Who Killed The Electric Car? Page #10

wishing makes it come true.

I don't work in Disneyland.

I work in the real world, where

wishing doesn't make it come true

and you really have to work hard

to make it come true. Hopefully we do.

On the 27th day of their vigil,

activists finally heard from GM.

Paul Scott called: "Are you guys busy?

They're hauling in the cars right now."

"GM is loading the cars

on trucks right now!"

"What, what?"

"Yeah, we'll drop everything

and run on out there right now."

They've loaded them up,

tires screeching, and panels

cracking against each other

as they shoved them onto the tracks.

We're up against most

of the money in the world.

We're up against the oil industry,

the automobile industry.

It's David versus Goliath

in a very big way

but if there are enough

Davids in the world, we can win.

GM, shame on you!

General Motors is taking the EV1's out of here,

destroying them,

doing the work of the oil companies.

We're going to ask you guys just

to give us some grass area

If you could just get out

of the driveway for us

so we don't have to put

cuffs on anybody. Thank you.

Don't crush the EV1.

On March 15th, 2005,

the last EV1's in the Burbank lot

were taken away and destroyed.

- Alright, come on in.

- Cool.

We'll go down to the vault

and I'll show you the car.

I miss this little car.

Yeah. We love having it.

We have a number of electric

vehicles in the collection, and the hybrids,

but we're especially happy about this.

This is a special one.

- There she is.

- My baby!

Number 99.

- You might recognize this car.

- I do. It was Chris's car.

Sure was.

Please, have a seat.

There's only one challenge,

it doesn't start up.

You know that General Motors disabled them.

- I know.

- We wish they didn't, but they had to.

So we understand that.

We're just happy to have it.

Yeah.

That is such an important

part of automotive history.

- It is...

- To have a manufacturer like

General Motors participate

in this program. It's wonderful.

The thing is, it shouldn't be

a part of automotive history.

Ever since 1939, they

would dangle this electric car.

They'd have a few models out there.

They'd say that's something

in another few years.

And it never came. Because

they never intended it to come.

They make too much money

with the technological stagnation

in the internal combustion engine.

If somethin becomes scarce, then there's

economic pressures to find alternatives.

And as long as no alternatives exist,

the scarce item can become

increasingly profitable.

These are the same batteries that

are used in your laptop computer.

We have 6800 cells.

And it can go 300 miles on one charge,

running along at 70 mph.

It's now 0-60 in 3.6 seconds.

It's an amazing performance for

any car, not just an electric car.

Those same batteries could be put in EV1

and make it a 300-mile-range car very easily.

It's a shame seeing these cars destroyed

when you could upgrade them.

I know what I did and why I did it.

And if I had to do the same

thing again based on the data,

and I've seen what has happened to date,

I would do exactly the same thing.

When we talk about sensible energy policy

most people hear is: "You're going

to make me drive a small car,

"you're going to make

me keep my house cold,

"and essentially, you're going

to make me live like a European."

It's a lack of leadership.

It's a lack of being able

to take on the oil industry,

and the automobile industry,

and recognize that they are not Uncle Sam.

Uncle Sam has to be Uncle Sam,

and Uncle Sam is acting

like they're General Motors.

They're squandering

huge amounts of money

on hydrogen cars, which,

by any reasonable estimate,

are not going to be

selling in the consumer market

for two decades at the earliest.

I think it will go down as

one of the biggest blunders

in the history of the automotive industry.

Have you never heard that expression:

"Death by a million cuts"?

Little tiny cuts, eventually

someone will bleed to death.

The fight over electric cars was

quite simply, a fight about the future.

Goliath won this round, but

now Goliath has new problems.

Oil prices have soared.

America is further

entangled in the Middle East,

and global warming is an

increasingly serious threat.

What can we do to reshape the future?

This city is replete with famous

names that are no longer here.

Why? Because they

couldn't adapt to change.

We all have to adapt to change.

Don't debate about

who's to blame or what to blame.

Let's build new industries.

Let's make America strong again.

Chelsea continues her work with

a new group called Plug In America,

working with citizens

across the political spectrum

to promote an independant energy future.

I met Jim Woolsey at an

event, and as it turns out

he was already a bit of a fan

of stuff that we were doing,

and he's come to work

with Plug In America.

That's one example of the types

of relationships that have to exist

in order to further what we all want.

I've served in four administrations,

with presidential appointments,

all in different aspects

of national security.

And the fact that two thirds of

the world's proven reserves of oil

are in the Middle East, and that we're

so dependant on that part of our world,

is a very big national security question.

Behind me there are two things.

One is a Prius, hybrid

gasoline-electric Toyota,

and an electrical substation.

Today, they don't have

much to do with one another,

but there's a chance that they might be able

to have something to do with one another

in a positive way.

And that's where I think that the

plug-in hybrid is the natural next step,

and that it is avilable to us today.

This is a plug-in hybrid Prius,

which is a modification

to a normal Toyota Prius

that allows you to travel...

Which gives you up to

for the first 50 to 60 miles of the day.

We don't need an expensive

charging infrastructure to use this car.

You can just plug it in

anywhere in your garage.

So we make the environmentalists

happy because it's cleaner.

We make the neo-conservatives

happy because it uses less gasoline.

Well, everyone's happy

because it uses less gasoline.

Plugging in could go a long way to

reducing our dependence on oil.

And generating that electricity

with the wind and the sun

would create even less pollution.

With his battery technology in most

hybrid cars, Ovshinsky has also built

one of the largest thin-film

solar factories in the world.

This is just an ordinary steel roof.

And this is with the adhesive.

You just put the shingles down.

You're in there. You've

run your wires down.

Everything is plug-and-play.

Anybody that wants to make a

revolution shouldn't grab a gun.

Just go and start

working like we do

to change the world by

using science and technology.

I am so optimistic about the future.

Even given everything that we've

seen, and all of the EV wars,

I remain an optimist.

One of the things that makes America work

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