Who Killed the Liberals' Common Sense?
by John Reit (May 31, 2006)

I love going to Apple's website and watch the trailers for upcoming films. The other day, I ran across one for a documentary that's opening June 30th called Who Killed the Electric Car? According to the trailer, GM came out with what would hopefully become a commercially viable electric car in 1996. But after a few years, it pretty much disappeared, never to be heard from again. No surprise, the trailer flat-out accuses the oil companies and George W. Bush (is there anything this man isn't guilty of in the minds of liberals?) of quashing the electric car in the interest of big oil profits. Bottom line: if not for oil companies and their powerful buddies like George W. Bush, we would all be driving electric cars today. If you go just by the trailer, it's a pretty cut and dry case.

Of course, I wasn't content to simply go by the trailer. What I found was more evidence of the elitist, self-righteous hypocrisy possessed by environmentalist liberals.

The reason this sparked my interest so much is because if there's one thing I truly love about liberals, it's there "smoking gun" approach to debate. Thomas Sowell calls it the, "Ah-ha!" method. Liberals are notorious for creating national-interest issues base on one big piece of evidence. Whenever they want to make conservatives or the free-market system seem corrupt, morally unjust, or evil, they throw out a "smoking gun" to the public, followed by a "we know how to fix things" campaign. America has a history of racism… we need affirmative action! Gas prices are too high… big oil is price gouging! Health care is too expensive… it's time for universal health care! So, when liberals present another smoking gun, I like to see how hot it really is. Like all of these other issues about which liberals trumpet, there was more to the story.

I went no further than GM's website, which offered a rather detailed account. The electric car that GM offered to the public in 1996 was called the EV1. It was available only in California. As far as performance, it was just as fast and powerful as a combustible-engine car. The EV1 was also not available for purchase, only for lease. The payments ranged from $299 - $574.

Those are the basics.

I then went to the film's website. The most interesting part of the site is the section called The Suspects. These are the people, industries, or things that, in the eyes of the filmmaker, might or might not be to blame for the demise of the electric car. Let's examine, shall we?

Suspect #1: Batteries - Not Guilty
More specifically, the batteries it took to power the EV1. Here are a few quotes from the site:

"The GM EV1 was commercially released in 1996 with an under performing lead-acid battery that powered the car only 60-80 miles to a charge. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Americans drive an average of 29 miles a day. But the range of the first generation of EV1s was still seen as inadequate and impractical for many drivers, and led analysts and the public to dismiss the technology. Two years later, the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery…was used in second-generation EV1s. With the NiMH battery, the EV1 was able to travel 100 - 120 miles per charge… A new generation of Lithium-ion batteries power electric cars in development today. They are twice as energy efficient as hydrogen fuel cells and can provide 250 to 300 miles per charge. Currently they are extremely expensive."

What this part of the site fails to explain is that the driver had to charge the EV1 for 6 to 8 hours in order to go 55 to 130 miles. Furthermore, the batteries - like today's hybrids - require replacement around 100,000 miles. The cost of these batteries ranged from $6,000 to $7,000.

What the filmmakers, and environmentalists in general, continually misunderstand is that for the average American, this is simply impractical - both in financial and "everyday life" terms. First of all, if we pay $10,000 more for an electric car, we expect reliability and convenience. We don't want to devote 1/3 of the day to charging our cars. Secondly, most of us simply can't just drop $6,000 for a battery. Let's say that the EV1 was available for sale. I buy one and ten years later, I decide I want to sell it. The car now has 95,000 miles on it. Any buyer who has done his research will certainly know that in addition to the money I will charge for the vehicle, he will have to eventually pay $6,000 for a new battery. Call me kooky, but that probably doesn't make for a motivated buyer.

And what about the statistic that states Americans drive an average of 29 miles a day? I'm sure that's true. I certainly drive less than that. And in that sense, it's nothing to have my car charge overnight while I sleep. But what about vacations? I was recently on one. I drove from Philadelphia, PA to Cape Cod, MA. The trip was about 380 miles. It took me about 7 hours to get there. Now, if I had an EV1, the trip would have taken me three days and cost me about $70 in food and $200 in motel rooms. There's certainly no way of getting around the fact that after about 100 miles I would have had to stop overnight as my car took 8 hours to charge - all so I could go another 100 miles and do it all over again. Fortunately, I was driving a gas-powered car and spent a total of $70 for gas and food during the trip.

Suspect #2: Big Oil - Guilty (Hey! There's a surprise!)

"Why did oil companies fight so hard to stop funding of public charging stations… The oil industry sells nearly 3 billion gallons of gasoline per week in the U.S. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, commuters alone spent $60 billion on gasoline in 2004. As the world demand for transportation fuel increases, a lack of alternatives keeps prices and profitability going up."

Wow. A company that doesn't want to go out of business! What a shock! When the electric train came along, I'm sure the coal producers just raised their hands and said, "Well. I guess we're licked. Let's close up shop and call it a life." Of course a company will fight for its survival - it has employees, pensions, shareholders, etc. to whom they're accountable. But once again, liberals fail to understand that the consumer always has the last word, not the companies. If the consumer wanted the car, there is little big oil could have done about it.

This part of the site also lists the profits of the three biggest oil companies. You'll notice how they ignore the fact that during this same time (1996 - 2000), oil companies were actually losing money and laying off workers.

Suspect #3: Car Guys - Guilty

"Even as the automakers launched their EV programs, they undermined their success every step of the way. Why… Electric cars are a threat to the profitability of the conventional gas-powered auto industry. GM said that it spent more than $1 billion to market and develop the EV1. Not only would a successful electric car program cannibalize sales of conventional cars, but the electric car costs the auto industry in other ways: lacking an engine, it saves the driver the cost of replacement parts, motor oil, filters, and spark plugs."

Well, if the consumer had found the electric car more efficient and reliable, they certainly wouldn't have had to worry about it cannibalizing their gas-powered cars, now would they? This is the same thing as saying that record companies suppressed the compact disc because it was cannibalizing its vinyl sales.

Here's the scoop geniuses… any company that has anyone with half a brain working for it realizes that it has to change with the technology the consumer wants, or another company will gladly come along and provide it for them. Nissan, Honda, Toyota, and every other car company would have come along after the EV1 with their own electric cars if not for one thing - the consumer didn't want it!

Suspect #4: Government - Guilty (another shocker)

I won't offer a quote here, because honestly, I could quote the whole thing. It's pretty much another "while Reagan and Bush installed policies to choke us all on gas, Carter and Clinton tried to save us and the planet" statement.

I've never been one to counter the whole Bush-big oil connection. I'm sure there is one. My response to it is, "so what?" Before he was President, George W. Bush was a businessman. And his business was oil. In that business he made friends and associates. Shall we go over the list of people Clinton helped out and/or pardoned while he was in office? Should we point out that the Clinton administration gave Haliburton a no-bid contract during the Bosnian conflict? Show me a politician that leaves his associations behind when he walks into Washington, and then we'll talk about Bush's morality. Mind you - I'm not condoning the ethics of politicians at all. But if the filmmakers are going to throw stones, let's hit them all - including Clinton.

By the way, the one thing they don't say in this section - the demise of the EV1 was well established while Clinton was in office and big oil was financially weak. If anything, the electric car was in a great position to win over the public… if it just wasn't for that darn impracticality thing.

Suspect #5: The California Air Resource Board - Guilty

"While the California Air Resource Board's leadership galvanized the development of the electric vehicle, CARB failed to steer the ZEV (Zero Emissions Vehicles) initiative to success. Beset by industry and political pressure, CARB ultimately let the auto and oil industries off the hook by eliminating electrical vehicle production from the mandate."

Industry and political pressure? How about the fact that the average consumer couldn't afford the EV1? It's hard to have a Zero Emission Vehicles initiative when no one can afford a vehicle that expels zero emissions. Why not just pass a Zero CO2 initiative and tell people they're no longer allowed to exhale?

Suspect #6: The Hydrogen Fuel Cell - Guilty

"The hydrogen fuel cell is attractive to the oil and auto industries because most hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. Even if hydrogen were made from renewable electricity, it would still be delivered as a fuel-instead of via an electric utility."

This is where I get really worried. When it's their alternative or nothing at all, they lose a lot of credibility. If it's the environment and dependence on oil they're trying to solve, they should probably be happy there's so much attention being paid to the hydrogen fuel cell.

People didn't like the electric car. Get over it.

Suspect #7: The Consumer - Guilty

"While consumers failed to embrace the electric vehicle in the era of cheap gas and big SUVs, auto producers and opinion makers like the press did little to convince them otherwise."

Translation - you're all a bunch of mindless sheep who don't know what's good for you. You'll gladly do whatever the automakers and big oil tells you.

Once again, the limousine liberals and Hollywood elite want to force you to live by their enlightened standards. Even though it's your money and you have to live with the car for the next several years, that's completely irrelevant. You have no justification for refusing to buy what you cannot afford! If you had the morals and intellect equal to these filmmakers, Martin Sheen, Ed Begley Jr. and so on, you would drive the EV1 regardless of your financial status.

It simply goes to prove my theory that you can only spend so much time in an ivory tower before you forget how those below you actually live. It's easy to live in Utopia when money is no object. But average Americans have to live in the real world.

There's much more to the site that I could go on about. The Timeline, for instance, blames Henry Ford's assembly line system and the Model T for the first demise of the electric car - once again ignoring that the electric car then, as it is now, was to expensive for the average consumer. If these folks had an iota of economic sense, they would praise Ford for making the automobile affordable to all, which allowed society to prosper the way it did.

I probably won't waste the $9 and see the movie. But I recommend going to the site and checking it out yourself. See if the contradictions are as glaringly obvious to you as they are to me. It should be just one more reminder of the economic wasteland our country will become should liberal philosophy completely usurp our Constitution.