"Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to berieve the loss of something dear to us." "We are here today to say goodbye to a special friend, to say goodbye to an idea." "Some might say that to be here gathered today to mourn the loss of a car would be going too far." "In 1996, electric cars began to appear on roads all over California." "They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline." "Ten years later, these futuristic cars were almost entirely gone." "What happened?" "Why should we be haunted by the ghost of the electric car?" "This wasn't the first time the electric car was killed." "One hundred years ago, there were more electrics on the road than there were gas cars." "For many people electric cars were the car of choice." "They were quiet an smooth, and could be charged at home." "Gas cars by comparison required cranking and produced exhaust." "I'm so old I remember electric cars, when they were around in the beginning." "I would've been about six years old on the way to the symphony in that darling little electric car." "They were very quiet, and it had beveled glass windows." "It was almost like sitting inside a huge lamp." "What happened?" "Why did the gas car win over the electric car?" "As the 20th century gathered speed, the electric car lost momentum." "Automatic starters, cheaper oil and mass production gave the edge to the gasoline car." "By 1920, the internal combustion engine had won the race for control of the roads." "And the modern automobile age was born." "Of the hundreds of millions of cars built in the 20th century, almost none were electric." "They were sleek." "They were fast." "And they gave Americans the open road." "But as time went on, their number one flaw became apparent." "Smog." "California has the worst air quality in the nation." "And it impacts some of our largest population centers." "In my district, we have what is called the "black cloud of death"" "that hangs over the port areas and the areas surrounding the ports." "We are seeing some tremendously debilitating effects:" "asthma rates, cancer rates, lung development in children, children not being allowed to play outside." "In 1989, a study found that one out of four 15 to 25 year-olds in Los Angeles county had severe lung lesions and chronic respiratory disease." "In 1990, there were 41 stage one smog alerts." "No matter what kind of car we drive, every gallon of gas we burn, adds 19 pounds of carbon dioxide to the air." "The more gas we burn, the more CO2 we create." "If you don't do something with that CO2, if you don't sequester it it's going up into the atmosphere and CO2 is a global warming gas." "I believe the problems of global warming will be far greater than the problems of social security" "or even the problems of war on terrorism." "We've got the equivalent of a nuclear time bomb on our hand, with global warming." "If lung disease from air pollution is unimportant, if all those things don't count, we're going to be in bad trouble." "And there's a public health crisis." "But we have to have incentives and we have to have alternatives." "Car companies experimented with alternatives over the years, but none of them ever seem to make it out of the proving grounds." "I remember, I was the chairman of the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and we were promoting the electric car back in the late 70's." "I had even planned a race from Gatlinburg, Tennessee to Nashville between Paul Newman and Robert Redford." "And I had it all lined up, and then I realised that we'd get a lot of national publicity, but there were no cars in the showrooms." "It would take a different kind of race to make the electric car the car of the future." "The Sunraycer was a solar-powered vehicle that was developed here, at AeroVironment, for the purpose of winning a race." "In 1987, GM won the World Solar Challenge race in Australia with a one-of-a-kind solar-powered electric vehicle, the Sunraycer." "Emboldened by their success, GM C. E. O. Roger Smith challenged the same design team to build a prototype for a practical electric car." "If we were to go full speed ahead with electric cars the electronics had to be good enough in order to warrant that concept, and that's where the work of Alan Cocconi came in." "You've built the prototype for this in your garage?" "Yes." "Well, my garage isn't quite the average garage, it's a pretty good machine shop and electronics lab." "But yes, I've built it there." "It's like a three-channel stereo amplifier." "It provides the right size sinus waves at right frequency to drive the motor for all the different driving conditions." "So it's a 100 000 watt stereo amplifier." "Alan's breakthrough power system helped create an electric car unlike any that had ever been driven before." "They've kept this car also a secret, much better than any Detroit secret because it was all developed out here in California." "So it truly was a surprise when it was introduced to Los Angeles auto show." "This is going to represent a great step forward for people in terms of commuting to work, from work if you don't have to go more than 120 miles a day." "Other than the jokes that we made about the wisdom of calling a vehicle the Impact" "it was very impressive, it was very high-tech and it had an interesting premise that we've got this Corvette electric-type car, two-seater, slick styling, and that we can make a business out of it." "It was interesting." "Program manager called me and said:" ""Would you like to be on the electric vehicle program? "" ""That's fine." "What do you want me to do? "" "And he said: "Develop demand for electric vehicles worldwide. "" "I said: "Do you have any instructions? "" "He took a blank piece of paper, shoved it in front of me and said:" ""No instructions." "You go figure it out. " At that point I joined the program." "It got a lot of interest flowing in the industry, but it did something else." "It caught the attention of the California Air Resources Board." "California's Air Resources Board, or CARB as it was known, saw the electric car as an opportunity to solve another problem." "Since GM had already announced that they were going to produce an electric vehicle before we even adopted the mandate, the electric vehicle technology became the technology of greatest promise." "Knowing a modern electric car was now possible," "California regulators took a bold and unprecedented step." "They passed the Zero Emissions Vehicle mandate." "The mandate was simple." "If automakers wanted to continue to sell cars in California, some of those cars would have to be vehicles with no exhaust." "They've decided to ramp it up." "They said 2% in 1998, 5% in 2001 and 10% in 2003." "For the car companies there were only two options;" "Comply with the law or fight it." "In the end, they would do both." "The electric car is here." "The EV1 from General Motors." "The Impact prototype became the EV1, the first modern electric production car from a major US car company in nearly a century." "GM chose its Saturn division to market it in California and Arizona." "I'd bought my first Saturn at 17, and they'd said;" ""Do you want to come work here? "" "I thought it would be a good college job," "I'll put myself through college this way." "It turned out I loved the cars more than what I was studying, and three years later they announced the EV1 program and I jumped on it." "There were the 13 of us, most of whom were mid-twenties, unattached, single, no kids - willing to do anything for a little money." "We all handled a particular geographic region." "Mine started as Los Angeles, and I've worked with everybody:" "from engineers and students to celebrities." "I say, I say, I say Alexandra !" "I have a picture of myself... just hearing the Saturn song..." "Just being so happy!" "I had one of those early EV1's, and I used it here in the capital." "I love the car." "It's everything Americans want in a car." "They're cool, fast, sexy." "I got in the car and felt like..." "It was fairly reasonably priced." "It was between 250 $ and 500 $ a month." "I haven't tried accelerating too much, because there is too many cops around." "I'm afraid I'll get a ticket, I'll be too excited." "Believe it or not, that sucker goes." "It will take you down the Pacific Coast Highway so fast you could get a ticket." "I did kind of feel like Batman..." "And the way it takes off out of the cave." "You know, I have this gate that opens..." "You'd get inside, and the console was really near you, and the lighting is beautiful." "It was quiet." "The car was so fast it looked like it would outrun its own shadow." "It's an awesome car to drive." "It was the crust of a wave that we'd thought was coming in." "It was going to change the way everybody travels." "Other car companies began to comply, often with conversions of gas cars but with many of the same advantages of the EV1." "I'm not mechanical at all but I love dealing wih my electric car, because it's so easy." "I plug it in at night and when I need to drive it I unplug and drive it away." "They're for people who love the environment." "I said they're for people who love cars." "They're for people who have to go somewhere." "This is amazing." "What you do with this electric car is, you put the key in," " and you turn it." " Wow." "And there's this thing on the floor called the pedal." "The exciting thing about this is that the cost of operating a car is the same as if you're driving a typical gasoline car." "But the gasoline only costs 60 cents a gallon." "Going to the gas station is a hassle, believe it or not." "Plugging a car in is not." "The battery, that you charge at home, gets between 70 and 80 miles per charge, which for me is more than all the driving that I need to do in the course of a day." "People started seeing the cars on the road and getting a better understanding of what they could do." "Friends and neighbors and relatives are saying;" ""Hey, that's a neat idea." "I should get one of those. "" "And we started seeing the momentum building for this, and the waiting lists being created for these cars." " Cut two." " Cut two." "I go online to look for other Toyota RAV4's and I see Toyota RAV4 EV." "And wow!" "My whole world opened up." "It's this electric vehicle." "It goes 100 miles to a charge, blablabla..." "I was like "I didn't know this existed. "" ""How come I don't know about this?" "Have you seen this on tv? "" "When I first tried to buy the Honda EV Plus," "I drove in it and said:" ""Hey, this is a great car. "" "The person who was trying to sell it to us was dumbfounded." "He didn't know what to do." "He'd never leased one before." "Didn't know how to do it, and it took me six weeks of negotiations before I was able to get the car from their hands." "There's nothing like driving a car where you realise, as you sit in the traffic there's no pollution coming out of your tailpipe." "It's just the battery sound." "By driving an electric car, what are you sparing us from?" "I'm saving America Dave, that's what I'm doing." "I am saving America by driving an electric car." "Not everyone was sure that electric cars would save Ameica." "Even as GM rolled out its first batch of EV1's, there were skeptics." "Consumer acceptance and understanding has been a key issue in all of this." "And what we discovered is that people are very cautious about the electric car." "I would consider it, but I haven't done enough research," "I don't know if they're going to be strong, big and dependable." "I have to know where do I have to go to recharge it, what do I have to do for the battery..." "People don't want a mini, tiny car that has 15 inch wheels." "How's he gonna fix that up and go around town and parade it?" "While some consumers expressed skepticism about electric cars," "California was pressured to drop the mandate." "A group called "Californians against utility company abuse"" "fought a small utility surcharge to build charging stations." "They would go to local city council meetings and say:" ""You don't want to put an electric vehicle charging station there." ""That's a waste of taxpayer money. "" "They had this list of supporters." "Companies like Trader Joe's, and others for which you'd say" ""Why would they support something like this? "" "So the EV drivers got together and started writing letters to some of these people that were listed on their web site." "as being supporters, and said "Do you realise what you're supporting here? "" "And they got all these names removed from the list." "Further investigation revealed that these groups were consumer organizations in name only funded almost exclusively by the oil industry." "Oil companies also paid for editorials in national publications." "They even argued that the environmental benefits of EV's were dubious." "With electric vehicles we're going to have this shift of energy away from oil." "And if we shift it to coal, there are some environmental problems that are just very disconcerting." "Right now, in the United States, we're 55 percent coal." "If you run the numbers with standard coal power plants, you don't end up with a better environmental performance, but with a longer tailpipe." "There have been numerous studies conducted by the California Energy Commission, that clearly show that electric drive is substantially more efficient and less polluting, even if you get your electricity from coal plants." "But the arguments against electrics didn't stop there." "They even made the ridiculous argument that there was an environmental justice issue involved, because they said only rich people could buy electric cars." "Well, the air doesn't know a boundary between Brentwood and south L. A." "Car companies began to argue that the mandate was too strict." "We had to help with the regulations." "The regulatory people knew nothing about this stuff, and we began to get the eerie feeling that we were going over a cliff." "It wasn't going to be possible." "California was faced with the prospect of "What do you do" ""... if the car companies don't comply? "" "So rather than do brinksmanship about what would happen if they didn't comply and stick with it, they started negotiating, a certain flexibility in the mandate." "California compromised with the automakers adopting a memorandum of agreement." "One of the agreements with the state was that the automakers would build and market electric vehicles in accordance with demand." "If they didn't want to build more of them, the car companies would have to make the case that there was no demand." "The person will go unnamed, but we were having a lunch in the executive dining room at the GM tech center one day." "Just the two of us, and he leans over to me and says:" ""Dabels, you know something?" "You are my worst enemy. "" "I asked why, and he said:" ""I'm out there lobbying to show that there's no demand for electric vehicles," ""and you're out there proving me wrong. "" "We would sit down with Hal Riney or with executives from GM and discuss how fast, how far, how much." "These were the three questions we were getting." ""Please put it in the advertising." "It's not rocket science. "" "And they would go back and do the exact opposite." "We never saw a tv ad with an electric car scampering up the side of a hill with a good looking man or woman draped around it." "That's the way they sell cars." "How does it go without gas and air?" "How does it go without sparks and explosions?" "How does it go without gears or transmissions?" "How does it go, you ask yourself?" "And then, you will ask;" "How did we go so long without it?" "The electric car." "It isn't coming, it's here." "What was the objective of these advertisements?" "Was it to entice consumers or to scare them away?" "Our goal at GM was to make the full functioning, battery electric vehicle a commercially viable business opportunity for General Motors." "GM spokesman, Dave Barthmuss, has worked for GM for nearly ten years." "We spent in excess of one billion dollars to drive this market." "That means award-winning advertising, developing the vehicle, developing the recharging infrastructure." "In a four-year timeframe, from roughly 1996 to 2000, we were able to lease 800 EV1's." "We started this waiting list in order to prove demand to GM, but no matter how many people we got on that list, that was never considered enough demand." "Everything was anecdotal to GM." "We have heard about these long waiting lists, and frankly, we did have a list of roughly 4000 people that raised their hands and said:" ""I would be interested in getting a new EV1" ""and being an EV1 lessee. "" "We contacted each of those folks and we riddled that list down." "And when we got down to a point when we were able to have somebody sign on the dotted line, that list from 4000 people shrunk to about 50." "Only recently did they finally admit there actually was a waiting list and tried to explain it in the way of;" ""By the time we explained all the limitations of the car to them only 50 would sign up. "" "If you sincerely want to market a product, you don't start out by describing the limitations of the product." "Tom Everhart is president emeritus at Caltech." "He served on GM's board of directors for 13 years." "I do not think General Motors tried hard to get the electric cars out rapidly." "Whether the C. E. O. of General Motors understood that, I don't know." "We had to ask permission of who everyone to give a car to, and by the end we were low on cars, we had to write case statements." "We tried to put the cars in hands of celebrities, because they were the only ones that stood a chance of getting the car." "The 3rd grade science teacher didn't stand a chance." "I had to write a resume for Mel Gibson, and what he'd done and accomplished, because the people I was talking to didn't believe that he warranted a car." "I was wondering: "Why do I have to fill this out? "" "You had to tell them where your birthmarks were." "I mean it was everything." ""Have you recently had a proctoscope inserted into your... "" ""Well, no. "" "You had to get really specific about a whole bunch of things." "Consumers wanted it, but they regarded it as a limited vehicle and they expected to pay a limited price for it." "And there's nothing irrational about the consumer that said that to us." "That's a perfectly reasonable statement." ""You're giving me a vehicle that does less, I wanna pay less. "" "Okay." "But unfortunately, I couldn't make it for less." "They argue things like money and that they're too expensive to build, yet they're building four a day." "They were very hand built cars, with specialized components." "And had they mass-marketed them, they of course would have come down." "As car companies made the case there was no demand electric vehicle advocates thought they had a sympathetic ear with the appointment of environmental scientist, doctor Alan Lloyd as chairman of the California Air Resources Board." "First time I presided over that," "I felt that the car companies weren't making significant effort, so i felt: "Flog them harder." "Flog them often." "They need to do better. "" "For the regulation - we felt it needed to be changed drastically." "And there was some movement that way, but it didn't go away." "While the car companies fought the mandate in Sacramento," "GM quietly closed its EV1 assembly line and began laying off its sales force." "All of a sudden, we were not only taken off the project, but taken out of the company." "They started with the ones with the most... the biggest waiting lists, and the most customers." "The primary areas were the ones that they dismantled first." "And so, at the end of 2001, that was it in terms of my employment with General Motors." "Studying general Motors practices over the years, and I don't speak for the engineers and scientists who would really have liked to have done a better job with motor vehicle technology, but the executives at the top, their motto seemed to have been:" ""Going backwards into the future. "" "And that's what they've been doing for decades." "As a veteran consumer advocate, Ralph Nader used grassroots campaigns to make cars safer and more fuel efficient." "He's familiar with the tactics used by the car industry to resist change." "There are all kinds of ways to take and bring politicians to their knees." "Once the car companies get a long delay time, then they go to work, eroding, eroding." "And than when the deadline is approaching they say they can't do it and there are going to be terrible consequences." "Automakers took the fight to a new level." "They sued California's Air Resources Board." "GM led the lawsuit, soon joined by Chrysler and several auto dealerships." "As California withered under the pressure, the carmakers found a powerful new ally," "the federal government." "Shortly after joining the suit, the Bush administration made another announcement." "Tonight, I'm proposing 1. 2 billion dollars in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles." "The federal government joined the car and oil industries to embrace a new clean car of the future." "With more than a billion federal dollars up for grabs, over the next few years, the campaign for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles began to sway California." "Hello there and welcome to the California Fuel Cell Partnership where we're fuelling the future in a new and enviromentally friendly way." "Automakers, energy and technology providers, along with government agencies are voluntarily working together to commercialize the fuel cell for cars and buses." "Soon you may see some of these cars cruising through your very own neighborhood." "We will not just dream about the hydrogen fuelling stations." "We will not just dream about the hydrogen cars." "We will build it." "The hydrogen Hummer is not a production vehicle, it's a concept vehicle." "It's a way for governor Schwarzenegger to have a property at various events that ge goes to when he unveils a new hydrogen refuelling station." "At LAX for example." "I am going to encourage the building of a hydrogen highway to take us to the environmental future." "While hydrogen fuel cells offered an exciting alternative sometime in the future what would happen to the technology of today?" "What would happen to the electric car?" "It all came down to a decisive meeting at California's Air Resources Board." "Citizens and industry alike testified as CARB prepared to vote on the fate of the electric car." "I'd also like to thank all the other stakeholders, particularly also, the auto industry who is going to have a major impact here." "I like the fact that hydrogen might be in a position to displace the petroleum products." "I share your optimism on fuel cells, just not to the extent." "I think it's a bait and switch strategy." "I hope I'm wrong." "I'm concerned that we've picked numbers that are based entirely on fuel cells." "What if fuel cells don't work?" "It seems that most of the recent changes to the mandate have been designed to ease the burden on the automakers." "You're part of the environmental protection agency, not the corporate profit protection agency." "I think that we've been a contributor to this marketplace to..." "I agree." "But remember there are many of you." "We're not giving more time to the auto manufacturers." "Lou Browning had the job to present the report, and he'd been promised ten minutes." " One of the things we've found is..." " Dr Browning," "I would appreciate if you could summarize this in three minutes." "Okay, I thought I had ten, but..." "Alan Lloyd cut him off, whereas he had given the automakers unlimited time earlier in the day." "The improvements we need in fuel cells are mainly to get the cost down." "In addition, we have recently certified and introduced the Honda FCX fuel cell vehicle." "Largely this work has been pushed forward through the California Fuel Cell Partnership which has been very valuable in pulling together the diverse interests." "Any new information on batteries that didn't mesh with overall conclusions was just shut out very fast by Alan Lloyd." "Let's get it clear." "I'm not trying to show any bias or anything here." "There were 80 people who came to speak for electric cars, and only two industry representatives on the side to kill the mandate." "We have four people out of 78 who are supporting this proposal." "How did we end up with this?" "This is a tough, tough program." "It's a revolutionary program." "It pushes the automakers hard." "And they don't like it, and they push back hard." "As you deliberate today on the fate of this program," "I urge you to summon all of your political courage to make the hard choices that you know you need to make on this program." "Because when it comes to protecting the health of the people of California, there are simply no more easy choices to make." "I saw this as losing a wonderful opportunity that we have really invested a great deal in the infrastructure, in the technology..." "It was like the rug was pulled out." "They gave it away." "And to me that is just sad." "It's a sad commentary on the way our society and our system in the United States works." "When GM introduced the EV1," "California was setting the toughest auto pollution standards in the nation." "10% of all cars sold here this year were to be zero emission vehicles." "But California dropped those standards after being sued by automakers." "A lot of the vehicles, the Honda vehicles, the General Motors vehicles, were all leased, and nobody had the option to buy." "So the automakers took advantage of that and pulled all the cars off the road." "They weren't willing to let people take the cars and actually drive them and keep driving them like normal cars." "When I noticed that GM was losing interest was when I wanted to re-lease my car, and they wouldn't let me." "I've never had a product I've had to beg and fight and cajole and persist so much to get." "And then I had to try and beg and fight and find any way possible to try and keep." " They didn't give you the option..." " They didn't give you an option to buy." "They said: "Thank you for leasing the car." "Goodbye." "That's it. "" ""Turn it in by such and such a date, or you're going to be held liable. "" "GM had very quietly gone about taking cars back, without anybody saying very much other than some of the drivers that complained having their cars taken away but never in a big, organized fashion." "They had no choice but to turn them in or face legal consequences of stealing a car." "To my knowledge all the cars were turned in because people had too much to lose." "To this day, the automakers have fought anyone understanding how much demand there was, and how much demand that there is." "So we decided we were going to fight them in whatever way we could, and we became organized." "Across California drivers held protests to save electric cars." ""... it turned my head around about electric cars. "" ""And it broke me of my addiction to oil. "" "Unable to change policy, activists staged a funeral to raise public awareness." "It was the same month as the first stage 1 smog alert in southern California in five years." "I was an EV1 driver, still am, from 1998 until December of this year, when GM will have to pry it out of my charger's dead cold hands." "What the detractors and the critics of electric vehicles have been saying for years is true." "The electric vehicle is not for everybody." "Given the limited range, it can only meet the needs of 90% of the population." "People used to ask me:" ""Why do you do what you do? "" "And I say, especially after my son had told them:" ""I figure if I do my job well enough," ""my son will never know a time before there were electric cars on the road. "" "And he rode in an EV1 on the way over here, and he said:" ""I wish we could keep the EV1 for a long time. "" "And all I could say was: "Me too. "" "By the summer of 2004, there was only a single EV1 left in private hands in southern California." "Today is D-day." "Today is the end." "GM did do it right." "They did create a great, great car." "It's well engineered, it's well designed, and it's enjoyable to drive." "I've never seen a company be so canniballistic about its own product before." "It's such an odd experience." "What makes that car go?" " We press this button." "It's an electric car like daddy's." "Hey, you got here just in time." "I know." "I see that." "It's so sad." "This is the EV specialist I was talking about, who gave me her car." "It's really sad, heartbroken." "Are you kidding me?" "They are my babies, every one of them." "A lot of human potential just drove off." " The fight continues." " It does." "With no more electric cars on the road," "General Motors now had possession of their entire EV1 fleet." "Pourquoi vouloir toutes les récupérer ?" "Why did they want them back?" "What were they going to do with these cars?" "We have discovered 78 EV1's parked in the back parking lot of a facility that GM owns in Burbank." "Taking off the cars that were on the road, that were running fine..." "Just let those people drive those cars until they can't drive them anymore." " Where are you guys from?" " We're members of the EV1 club, and we want to come and take a look at our cars." "I know they are being mothballed here." "I have no authorization for you guys to come back there and look at the cars." " Can we just go and..." " No." "There were no clues as to where the cars were going, until a rumor surfaced on the Internet." "We had the understanding, through back channels that these vehicles were about to be taken to the Arizona proving grounds." "Many EV1's had apparently been trucked out of state to GM's vast proving grounds in Mesa, Arizona." "...so large, it has the track denoted on it..." "The location was off-limits to the public, and there was no way of knowing where the EV1's might be." "We're flying over GM." "There they are." "Wow." "We flew over General Motors, and looking down, we could see, right next to the racetrack where the EV1 was first tested, we saw" "I don't know, maybe 50 EV1's crushed and put on top of semi-flatbeds, right next to the yellow crusher." "General Motors is almost finished off i think." "I imagine there isn't many EV1's left that haven't been crushed out." "It's pretty sad." "There are one of four things that will happen with the EV1's." "They'll go to colleges and universities, to engineering schools." "They'll go to museums and other displays across the country." "Other EV1 vehicles are being driven by our engineers." "And the other option for the EV1's at the end of their life is recycling." "But know that ever part of the EV1 is going to be recycled, dismantled through a third party and then reused." "Everything is going to be recycled." "We're not just going to go crush it and then send it off to a landfill." "When I saw the picture of the pile of pressed cars, it hurt." "I thought it was pretty spiteful." "To see on the computer, on the Internet, the crushed EV1's that GM did..." " It was wrong." " Tragic." "That was tragic." "But more wrong is the reasons for it." ""What do we do now? "" "At the time that most of this was going on, no one had any idea that every automaker was going to jump ship." "More internet tips revealed that the EV1's were not the only electric vehicles in jeopardy." "A number of Ford Th!" "nks and Ranger electric trucks were discovered in Palm Springs, and rumored to be set for destruction." "In Los Angeles, activists spotted a truckload of Toyota RAV4 EV's." "Fearing the destination was a crushing facility, they chased it." "The next morning the truck turned back." "That guy was going as fast as he possibly could in a big transporter like that, trying to lose us, it was clear." "but wasn't able to do it and, of course, that did change Toyota's plans." "It was so inconsistent, they didn't know what the hell to do." "Then he goes to the end of the pier, and these two big security guards come out, they open this locked gate, the truck goes inside, and then the security guards come out and survey us." "Somehow we ended up at this god forsaken place." "She has everything." "It has spewing smoke into the harbor that kids have to breathe." "It has an oil well, and it has Toyota, which is supposed to be the greenest car company, but which is simultaneously crushing and hiding the fact that they're crushing, clean RAV4 EV's, instead of selling them to willing customers." "No one had seen Honda's electric car since they were taken from customers." "Then, an episode of "California's Green" aired on PBS." "So we're going to be able to see cars shredded today." "Absolutely." "Which is not something most of us get to see." "We shred the car, about a car a minute, 1000 cars a day on a good day." "And what's interesting, the first thing we noticed when we drove up here, you're going to be shredding some new cars, too." "These look like perfectly good cars." "Why are you shredding them up?" "A little bit of a mystery really, since I've been here last eight years." "They bring us these cars from the dealerships, and they say that they're test cars." "And they've been brought over to test various emissions and the insurance companies won't reinsure them so they have to watch them destroyed here." "Boy, that seems like a shame." "I'd like to drive off in one of these things." "Ladies and gentlemen, that's the sound of a crushed automobile being shredded into a million pieces." "There's no precedent for a car company rounding up every one of a particular kind of car and crushing them, as if they're afraid one might get away." "I think they wanted to be sure that none of them were driving around the streets any more to remind people that there is such a thing as an electric car." "People keep making all these analogies," ""Crushing the EV is a betrayal of the American dream. "" "But it's not a dream." "It's here now!" "It may be a betrayal of my dream, but it's a betrayal of the American reality." "After the discovery of the crushed EV1's in Arizona, electric car drivers took action." "They vowed to keep watch over the remaining EV1's being stored at the GM facility in Burbank." "There are about 70 cars left in California." "They're in the parking lot behind me, and they have plans to crush those as well." "And we need to make a call to action on General Motors to give them back." "We ended up rallying enough troops in terms of interest and organizations to join our coalition and then we simply didn't leave, and stayed 24 hours a day, seven days a week." "It's 6 A. M. , and I've been here for an hour, part of a vigil." "We're making sure that GM doesn't sneak out their cars in the back lot." "The first two weeks we were pretty much ignored." "It was like monsoon rains, it was kind of depressing to be out there, but at the same time there was such a sense of mission." "I was here this morning from about 5:45 A. M. , and it's pretty quiet." "Finally, on day 15, we did this announcement of this offer." "As the EV activists recorded the VIN numbers of the cars in storage," "Chelsea led a last ditch effort to buy the cars from GM." ""Okay, General Motors contends that no one wants these EV1's here. "" ""Would anybody be willing to buy them for the residual price of the lease? "" "And within 48 hours, over 80 people had signed up." "There were only 78 cars in that lot, and already we had a waiting list for a car that wasn't available." "It was a tremendous déjà vu moment." "At this point we thought it would be appropriate to some full circle." "Join me in holding this check offering 1. 9 million dollars to General Motors to put these cars back on the road." "Despite the offer, GM did not respond." "The fate of the last 78 EV1's remained in doubt" "A small group of activists would continue their vigil, to keep the dream of the electric car alive." "Who controls the future?" "Whoever has the biggest club." "In more ways than one." "One they can bash you with, and one they can belong to." "Gentlemen!" "Gentlemen!" "I know you're all worried, and I agree." "There's plenty to be worried about." "Like this solar power plant already operational outside Los Angeles." "Photovoltaic cells, they converts sunlight directly into electricity." "Fluorescent, lasts ten times as long as a conventional light bulb." "uses only a quarter of the power." "Superwindows, insulate as well as ten sheets of glass." "An electric car, partially powered by solar panels." "But the truth is, gentlemen," "I'm not worried about any of these things." "Because no one is ever going to know about them." "There's all these conspiracy theories out there about who killed the electric car." "So really, who killed the electric car?" "Unfortunately, I can't summarize that in one sentence." "What killed the electric vehicle, very simply, I think, is lack of corporate wisdom." "In my opinion it's big oil that killed the electric car." "Alan Lloyd killed the electric car project." "I was there when he did it." "The California Air Resources Board killed the electric car under huge pressure from the auto companies." "They were an accessory to the murder, but the murder was commited by the General Motors." "I don't believe that for a minute." "GM would sell you a car on pig shit if it sold." "Carmakers argue that there was not enough demand for the electric car." "Claiming to have spent millions of dollars on advertising, they said buyers weren't interested." "But did consumers even know that the car existed?" "Did you ever see this car advertised?" "Never." "That's what I'm trying to say." "It's totally under the scope of the radar." "I don't know who drives an EV1 actually." " You don't know anybody?" " Anybody." "Maybe Fernando." "I know Fernando..." "Did you ever drive an EV1?" " I've heard of them." " He's heard of them." "They're not making these cars in California anymore?" "No." "They're not making them anywhere." "That's really too bad." "We need those cars." "Why are they getting rid of it?" "They said that there was no demand for the car." "Are they insane?" "That's a no-brainer." "Of course there's a demand." "Save gas, save people, save air, save oxygen, save the world." "All sounds good to me." "We've been selling vehicles for a century, and as you might imagine, we've figured out what people wanted." "If you ask them, they say:" ""I want a 300 mile range. "" ""I want to be able to go 85 or 90 mph" ""I want to carry four passengers and have a big trunk. "" "Which is basically what we were already selling." "I've said this time and time again." "People will buy anthing you convince them to buy." "Feed people enough, and they believe that's a diet." "Consumers, they couldn't see the difference between electric car and the car they're already driving because they don't read environmental impact." "They don't read political instability caused by oil production in the Middle East." "All they read is does this car work and how much does it cost." "What really killed EV's, is American consumers because they did not accept this idea, did not embrace it, that vehicles could have these limited ranges and still be functional, useful, practical." "Did the electric car die because of the battery technology ?" "Did EV's really not have enough range?" "Did car companies use the best batteries available?" "Battery technology at that time was lead accid batteries and allowed the car to go 60 miles." "If you started out on a trip knowing that you were going to go dead in 60 miles, you'd be nervous about making the trip." "People think that they need a car that will go 300 miles and be able to charge it up or refuel it in five minutes." "For virtually 90-95% of your driving, you really don't need that." "You need a vehicle that will go at least 60 miles or so, and that way your daily commute is covered." "For those who wanted greater range from an EV, a 100 miles or more a better battery already existed." "Developed by a well known inventor working in Troy, Michigan, about 30 miles from General Motors headquarters." " I'm Stan and..." " And Iris Ovshinsky." "I think you shouldn't do that." "You should say you're Stan Ovshinsky, and I'll say I'm Iris Ovshinsky." "Don't do that." "It's funny." "With over 200 patents to his name, Stan Ovshinsky had pioneered a new battery and GM purchased controlling share of his company." "We were chosen over 60 different big companies, like Westinghouse and others, who wanted to win the race to make the batteries that would be used in pure electric cars." "And we were chosen because we had a battery." "And to us, putting it into a car was not the most gigantic thing." "What were we supposed to do?" "But you did expect champagne and roses." "I expected champagne and roses." "When I said that we were going to put a paragraph into a newspaper, that said we had achieved this," "I really expected congratulations to flow in." "And then I knew that something was different when the opposite happened." "Ovshinsky was censored for publicizing his battery advances without permission and asked not to run advertising in national publications." "The EV1 debuted with a weaker battery." "It would be another 2 years before Ovshinsky's batteries were installed in the EV1." "The first version of the EV1 had defective Delco batteries, and they kept failing." "That was GM's failure, on those batteries." "Once they put good batteries in, they didn't have any problems." "Ultimately, GM sold its share in Ovshinsky's company to an unlikely buyer." "Then, when the Ni-MH batteries were improved, so that they're now lasting longer than the life of the car and cheaper than an engine," "Chevron Texaco stepped in and purchased control from General Motors of Ovshinsky technology." "The oil companies do not feel threatened by battery technology, because they effectively crushed it." "The electric car is an interesting case study." "It was such an abysmal failure, that there are a lot of people involved in the initial decision making that are pointing fingers at whose responsibility it is." "To Basrah and all of Iraq comes good news with the opening of a new oil field." "The pipeline runs across the desert to the Persian Gulf at Al Faw." "There, tankers load up with the precious fuel the world needs so badly." "Yes, it's a big day for Iraq, and there's a feast to celebrate." "Sheep stuffed with rice and host of other good things." "But that's only the first of the good things that will come to Iraq, thanks to oil." "Oil companies have rarely shied away from global issues." "But why did they lobby so hard to build a public opposition to the electric car in California?" "I find it difficult to rationalize why the oil industry got so intimately involved in this." "Other than maybe they saw it as a threat to the monopoly they had on providing the transportation fuel." "There's no question that the oil companies who control the market today have a strong incentive to discourage alternatives, except the alternatives that they themselves control." "Just as General Motors," "40 or 50 years ago, bought up the trolley systems and shut them down, the oil companies have opposed the creation of an electric infrastructure." "I differ strongly with that." "We did not kill the electric car." "The petroleum industry did not kill the electric car." "What killed the electric car was antiquated technology." "It's a good example of something we should not repeat, an example we need to avoid." "There's still roughly a trillion barrels worth of oil in the Earth's crust." "And if you figure that the average price of that subsequent oil will be 100 $ a barrel, that's a 100 trillion dollars worth of business yet to be done." "However, at some point when an alternative is good enough, people will snap over, and that's what the oil companies fear the most." "We use 180 million gallons of gasoline a week in California." "Right now, the price is 2,20 $." "A year ago, it was 1,20 $." "There's a dollar more a gallon." "Somebody's making 180 million dollars more a week." "It's the same gas, the same pipeline, the same refinery." "The profits are outstanding." "What the oil companies feared, is that electric vehicles would become successful six years from now." "What the automobile companies feared, was that they'd be losing money on electric vehicles in the next six months." "Even as car companies made electric cars, they fought them at every step." "What was their motive?" "Why were they so determined to take them off the road?" "I think in the beginning," "General Motors didn't believe the car would catch on." "I don't think they'd thought they'd ever have to worry about something like a conspiracy to keep it from happening." "They hated the mandate." "They hated it so much that they ended up not really wanting to be in the business of EV's." "What I detected was a huge resentment about being told what type of motor vehicle had to be made." "And it became a fight of principle rather than one of trying to technologically solve the problem." "I do know that I was surprised at some of the stances they took in Sacramento in arguing." "End of comment." "In a confidential 1995 memo the American Automobile Manufacturers Association sought to hire a PR firm to manage a so-called" ""grassroots and educational campaign"" "to create a climate to repeal the mandate." "The challenge, according to the document, was "greater consumer acceptance of electric vehicles. "" "Why would the car companies campaign so hard against their own creation?" "I made the case at the General Motors board, that the reason for the EV1 was to give General Motors a very big head start in how you transform electricity into the drive power of a car." "And we give them two or three years lead, and in my judgement it did." "But my frustration was they didn't capitalize on the lead." "And the reason, which was discussed with the board, was that there was not a profit seemed to be coming out of either electric cars or hybrids." "They could not understand how Toyota could possibly make a profit out of the Prius, for example." "They were gonna lose their shirt." "And as evidence have shown, I don't think Toyota is losing their shirt." "If loss of revenue worried car companies than the electric car posed another problem altogether:" "it had no internal combustion engine, the cornerstone of the auto industry." "These parts represent a large part of a dealership's income, through the replacement and the maintenance." "Esentially, this group of parts is a visual representation of the profits the auto industry doesn't make when they sell an EV1, or an EV in general." "I can actually identify a lot of these that didn't get used on the EV1 program." "Oil filters you need four times a year." "It was the most prominent thing, along with several quarts of oil every time." "I didn't enjoy working on the internal combustion engines, just due to the fact you got so dirty." "And working on the EV1, I basically go home looking like this." "Servicing the EV1 was pretty simple." "It came in about every 5000 miles." "We'd rotate the tires, add washer fluid to it, and send it back out on the street." "It's amazing." "Look how dirty I've gotten just handling this stuff." "It's kind of sad." "In order to sincerely market a clean car, you have to suggest that your core product is dirty, that it uses oil, that it uses gas, and that increases our dependance on foreign oil." "And here's this product that doesn't." "It looks very schizophrenic, but I think, when it started..." ""We can show the people in California we can meet the zero emission requirements. "" "And later on: "Do we want to show them? "" ""That means, all of our other cars... "" "But the more it caught on, the more that there was this dichotomy between clean and efficient and non-polluting versus a Suburban." "Car companies had convinced themselves that they couldn't make money in the short term with the electric car." "In order to do that, they would need an entirely different vehicle." "General Motors made a commitment to the Hummer, because they could see that the Hummer would make them money." "When SUV's first came out, people said: "I can't drive that. "" " "That big old truck? "" " Especially for the ladies." " "I can't see out of there. " - "I'm going to murder somebody in that. "" " "That's too big. " - "That's too big for me. "" " But they convinced people. "This is safer. " - "You need this car. "" " "You need a big car. " - "This is a safe car. "" " "You need this for your family. " - "Bigger, safer. "" "The idea of a penny-pinching EV1 that was super-green, that didn't get a lot attraction." "Whereas the idea of a gigantic SUV that would crush your neighbor, that did get a lot attraction." "Basically, that tells us what the 90's was about." "What began as a 25 000 $ tax break, grew to a 100 000 $ when Congress passed the President's economic stimulus package last spring." "We think small businesses need to have support at this time to keep them afloat, to keep the economy moving ahead." "But there's an encouragement for the small business person, not just to stay afloat, but to go the biggest gas guzzler there is." "The 6,000-pound car, the biggest." "Does that make sense?" "I don't think we can dictate what vehicles people buy." " The goal here is..." " This is encouraging them!" "You can almost buy the whole car for the tax break." "I'm not going to concede that that would be the way that this would be used..." "There is some evidence that is how they are being used." "I don't know." "We'll have to wait and see what happens." "I don't want to see Hummers driven off the market by the government." "I want to see everything given a level, equal chance." "The thing that bothers me is that it's not a level, equal chance." "We're using our military to ensure the flow of oil." "We're using tax dollars to support the car companies in different ways, and we're not using our tax money to do the things that we really need to do to prepare for the future." "Federal policy has always had tremendous power to shape the future." "As it gave enormous incentives to buy SUV's the federal government also sued California to stop the electric car." "Some pointed to the influence of the oil and auto industries." "They control things in Washington, they and the automobile industry." "Now they've got Andy Card there, former lobbyist, as chief of staff in the White House." "I guess they don't have to pay the lobbyists anymore." "So they're saving a little money there." "Andrew Card was chief of staff when the Bush administration joined the suit against California." "Card had also been president and C. E. O." "of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association during its campaign to kill California's electric car mandate." "Industries began to see if we don't kill this cancer in California, it's going to spread to the rest of the country." "I think it became a strategy on the part of many companies to make it a national issue." "I was even told once by a very prominent congressman who I shall not mention by name, that" ""I could understand and tolerate what you're doing in California," ""but if you ever try to spread your California program"" ""to the rest of my country, I'm going to have to do battle with you. "" "Sometimes, I listen to the energy debate and I think I'm watching an old movie that was made back in the 70's." "Because the discussion is exactly the same as it was 30 years ago." "Our average vehicle, average car on the road, is less efficient than it was 20 years ago." "And this is just a complete abdication of leadership." "Political leadership, really." "Because it's impossible to get fuel economy standards passed through the U. S. Congress." "After the OPEC oil embargo in the 1970's, the U. S. government created Corporate Average Fuel Economy or CAFE standards, to improve fuel economy in American vehicles." "As a result, in less than 10 years, fuel economy increased by more than 50 percent." "Unfortunately, two decades later, there has been virtually no change." "Jimmy Carter was the last president that really made energy a high priority." "He devoted his first 90 days in office to put together an energy plan." "I was there as part of it." "No president since then has put that kind of effort into it." "I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States." "Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977." "Never." "There was a radical change when Ronald Reagan came in and took down the solar panels off the White House roof that Jimmy had put up, and esentially, declared war on the sun." "I've put a freeze on pending regulations and set up a task force under vice president Bush to review regulations with an eye toward getting rid of as many as possible." "I have de-controlled oil, which should result in more domestic production and less dependance on foreign oil." "When Reagan came in, he was not a supporter of fuel economy, of conservation, of renewables." "In the mid 1980's, he basically stopped any improvement in fuel economy standards for cars." "And then, in 1985, the prices of oil collapsed." "I would not lay all of the blame at Ronald Reagan's feet, by any means." "I think he had his share of responsibility, but so did the Saudis, who made a very calculating decision, to drop the price of oil dramatically, principally to ensure that none of these alternative fuels" "and energy saving measures really produced the desired results." "So they kept the junkie hooked up, in other words." "And as a result, we are today still addicted to oil." "When Clinton came in, and I worked for Clinton, we were definitely quite interested in trying to come up with alternatives and improve the fuel economy of the fleet." "Politically, it was still very unattractive." "The automobile lobby was quite powerful then, so the administration kind of made a bargain with the automobile companies, this partnership for new generation of vehicles where we would develop hybrid vehicles, a combination of a gasoline engine and an electric drive train." "In return, we wouldn't really pursue fuel economy standards." "I've never met a five year old kid like this in my life." "He said: "I'm glad to meet you, Mr. President. "" ""I want you to make a car that runs on electricity and doesn't pollute the air. "" "I was so impressed, I went to get Al Gore and I introduced him to this five year old boy, and he said: "Hello, Mr. vice président." "I intend to spend my life working on this. "" ""I am going to help you develop an electric car"" ""that has no pollution. "" "Al Gore says: "That means we're going to be partners. "" "He said: "Yes, I guess so. "" ""But you don't understand." "I'm going to spend my whole life on this. "" "For 8-9 years, we've spent about a billion dollars of taxpayers' money to develop hybrid vehicles." "Ironically, the U. S. car companies didn't put any hybrids on the road." "In fact, the minute George Bush got elected president, the U. S. car companies walked away from hybrids." "But, and this is the irony, the U. S. program got the Japanese very nervous." "So Toyota and Honda, in response, developed hybrids, because they didn't want to be beaten by the U. S." "Now, they lure people into thinking they're doing something but they sweet-talk." "I remember way back we used to have this joke, but it's not a joke anymore." "We're giving the environmentalists the music and the industry the action." "The second step toward making America less dependant on foreign oil is to produce and refine more crude oil here at home in environmentally sensitive ways." "By far the most promising site for oil in America is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska." "While it is predicted that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could supply America with slightly more than one year's supply of oil, simply raising fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon could save the same amount of fuel within 15 years." "The oil industry and the automobile companies are resistant to change." "The American people need to be reminded that it took a law to get seatbelts in the cars." "It took a law to get airbags in the cars." "It took a law to get the mileage up from 12 to 20 miles per gallon." "It took a law to get catalytic converters to control the pollution." "I think clean cars are too important to be left to the automobile industry." "The California mandate forced automakers to make electric cars." "When California changed it, the cars vanished." "Why did California retreat from the bold law it created?" "Having visited all the car companies, they were saying:" ""Look, we can't produce these increasing numbers of the battery electric vehicles. "" "And I became convinced that..." "What are we supposed to do here?" "Is our job to clean the air?" "Or is it to force a certain number of a type of technology out on the road?" "Alan Lloyd failed in his leadership to really steer the zero emission vehicle mandate toward a successful outcome." "Oh, I know Alec very well." "I know Alec very well." "And we had some... heartfelt memos come back." "And it pained me, because I have the utmost respect for Alec." "And it pained me to be accused of basically abanding the battery electrics." "In addition to his role as chairman of the Air Resources Board," "Alan Lloyd had another position." "Just four months before the meeting that killed the electric car," "Lloyd accepted the chairmanship of the California Fuel Cell Partnership." "I've been involved with hydrogen since the early 90's." "When I became chair of ARB ten years later, I knew a lot about hydrogen." "So for me, I'm very much fact-technology driven." "Maybe you can say that's an asset or a handicap in the terms of hydrogen because I knew what could be done." "Excuse me while I watch my baby get off here." "Carmakers convinced California that the facts supported the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles." "Were they a better option than electric cars?" "Toyota's national manager of advanced technologies, Bill Reinert, took their prototype hydrogen fuel cell SUV on a press tour." "One of our customers didn't really like this car anywhere nearly as much as the EV1." "And the reason was not because it would have anything bad about the car, the reason was because his EV1, he could charge it at home, charge it at work, and even though it provided limited range," "he didn't have to worry about getting his car charged up." "With this car, with a limited access to a hydrogen filling station, he said he'd spend his whole day planning how to get hydrogen in the car and how to get back." "It's growing humbly." "The more you know, the more you realize you really don't know what issues are going to be put forward." "The number one worst question is:" ""When can..." "When will that be on the market? "" "When will that be on the market?" "That's the worst question." "Consumers are probably going to want to know how long it would be for this to be mass produced." "That's quite a ways off." "We've got some real technical issues we've got to solve, with hydrogen storage with durability, with cost reduction." "Is it a practical solution at this point?" "The cars have a limited range, the durability of the car isn't very good..." "Let me see, what else?" "They don't do well in cold weather." "Other than that, they're great." "Have you ever been to a dog race?" "There's the mechanical rabbit that's out in front and the dogs never quite reach it." "Well, the fuel cell is the equivalent of that mechanical rabbit." "We're going for it." "For the last 15 years they've been telling us the fuel cells are 10 to 15 years off." "You're an oil company." "Your business is to be selling a fuel." "They think that it's a long time off, 30 years, and they want to have a product that sells." "From that point, they're protecting themselves but the other side is that they're protecting the status quo." "We see in Scientific American a double page ad by General Motors and Shell both touting both the fuel cell that General Motors is doing and also Shell as a potential supplier of hydrogen." "If hydrogen can do a better job as an energy carrier than electricity, then by gosh, it should be the carrier of choice." "The problem is, it's not even close." "How far would this car ride on environmental fuel?" "It's approximately about a 100-125 miles." "Good." "Interesting." "A fuel cell car powered by hydrogen made with electricity uses three to four times more energy than a car powered by batteries." "This is the beginning of a fantastic technology, and thanks for having us out here." "We're going to look at some other vehicles in a minute, but, hydrogen is the way of the future." "Today, there's a lot of enthusiasm for hydrogen cars but, I wrote the whole book "The Hype About Hydrogen"." "I think it's pretty clear that hydrogen is a much tougher alternative fuel than any other alternative fuel we've ever pursued." "These are the five miracles that you need for a successful hydrogen car in the marketplace." "First, your average hydrogen car costs a million dollars." "That's got to drop." "Second, no known material to humankind can store enough hydrogen onboard the car to give you the range people want." "Miracle number three." "The fuel is wildly expensive." "Even hydrogen from dirty fossil fuels is 2 or 3 times more expensive than gasoline." "Fourth, you have to have the fueling infrastructure." "We have a 180 000 gas stations." "Someone's going to have to build at least 10 or 20 thousand hydrogen fueling stations before anybody is going to be very interested." "Miracle five is - you have to hope and pray that the competitors in the marketplace don't get any better." "Because right now, the best car in the marketplace just got a lot better, the hybrid vehicle." "Still runs on gasoline, you can fuel it everywhere, it has twice the range of a regular car." "Current hybrid vehicles depend on gasoline, but use an electric motor to increase their fuel economy." "And if battery technology keeps getting steadily better, than the best hybrid, and then plug-in hybrid in the year 2020 will be vastly superior to the best hydrogen car." "You guys have filmed me long enought to know that I'm not going to dance around the issue." "And these could be a long ways out into the future." "Toyota says: "Fuel cell cars, 30 years away. "" "Then I get the calls from the Department of Energy and the State of California:" ""What the hell are you doing? "" "And all the other fuel cell manufacturers:" ""We're trying to make a living here... "" "It's awful." "Just because a lot of people want it to work, it's no guarantee." "That's Disneyland, you know - wishing makes it come true." "I don't work in Disneyland." "I work in the real world, where wishing doesn't make it come true and you really have to work hard to make it come true." "Hopefully we do." "On the 27th day of their vigil, activists finally heard from GM." "Paul Scott called: "Are you guys busy?" "They're hauling in the cars right now. "" ""GM is loading the cars on trucks right now! "" ""What, what? "" ""Yeah, we'll drop everything and run on out there right now. "" "They've loaded them up, tires screeching, and panels cracking against each other as they shoved them onto the tracks." "We're up against most of the money in the world." "We're up against the oil industry, the automobile industry." "It's David versus Goliath in a very big way but if there are enough Davids in the world, we can win." "GM, shame on you!" "General Motors is taking the EV1's out of here, destroying them, doing the work of the oil companies." "We're going to ask you guys just to give us some grass area" "If you could just get out of the driveway for us so we don't have to put cuffs on anybody." "Thank you." "Don't crush the EV1." "On March 15th, 2005, the last EV1's in the Burbank lot were taken away and destroyed." " Alright, come on in." " Cool." "We'll go down to the vault and I'll show you the car." "I miss this little car." "Yeah." "We love having it." "We have a number of electric vehicles in the collection, and the hybrids, but we're especially happy about this." "This is a special one." " There she is." " My baby!" "Number 99." " You might recognize this car." " I do." "It was Chris's car." "Sure was." "Please, have a seat." "There's only one challenge, it doesn't start up." "You know that General Motors disabled them." " I know." " We wish they didn't, but they had to." "So we understand that." "We're just happy to have it." "Yeah." "That is such an important part of automotive history." " It is..." " To have a manufacturer like" "General Motors participate in this program." "It's wonderful." "The thing is, it shouldn't be a part of automotive history." "Ever since 1939, they would dangle this electric car." "They'd have a few models out there." "They'd say that's something in another few years." "And it never came." "Because they never intended it to come." "They make too much money with the technological stagnation in the internal combustion engine." "If somethin becomes scarce, then there's economic pressures to find alternatives." "And as long as no alternatives exist, the scarce item can become increasingly profitable." "These are the same batteries that are used in your laptop computer." "We have 6800 cells." "And it can go 300 miles on one charge, running along at 70 mph." "It's now 0-60 in 3. 6 seconds." "It's an amazing performance for any car, not just an electric car." "Those same batteries could be put in EV1 and make it a 300-mile-range car very easily." "It's a shame seeing these cars destroyed when you could upgrade them." "I know what I did and why I did it." "And if I had to do the same thing again based on the data, and I've seen what has happened to date," "I would do exactly the same thing." "When we talk about sensible energy policy most people hear is: "You're going to make me drive a small car," ""you're going to make me keep my house cold," ""and essentially, you're going to make me live like a European. "" "It's a lack of leadership." "It's a lack of being able to take on the oil industry, and the automobile industry, and recognize that they are not Uncle Sam." "Uncle Sam has to be Uncle Sam, and Uncle Sam is acting like they're General Motors." "They're squandering huge amounts of money on hydrogen cars, which, by any reasonable estimate, are not going to be selling in the consumer market for two decades at the earliest." "I think it will go down as one of the biggest blunders in the history of the automotive industry." "Have you never heard that expression:" ""Death by a million cuts"?" "Little tiny cuts, eventually someone will bleed to death." "The fight over electric cars was quite simply, a fight about the future." "Goliath won this round, but now Goliath has new problems." "Oil prices have soared." "America is further entangled in the Middle East, and global warming is an increasingly serious threat." "What can we do to reshape the future?" "This city is replete with famous names that are no longer here." "Why?" "Because they couldn't adapt to change." "We all have to adapt to change." "Don't debate about who's to blame or what to blame." "Let's build new industries." "Let's make America strong again." "Chelsea continues her work with a new group called Plug In America, working with citizens across the political spectrum to promote an independant energy future." "I met Jim Woolsey at an event, and as it turns out he was already a bit of a fan of stuff that we were doing, and he's come to work with Plug In America." "That's one example of the types of relationships that have to exist in order to further what we all want." "I've served in four administrations, with presidential appointments, all in different aspects of national security." "And the fact that two thirds of the world's proven reserves of oil are in the Middle East, and that we're so dependant on that part of our world, is a very big national security question." "Behind me there are two things." "One is a Prius, hybrid gasoline-electric Toyota, and an electrical substation." "Today, they don't have much to do with one another, but there's a chance that they might be able to have something to do with one another in a positive way." "And that's where I think that the plug-in hybrid is the natural next step, and that it is avilable to us today." "This is a plug-in hybrid Prius, which is a modification to a normal Toyota Prius that allows you to travel..." "Which gives you up to 150-180 miles per gallon for the first 50 to 60 miles of the day." "We don't need an expensive charging infrastructure to use this car." "You can just plug it in anywhere in your garage." "So we make the environmentalists happy because it's cleaner." "We make the neo-conservatives happy because it uses less gasoline." "Well, everyone's happy because it uses less gasoline." "Plugging in could go a long way to reducing our dependence on oil." "And generating that electricity with the wind and the sun would create even less pollution." "With his battery technology in most hybrid cars, Ovshinsky has also built one of the largest thin-film solar factories in the world." "This is just an ordinary steel roof." "And this is with the adhesive." "You just put the shingles down." "You're in there." "You've run your wires down." "Everything is plug-and-play." "Anybody that wants to make a revolution shouldn't grab a gun." "Just go and start working like we do to change the world by using science and technology." "I am so optimistic about the future." "Even given everything that we've seen, and all of the EV wars," "I remain an optimist." "One of the things that makes America work is this rampant grassroots agitation for things that are new." "When you get a coalition of that size, and that surprising character, you get politicians' attention." "And here we have a serious problem:" "America is addicted to oil." "I call all this a potential coalition between the tree-huggers, the do-gooders, the sod-busters, the cheap-hawks and the evangelicals." "That's a pretty good-sized coalition." "We are about to enter into a world that is truly renewable and completely clean if we just had the willpower to implement it." "You don't have to wait for major auto companies." "You can do it yourself, like I'm doing here." "Old cars, new cars - doesn't really matter." "I can convert anything." "You haven't seen anything yet." "The future is going to be very bright in this area, and the forces are all pushing in that direction, both the economic and technological forces." "Once people see these things, they say: "Wow, I want to do this! "" "And so the word is getting out." "That gives us hope." "Hope that we can end up our lives having achieved what we set out to do." "And we have." "And you still have so many years you want to do things." "I wouldn't have enought time.." "Subtitles by timbouctou"