha Christie mystery, Paine itemizes the suspected murderers- consumers who were ambivalent and resistant about the new technology, the oil and car companies, the government, the CARB - and all are deemed guilty except the batteries themselves. The film also includes strong criticism leveled against hydrogen as a possible alternative energy source, epitomized by an amusing clip of Bush being shown how to fill up a hydrogen-fueled vehicle, but there is also a guarded note of optimism with the plug-in hybrid, seen as a more viable path of development. As one of the most valuable extras in the DVD, there is a fifteen-minute short, "Jump-Starting the Future", which goes deeper into these alternatives. Also on the DVD are fifteen minutes of deleted scenes, all understandably excised, and a rather disposable music video by the band Meeky Rose, who performed the main theme for the film.