Preview Review: Who Killed the Electric Car?

Reviewed by- John Hang

Remember as a child, watching Saturday morning cartoons, in your P Js, cross-legged, holding onto your blanket and your pet chicken Bangkok…okay, that last part might have just been me…but remember those Power Wheels commercials? Well, several years ago engineers made a grown-up version of them and now they are all gone. Director Chris Paine gives you the tragic story of the electric car.
Who Killed the Electric car? Is a documentary that investigates the birth and death of the electric car, as well as the role of renewable energy and sustainable living in the future.

STORY: we are starting to see a lot more environmental documentaries circulate, a sign there is a strong interest and concern of what is happening. The story of the electric car is a tragic one, the reality of our government, car manufactures, oil companies, and consumers failing to support a vehicle with zero omission of gases. We all saw those re-chargeable stations at convenient stores, yet there was not a strong enough demand at the time to convince manufactures, supposedly, and now we’re experiencing the retribution of global warming. This documentary shines light on exactly how the electric car was killed and why all electric cars were destroyed.

STYLE: clever graphics and animation has become a staple in documentaries, thereby causing their budgets to sky-rocket. There is also a good amount of footage depicting the environment and what our factories are doing to our o-zone. The film builds to this great scene of a news piece by PBS that visited a recycling center and the reporter notices an entire lot of brand new vehicles in the lot. Well the recycling manager admits to his shock as well, for these were brand new electric cars that were tagged to be destroyed immediately. The two puzzled looks from the men were enough to make me understand what kind of travesty this image was.

SUMMARY: is this film biased? Yes. Are both sides properly represented? Probably not. But consider this documentary more as a debate environmentalist are making to stake their claim your government does not care enough about our health. The electric car provided a vision of the future, the equivalent in my mind to a Lego car, but it wasn’t given a chance to succeed. Hybrids and Hydrogen gas stations might be the future, but electric cars was an alternative to where oil was not dependent, and now it is just part of car history.