Who Killed the Electric Car?

"Fast and furious, Who Killed the Electric Car? is, in brief, the sad tale of yet one more attempt by a heroic group of civic-minded souls to save the browning, warming planet," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "As [director Chris] Paine forcefully makes clear, the story of the electric car is greater than one zippy ride and the people who loved it. From the polar ice caps to Los Angeles, where many cars truly are to die for, it is a story as big as life, and just as urgent."

At Grist, Hannah Eaves talks with Paine; one of the exec producers, Dean Devlin; former electric-vehicle sales rep Chelsea Sexton; "and Sexton's husband, Bob, who helped launch Saturn before becoming the go-to technician for EV owners." More from David Roberts.

Updated through 7/2.

"[T]hough its expose style precludes nuance, it packs a wallop," writes Kristi Mitsuda, kicking off Reverse Shot's round of reviews at indieWIRE.

"Much like a 60s European art film, the EV-1 had a limited but passionate audience," writes Steve Erickson for Gay City News. The doc "predicts a bipartisan coalition of electric car proponents storming the auto industry's gates. These good vibes are a little forced; I wasn't surprised to learn that its cheerful coda was added after the film's Sundance premiere."

In the New York Press, Jennifer Merin calls the doc "a first-rate detective story, well executed, with real social and political conviction."

But the AV Club's Nathan Rabin finds that Paine's "attempts to sweeten his message with pop-culture playfulness feel a little strained."

Rob Nelson in the Voice: "Another few of these squandered opportunities for art-house muckraking and we'll need someone to ask who killed the left-wing documentary."

Update, 7/1: Salon's Andrew O'Hehir: "By the end of Who Killed the Electric Car? you'll be worked into a lather one way or another. Paine crams in more theories, ideas and arguments than the movie can easily hold, but that's OK with me. He sees the Bush administration's hydrogen fuel-cell initiative as an enormous pie-in-the-sky scam, designed to buy the oil industry still more decades of hegemony, and suggests that while the electric car is dead for the moment, it isn't buried."

Update, 7/2: Jim Emerson finds the perfect quote.

Posted by dwhudson at June 30, 2006 8:56 AM