Revenge of the Electric Car

That was maybe six years ago when one of our readers sent me this video documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” produced by Jessie Deeter. It was probably one of the sorriest movie-documentaries I saw chronicling the short-sightedness of the American automobile manufacturers and of the Bush administration which faithlessly dumped all hopes of producing petrol-free vehicles for the consumer markets. The movie begins with a funeral of an electric car or popularly known as EV and a “eulogy” of its inspiring birth and the good end for which it was built. 

In the middle of the documentary, you will find celebrities using these cars like Tom Hanks, Mel Gibson, and Phyllis Dille to name a few. The use of the cars by such known personalities wasn’t for anything like an ephemeral vogue but a genuine and bold statement that they care about air quality, the use of clean energy and global warming. But to cut to the chase, the film unfolds an obvious conspiracy of car manufacturers, the Bush regime and the oil companies that strongly called for the “mass murder” of the electric cars that were running initially in California under the pretext that there was low consumer demand, poor battery technology, not enough plug-in stations to recharge such vehicles, and all sorts of lame grounds.

In other words, the death of the EVs was already ordained NOT really for good reasons but greed. You see, if you had an electric car, you have far less worries in terms of maintenance compared to combustion-powered engines. But above all, you don’t have to worry about the seemingly unending ascent of gas prices. So you can easily tell those wish for their existence and those who are willing and can easily afford to put up huge amounts of lobby money to order for their death sentence. And so it came to pass that the latter triumphed, however, it was short-lived.

Just as I thought that the electric car will finally be brought to its ultimate resting place or just another interesting specimen in a museum, hopes are rekindled as car companies begin to realize that oil companies cannot save them over the long haul. Besides, everyone seems to hate the oil companies these days that if there would be a dislike page on Facebook about them, they would be the first to generate millions of thumbs down in a day.

Anyway, it’s just a sweet revenge to see the come-back of electric vehicles. The guy who sent me the Who Killed the Electrical video just sent me a week ago “The Revenge of the Electric Car.” I didn’t expect that there was going to be a sequel after seeing that emotional ending of that film when the last EV was crushed to its last bolt in a junkyard in Burbank California. The Revenge of the Electric Car is one movie that sparks optimism in our arduous resistance to “petroligarchs” which are but just an insignificant minority in society, but that have so much to say and control in the lives of people. A true to life tale of the triumph of the human spirit in an ambitious attempt not only to make a change on the face of industry and economics, but of the earth which has long suffered in the hands of providers of filthy energy. 

The Revenge of the Electric Car also features influential celebrities like Danny Devito Jon Favreau, Stephen Colbert, Adrian Grenier, Tim Robbins including actor turned governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who are also vocal advocates of clean cars.

Another interesting part of the film documentary is that Asia is geared to become a major player in the manufacturing of these green vehicles to be led by Nissan. But the movie would have been all the more convincing if it featured India’s cars that are powered by air-pressure -- that would have opened a more serious exploration between battery-operated cars like the EVs and air-powered cars.

Private initiatives are also done by small players in the US to convert fuel-driven engines to EVs or hybrid vehicles powered by either gas or batteries. And I am hoping that someday we will have jeepneys, buses, taxis and other public conveyances configured to run on batteries just as we did it for our taxis to run in LPG.

What makes Revenge of the Electric Car (equally as well for Who Killed the Electric Car?) a must-see movie for everyone is that, it sends a message to those who use their money and influence that it is not the government that will make that change for everyone but ordinary people with extra ordinary vision for the future.

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