Rosen, Christine M

            Relatively biased, this documentary film is affected most by its trite endeavor to humanize the electric vehicle, including an asinine mock funeral held by clamorous supporters and the sad visit by former General Motors employees to a car museum to view one of the company’s “babies” (Kirsch 424). Such overindulgent sappiness, however, cannot obfuscate the inescapable feeling left by the documentary that with respect to buck passing regarding the prevalence of inefficient cars on American roads, every stakeholder was partially to blame, including the citizens. The past few years have witnessed the development of a theory that hinged on the idea that oil companies, in conjunction with automakers conspired with one another in the mid-1990s, to destroy the electric car; as a result, the entire humanity has been relegated to environmental doom.

            While the environmental concern from such claims may be genuine, the remainder of the theory does not hold up upon closer examination. Honda Motors and Toyota Motors both developed electric vehicles in the 1990s. At the time, the economy of Japan was stuck in depression and the government, apprehensive of competition from neighboring Asian tigers, endeavored hard to find a salable export. Instead of collaborating with the government, as had been the case in the past, the two giant Japanese automakers colluded with their rivals such as Ford and GM, to assist oil companies. This conspiracy had the car manufactures, led by General Motors, to flaunt reasons why the electric vehicle had no market. Among the reasons offered for lack of a market was the vehicle’s inadequate mileage range per charge. Consequently, GM recalled all of its EV1.

            The theory, as offered by this documentary, has some inherent inconsistencies. Toyota overtook General Motors as the world’s largest automaker because of its production of the Prius model, which is a hybrid model. To believe the conspiracy as elaborated by Paine, one would imagine that Toyota’s Prius was just a disguise to mask the real debate. This is, however, not the case. Statistics indicate that the sales of the electric cars were not impressive (Rosen 363). The customers had a lot of curiosity in the cars, but very few purchased them. The Rav4 EV had a range of 100 miles per charge, which was not adequate for most customers. In addition, the batteries used in the electric cars were not only difficult to manufacture but costly too.

Criticism
Rosen, Christine M