I just saw the new movie “Who Killed the Electric Car?” at the Tower Theater in Sacramento, and I really liked it. Though it wasn’t as good as Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” it told a very interesting story that I had never even thought about.
Electric cars went off the market because no one wanted them, right? Wrong. One of the most surprising and disturbing parts of the movie is the car companies not allowing willing customers to buy the EV1 cars, and instead crushing and shreading them.
This movie wasn’t playing in my local theaters, and probably never will, but it was still worth seeing. This is a story that needed to be told, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the enviroment, electric cars, dishonest car companies, or just interesting documentaries.
I haven’t seen the film yet, but I have read about this cover-up and find it more than a little disturbing. There are also a number of other replacement technologies that have been swept under the carpet by corporations in “the democratic world”. Unfortunately I believe this only adds fuel to fire for fundamentalists that oppose western democracies. How can we as the democratic west lecture the “uncivilised (undemocratised) nations on our planet” when we are prepared to ignore technologies that will improve quality of life and reduce damage to our planet for the sake of profit?
I believe it is time for the people of the world to accept that no one person is perfect, no one society is perfect, no one economic and political system is perfect and try to get along. Unfortunately this will take a radical overhaul of the political systems worldwide and we do not appear to be in a position to make this happen right now. All is not lost though, with the advent of the globalisation of the internet, a worldwide audience is able to critically assess every aspect of existence. This will hopefully lead to a more informed world population that is willing to challenge such idiocies as the squashing of the electric car to keep the profit in the oil companies pockets.
Wow, well written, quasidodo! I totally agree.
We’re never going to get in a circle and start singing kumbaya, but less fundamentalism, more responsible gov and industry, and a well-informed population would be a good start.
And yes, the scene showing all the crushed ev1 cars was disturbing.