By: dak

dak — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:29:33 +0000

that’s absolutely correct, i’m glad someone saw through that film’s bias. There were some good points made, but it was so shrouded by Paine’s love affair with the EV-1 that you can’t validate most of the facts they spout in the film. It seemed all terrible when I watched the film, but with a miniscule bit of research on Wikipedia you can see how polarized the film’s viewpoint really is. I stand by GM’s decision to kill the EV-1. At the same time I’m glad to see some decent cars getting developed today.

By: kent beuchert

kent beuchert — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 05:00:17 +0000

The film “Who Killed the Electric car?” is total fiction, aimed at audiences ignorant of the history of the electric car in general, and the EV-1 in particular. The car wasn’t “beloved” by very many, it seems. GM fielded a ton of complaints from owners who found the recharge requirments
altering the schedule of their family activities and women were petrified that it would run out of juice in th eworng side of town (you couldn’t really tell how far the car could travle on a charge – it varied considerably – up to 20% – based on terraine, use of A/C, temperature and age of battery pack). The car cost $43,000 but could not legaly be sold -thus the crushing of the cars when the crappy EV-1 was canceled. It was deemed an “experimental vehicle ” by the Feds and GM could only lease and had to promise to recover all the vehicles when the leases expired. There were never more than 1100 car sbuilt and at no time were all of them on lease. The car was a total bomb – named by Time’s auto analyst last week as one of the 50 worst cars ever built. Its battery pack cost over $20,000 and needed to be replaced every 5 years. None of the EV-1 leases ever paid what they should have for the leases, because of govt subsidies, and none ever had to buy a new battery pack. The car was, without doubt, one that should never have ben put on the road. Chris Paine uses the
infomercial technique of using treehugging stooges to offer personal recommendations of what was a horribly inconvenient and expensive vehicle that couldn’t get you
to a destination 35 miles away with any reliability (as the Motor trend tester found out – the battery was dead after
70 miles, not the promised 110). Ed Begley added his preposterously inane lie when he claimed with a straight face that the EV-1 met the needs of 90% of the population.
90% of the population didn’t even have a place to recharge the EV-1.

Comments on: Aptera research Vs Vertigo

By: dak

By: kent beuchert