First, I must admit this movie inspired me to build my own electric car. My bias and knowledge of the subject have influenced my opinion of this movie. To be fair to movie, you must consider it worthy of watching if it has affected so many people around the world to restart the electric vehicle movement. Yes, I agree WKTEC did not invent the movement (much like Al Gore did not invent the internet) but the content of the DVD is has been structured to answer nearly all the questions that you may have about why we do not drive EV's today.

The movie follows a rough timeline of the EV from it's beginning to today. The movie is centered in California because of the mandate set forth in the 90's that as many as 5% of all new vehicles in California should be electric vehicles (EV). Sprinkled throughout are archival video clips showing that the EV is really not a myth. You will marvel as automobile industry executives both promote and snicker at the evolution of the EV, all on tape! The movie's producers pulled together several automotive insiders, including some of the marketing team from the EV-1, for in-depth interviews. The director gives ample air time to discussion of how EV's operate and an exploration of alternative motor vehicle technologies.

You really cannot rate the acting performance of people giving interviews. The editing is top notch though, with sound and video flawlessly flowing between scenes. So many major movie stars appeared in the movie, I included some of their more notable quotes below.

The movie has some problems though, the movie follows the actions of several activists as they: follow a convoy of electric cars due for crushing, fly over GM's proving grounds and stage a sit in at a car depot lot. For all the crying and lip service these die hards of the EV community offer, they surprisingly have little to show for it. In fact, not one of the movie stars who owned a California "Leased" EV-1 have one today. Only one still exists, in the back of a car museum and it has been disabled. The reason these cars were so easily taken is that GM held the threat of filing theft charges against anyone who would not return the leased vehicles.

Scenes
The movie has no less than 29 scenes, primarily because the movie is intended to be used as an educational tool in the classroom.

Special Features
"Jump-Starting the Future" Runtime: 15 minutes
A followup discussion to the topics in the movie. Several more interviews with people from the EV community and a presentation of the various earth friendly vehicles that you can buy today.

10 Deleted ScenesRuntime: 18:40 minutes
"Do You Want To Have This Argument On Camera", "Dream Car", "Hallowed Grounds", "Colette and J. Karen", "Brakes And Tailpipes", "Stan & Iris: Building A Better World", "Are EVs Less Polluting?", "Street Theater", "Shooting The EV1", " Who Killed The Electric Street Car?"

The background screenshot for this menu is very curious looking. Pictured is an engineering prototype battery bank for the UCharge Saphion Technology and its circuit boards. The battery bank is utilizing a temperature controller board with several leads running to the Lithium-Ion batteries.

Meeky Rosie Music Video "Forever" Runtime: 3:50 minutes
The music video has clips from the movie mixed in. The scene where the two women blocked the car crushing convoy with their own electric vehicle is smartly placed near the end of the video.

Previews
Sixteen previews of other dvds released under the "Sony Classics" label are included. I found the previews very entertaining and felt tempted to purchase some of the overseas releases!

DVD Details
Partial List Of Actors: Phyllis Diller, Mel Gibson, Ed Begley, Jr., Tom Hanks, Chris Paine, Greg "Gadgett" Abbott, Wally Rippel, Chelsea Sexton, Roger Smith,
Director: Chris Paine
Runtime: 92 minutes
Runtime With Special Features: 125 minutes
Disc Count: 1
Rating: PG
Release Date: November 14, 2006
ASIN: B000I5Y8FU
1.77:1 Aspect Ratio

Official Movie Website: www.whokilledtheelectriccarmovie.com
The website is a beautiful flash based website that offers answers to popular misconceptions about several alternative fuel vehicles. By far my favorite part of the interface is the circular menu control which features a list of the mainstream alternative technologies: Biodiesel, Ethanol, Hydrogen, Hybrid, LI-ION and the Plug-In Hybrid. Each technology has a brief summary, pros, cons and comparison to the electric car itself. Hydrogen, a perfect example of marketing insanity, has a notable con listed that I never thought of:
"A Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce and H2 fuel is very expensive and is currently produced using non-renewable fuel sources. A national H2 fueling station infrastructure must be built at an enormous expense before H2 cars are commercially viable."
I spent over an hour pouring through the website, which I felt supported the concepts behind the movie itself by explaining in greater detail all aspects of the EV program in United States. The website has little emotion or tree-hugger hysteria behind it, making it easy to read and understand. A thirteen page teacher's guide is also available for download in PDF format.

Celebrity / Inventor / Executive Quotes
WKTEC is filled with celebrity and an engineer interview here is a quick list of the celebrities I could identify with some of their quotes from the movie and facts about them:

Ed Begley, Jr., Actor
"The electric vehicle is not for everybody, given the limited range, it can only meet the needs of 90% of the population."
Visit edbegley.com/environment/ to see a list of Ed's current environmental causes. He currently has a TV series entitled: "Living With Ed".

Tom Hanks, Actor
"The battery you can charge at home it gets between 70 or 80 miles per charge which for me is more than all the driving I need to do in the course of a day."
On Feb 15, 2007 Tom bought the first eBox from AC Propulsion a sign that he still feels strongly about electric vehicles.
Here is what Tom said as he drove away in his new eBox, earlier this year: "There are three electric cars sitting on the moon, and now another one in my garage. The eBox makes even more sense in Los Angeles than in the Taurus-Littrow Valley of the moon. I can drive all weekend, hauling dogs and helping my friends move, and the only reason I'll need to stop at a gas station is for beef jerky and lottery tickets."

Chris Paine, Director
"Utilities estimate that 20-30 million cars could be charged overnight without building anymore infrastructure"
Chris is currently working several EV marketing projects: Resurrecting The Electric Car and Driving Alternative Fuel Vehicles In Antarctica.

Greg "Gadget" Abbott, Left Coast Conversions
"We can convert any car..."
Gadget's business is still running strong in California today.

Wally Rippel, Research Engineer, AeroVironment
"It takes something like 50 electric cars to produce as much emissions, conventional smog type of emissions, as one gasoline car.."
Wally is now an engineer at Tesla Motors, and a long-time developer and advocate of battery powered electric vehicles. He left AeroVironment in 2006. AeroVironment builds UAVs.

Alan Cocconi, Impact Engineer
"This (a drive controller he built) is a 100,000 watt stereo amplifier."
He is featured on several websites including DWRA.net, the homepage of the World's Fastest Car. His business AC Propulsion's homepage is ACPropulsion.com

Roger Smith, CEO (1981-1990) General Motors
"This (the Impact Electric Vehicle) 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."
Smith funded the winning entry in first World Solar Challenge. As a result of the technology created, the EV-1 program was a direct descendant of Smith's work.

Chelsea Sexton, EV1 Specialist
"There is no precedent for a car company rounding up everyone one of a particular kind of a car and crushing them as if they were afraid one might get away."
She now serves as the Executive Director of Plug In America, a coalition of individuals and organizations that advocates for the preservation and manufacture of plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) and electric vehicles.

Counterpoints
One question should come to mind of anyone intrested in this movie: What did the creators of the movie want to see happen as a result of their work?

Simple, they want consumers to understand how EV's work and that they are truly affordable. Major car manufacturers tend to hit consumers with excessive costs for anything that is unique or out of the ordinary. Take the Honda hybrids, a $5,000 markup vs a comparable on the lot seems like a hefty premium for an EV that has no recharging capabilities. An EV motor, controller, reduced battery bank and associated wiring should cost at most $3,000 when purchased wholesale. The math seems like Al Gore fuzzy logic but I encourage you the reader to put pencil to paper and contradict me. Remember, you will not need an AC based battery charger because a hybrid vehicle uses the petrol engine to recharge the batteries.

At the end of the day a point that came out in the movie comes to mind when discussing the hybrids: maintenance and parts sales. Hybrids are a profit mogol's dream: add more routine maintenance items to keep the dealership repair shops busy. They can sell you oil, transmission fluid, air filters and now the occasional replacement electric motor and battery pack.

If I may, I want to add one note about lead acid batteries that were not mentioned in the movie or website. Gel-Cel batteries are currently the highest quality lead-acid battery you can find for an EV. They offer a 15% increase in range and stability over water based batteries. Most people think, as a result of shopping, these batteries are cost prohibitive. I have been able to secure a set of four of these batteries in Group 31 (69lbs) size for the low price of $165 a piece with no shipping cost. The same battery costs over $280 from most online retailers and even more when bought at the local supply store. Another fine example is the Valence UCharge battery featured as the background for the special features menu on the DVD. The miracle 100AH 12.8Vdc Lithium Ion battery retails for just $2,030. A 144Vdc EV would need $24,000 worth of these batteries just to operate. The cost of parts for EV's is something that is also artificially inflated by our free market system in America. Do not be fooled into thinking the cost of batteries is a reason to avoid EVs.

I do not believe in the conspiracy allegations, maybe one man's conspiracy is another mans attempt to make a profit. At the end of the day the EV's produced in California had ineffective battery charger systems. Reading the government's test reports will reveal numerous problems with batteries. The urge to deliver a 4 hour battery charger caused the engineers to ignore monitoring battery condition while charging. The result was batteries that boiled off their electrolyte from increased internal temperatures. Automobile executives only saw the effect of the problem, reduced profitability. Their cars were costing them a fortune in replacement batteries. The solution, replacement of all the batteries and a redesign of the charging stations was likely out of their budgets, so they scrapped all the EV's in an effort to avoid the cost of the problem.

Finally, in 2007 the perfect example of profiteering of EV's is the Telsa Roadster. Why they have not offered a more affordable version escapes me. The concept behind the roadster has been replicated in home built conversions with the TransWarp 11 series of direct drive motors. Electric conversions with these motors can run 12 second quarter miles and offer 60+ mile range when used conservatively. The home built conversions cost as little as $15,000, yet Telsa feels they should charge a huge multiple for the same performance we see in the conversion community.

Summary
My rating of the movie was initially only four stars because the funeral scene and subsequent towing of the electric vehicles gave me the impression that the movie was produced by an over zealous environmentalist. In fact, I strongly encourage restraint if you have the mind to loan it to your boss or coworkers. If you are concerned about your machismo, lay down some rubber in the company parking lot to make them think you are still a tree hating fiend.

Seriously, if you make it through the first few scenes, an informative documentary takes shape before your eyes. While there are no million dollar special effects in the movie, you will be on the edge of your seat anyway asking questions about subjects that one previous would have seemed daunting to most people. In the end, the purpose of the film is to educate us all and encourage Americans to question not authority but our way of living and culture.

Today, I have lost track of all the people who have borrowed the DVD from me. I keep the DVD on the edge of my bookshelf at work. The reactions people show when they see the cover are almost comical. People really believe the EV is still on the road in California. Once viewed, from coworkers to clients, the most scathing comment they make is how ridiculous the funeral was. Yet, they all want to know more. The movie is supported on DVD and by it's webpage with a large volume of factual information. Yet as always, answering one question can lead to many others.

Recommended Books
Solo: Life With An Electric Car is an excellent companion to this movie. The average cost of the used book is $5 with shipping and handling.

Links To Websites Of People And Businesses In The Movie

Official Movie Website: www.whokilledtheelectriccarmovie.com
Valence, makers of the U-Charge LI-ON battery: http://www.valence.com/products/ucharge_overview.html
Counter opinion of Valence actual costs: http://www.evworld.com/blogs/index.cfm?page=blogentry&blogid=382&authorid=28
Left Coast Conversions, Gadget's business: http://leftcoastelectric.com/

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8