The EV1 was the first battery electric vehicle produced by General Motors in the United States. The experimental cars were the only vehicles in the history of the company to bear the "General Motors" badge. GM leased over 800 EV1 cars (out of about 1100 manufactured - [1]) with the proviso that after the three-year leases were up, the cars reverted to the company. They were only available in California and Arizona and could only be serviced at designated Saturn dealers. The first generation EV1s used lead-acid battery batteries in 1996 (as model year 1997) and a second generation batch with nickel metal hydride batteries in 1999. As cars came off lease, they were refurbished and upgraded to second generation. GM claims to have spent more than $1 billion developing and marketing the EV1, much of which was defrayed by the Clinton Administration's (especially Al Gore's) $1.25 Billion Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) project[2][3], but the company claimed that it could not sell the car in enough quantities to make the EV1 profitable, despite long waiting lists and customers motivated enough to market the EV1 on their own dimes. The program was stopped in 2003. [4]The movie was really sad to tell you the truth. Being an engineer and scientist myself, its hard to see such great technological innovations being crushed with an iron fist like that. There's so much improvement still to be made, and the corporate gods decided against it, even though it was a perfectly viable product that was also as green as you can want for a transportation vehicle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EV-1
The film was shot as a pseudo murder-mystery with a general background beginning and then showing "murder" suspects and the rise and fall of the EV-1 from that point of view. These included such things as the government, oil companies, GM, the battery itself, and other alternative fuels such as hydrogen fuel cell. The pieces thrown together to create each segment is packed full of funny Bush quotes and videos, insight from industry reps, and celebrities.
It's a totally solid film and I'd watch it again. There's just so much to talk about in this subject -it's crazy. I posted earlier on here about the clueless move to push billions of research dollars into hydgrogen fuel cells by Bush's administration, and this film not only goes over that but even dumps more supporting facts that I wouldnt even imagine existed -- car manufacturer chief engineers (toyota's specifically) claiming that hydrogen fuel cells are still 20+ years away and are not viable for anything any time soon, even as he's driving a Rav4 hydrogen fuel cell car.
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