Who Killed The Electric Car?

Ladies and gentlemen,

we are gathered here today

to berieve the loss

of something dear to us.

We are here today to say

goodbye to a special friend,

to say goodbye to an idea.

Some might say that

to be here gathered today

to mourn the loss of a car

would be going too far.

In 1996, electric cars began to appear

on roads all over California.

They were quiet and fast,

produced no exhaust

and ran without gasoline.

Ten years later, these futuristic

cars were almost entirely gone.

What happened?

Why should we be haunted

by the ghost of the electric car?

This wasn't the first time

the electric car was killed.

One hundred years ago,

there were more electrics on the road

than there were gas cars.

For many people electric

cars were the car of choice.

They were quiet an smooth,

and could be charged at home.

Gas cars by comparison required

cranking and produced exhaust.

I'm so old I remember electric cars,

when they were around in the beginning.

I would've been about six years old

on the way to the symphony

in that darling little electric car.

They were very quiet, and it

had beveled glass windows.

It was almost like

sitting inside a huge lamp.

What happened?

Why did the gas car win

over the electric car?

As the 20th century gathered speed,

the electric car lost momentum.

Automatic starters, cheaper

oil and mass production

gave the edge to the gasoline car.

By 1920, the internal combustion

engine had won the race

for control of the roads.

And the modern automobile age was born.

Of the hundreds of millions

of cars built in the 20th century,

almost none were electric.

They were sleek.

They were fast.

And they gave Americans the open road.

But as time went on, their

number one flaw became apparent.

Smog.

California has the worst

air quality in the nation.

And it impacts some of our

largest population centers.

In my district, we have what is

called the "black cloud of death"

that hangs over the port areas

and the areas surrounding the ports.

We are seeing some

tremendously debilitating effects:

asthma rates, cancer rates,

lung development in children,

children not being

allowed to play outside.

In 1989, a study found

that one out of four 15 to 25

year-olds in Los Angeles county

had severe lung lesions

and chronic respiratory disease.

In 1990, there were 41

stage one smog alerts.

No matter what kind of car we drive,

every gallon of gas we burn,

adds 19 pounds of carbon dioxide to the air.

The more gas we burn,

the more CO2 we create.

If you don't do something with

that CO2, if you don't sequester it

it's going up into the atmosphere

and CO2 is a global warming gas.

I believe the problems of

global warming will be far greater

than the problems of social security

or even the problems of war on terrorism.

We've got the equivalent of a nuclear time bomb

on our hand,

with global warming.

If lung disease from air

pollution is unimportant,

if all those things don't count,

we're going to be in bad trouble.

And there's a public health crisis.

But we have to have incentives

and we have to have alternatives.

Car companies experimented

with alternatives over the years,

but none of them ever seem to

make it out of the proving grounds.

I remember, I was the chairman of the

board of the Tennessee Valley Authority,

and we were promoting the electric

car back in the late 70's.

I had even planned a race

from Gatlinburg, Tennessee

to Nashville

between Paul Newman

and Robert Redford.

And I had it all lined up, and then

I realised that we'd get a lot of national publicity,

but there were no cars in the showrooms.

It would take a different kind of race to

make the electric car the car of the future.

The Sunraycer was a solar-powered vehicle

that was developed here, at AeroVironment,

for the purpose of winning a race.

In 1987, GM won the World Solar

Challenge race in Australia

with a one-of-a-kind solar-powered

electric vehicle, the Sunraycer.

Emboldened by their success,

GM C.E.O. Roger Smith

challenged the same design team to

build a prototype for a practical electric car.

If we were to go full speed

ahead with electric cars

the electronics had to be good enough

in order to warrant that concept,

and that's where the work

of Alan Cocconi came in.

You've built the prototype

for this in your garage?

Yes. Well, my garage

isn't quite the average garage,

it's a pretty good machine shop and electronics

lab. But yes, I've built it there.

It's like a three-channel stereo amplifier.

It provides the right size sinus waves

at right frequency to drive the motor

for all the different driving conditions.

So it's a 100 000 watt stereo amplifier.

Alan's breakthrough power system

helped create an electric car

unlike any that had

ever been driven before.

They've kept this car also a secret,

much better than any Detroit secret

because it was all developed

out here in California.

So it truly was a surprise

when it was introduced

to Los Angeles auto show.

This 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.

Other than the jokes that we made

about the wisdom of calling a vehicle the Impact

it was very impressive, it was very high-tech

and it had an interesting premise

that we've got this Corvette

electric-type car,

two-seater, slick styling, and that

we can make a business out of it.

It was interesting.

Program manager called me and said:

"Would you like to be on the

electric vehicle program?"

"That's fine. What do

you want me to do?"

And he said:
"Develop demand for

electric vehicles worldwide."

I said:
"Do you have any instructions?"

He took a blank piece of paper,

shoved it in front of me and said:

"No instructions. You go figure it out." At

that point I joined the program.

It got a lot of interest

flowing in the industry,

but it did something else.

It caught the attention of the

California Air Resources Board.

California's Air Resources Board,

or CARB as it was known,

saw the electric car as an

opportunity to solve another problem.

Since GM had already announced

that they were going to

produce an electric vehicle

before we even adopted the mandate,

the electric vehicle technology

became the technology

of greatest promise.

Knowing a modern electric

car was now possible,

California regulators took a bold

and unprecedented step.

They passed the Zero Emissions Vehicle mandate.

The mandate was simple.

If automakers wanted to

continue to sell cars in California,

some of those cars would have

to be vehicles with no exhaust.

They've decided to ramp it up.

They said 2% in 1998, 5% in 2001

and 10% in 2003.

For the car companies there

were only two options;

Comply with the law or fight it.

In the end, they would do both.

The electric car is here.

The EV1 from General Motors.

The Impact prototype became the EV1,

the first modern electric

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