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.
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
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 rcuprer ?
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,
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 dj 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
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 lris 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
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 prsident.
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
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
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..