Who Killed The Electric Car? Page #5

And all I could say was: "Me too."

By the summer of 2004,

there was only a single EV1 left in

private hands in southern California.

Today is D-day. Today is the end.

GM did do it right.

They did create a great, great car.

It's well engineered, it's well designed,

and it's enjoyable to drive.

I've never seen a company be so

canniballistic about its own product before.

It's such an odd experience.

What makes that car go?

- We press this button.

It's an electric car like daddy's.

Hey, you got here just in time.

I know. I see that.

It's so sad.

This is the EV specialist I was talking

about, who gave me her car.

It's really sad, heartbroken.

Are you kidding me?

They are my babies, every one of them.

A lot of human potential just drove off.

- The fight continues.

- It does.

With no more electric cars on the road,

General Motors now had

possession of their entire EV1 fleet.

Pourquoi vouloir toutes les rcuprer ?

Why did they want them back?

What were they going to do with these cars?

We have discovered 78 EV1's

parked in the back parking lot

of a facility that GM owns in Burbank.

Taking off the cars that were

on the road, that were running fine...

Just let those people drive those

cars until they can't drive them anymore.

- Where are you guys from?

- We're members of the EV1 club,

and we want to come

and take a look at our cars.

I know they are being mothballed here.

I have no authorization for you guys to

come back there and look at the cars.

- Can we just go and...

- No.

There were no clues as to

where the cars were going,

until a rumor surfaced on the Internet.

We had the understanding,

through back channels

that these vehicles were about to be

taken to the Arizona proving grounds.

Many EV1's had apparently

been trucked out of state

to GM's vast proving

grounds in Mesa, Arizona.

...so large, it has the track denoted on it...

The location was off-limits to the public,

and there was no way of knowing

where the EV1's might be.

We're flying over GM.

There they are.

Wow.

We flew over General Motors,

and looking down, we could see,

right next to the racetrack

where the EV1 was

first tested, we saw

I don't know, maybe 50 EV1's crushed

and put on top of semi-flatbeds,

right next to the yellow crusher.

General Motors is

almost finished off i think.

I imagine there isn't many EV1's

left that haven't been crushed out.

It's pretty sad.

There are one of four

things that will happen with the EV1's.

They'll go to colleges and

universities, to engineering schools.

They'll go to museums and

other displays across the country.

Other EV1 vehicles are

being driven by our engineers.

And the other option for the EV1's

at the end of their life is recycling.

But know that ever part of

the EV1 is going to be recycled,

dismantled through a third party and then

reused. Everything is going to be recycled.

We're not just going to go crush

it and then send it off to a landfill.

When I saw the picture

of the pile of pressed cars,

it hurt. I thought it

was pretty spiteful.

To see on the computer,

on the Internet,

the crushed EV1's that GM did...

- It was wrong.

- Tragic. That was tragic.

But more wrong is the reasons for it.

"What do we do now?"

At the time that most of this

was going on, no one had any idea

that every automaker

was going to jump ship.

More internet tips

revealed that the EV1's

were not the only

electric vehicles in jeopardy.

A number of Ford Th!nks

and Ranger electric trucks

were discovered in Palm Springs,

and rumored to be set for destruction.

In Los Angeles, activists spotted

a truckload of Toyota RAV4 EV's.

Fearing the destination was

a crushing facility, they chased it.

The next morning the truck turned back.

That guy was going as fast as he

possibly could in a big transporter like that,

trying to lose us, it was clear.

but wasn't able to do it and, of

course, that did change Toyota's plans.

It was so inconsistent,

they didn't know what the hell to do.

Then he goes to the end of the pier,

and these two big security guards come out,

they open this locked gate,

the truck goes inside, and then the

security guards come out and survey us.

Somehow we ended up

at this god forsaken place.

She has everything.

It has spewing smoke into the

harbor that kids have to breathe.

It has an oil well, and it has

Toyota, which is supposed

to be the greenest car company,

but which is simultaneously crushing

and hiding the fact that they're

crushing, clean RAV4 EV's,

instead of selling

them to willing customers.

No one had seen Honda's electric car

since they were taken from customers.

Then, an episode of

"California's Green" aired on PBS.

So we're going to be able

to see cars shredded today.

Absolutely.

Which is not something

most of us get to see.

We shred the car, about a car a minute,

And what's interesting, the first thing

we noticed when we drove up here,

you're going to be shredding

some new cars, too.

These look like perfectly good cars.

Why are you shredding them up?

A little bit of a mystery really,

since I've been here last eight years.

They bring us these cars

from the dealerships,

and they say that they're test cars.

And they've been brought

over to test various emissions

and the insurance

companies won't reinsure them

so they have to watch

them destroyed here.

Boy, that seems like a shame. I'd like

to drive off in one of these things.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's the

sound of a crushed automobile

being shredded into a million pieces.

There's no precedent for a

car company rounding up

every one of a particular kind of car

and crushing them, as if they're

afraid one might get away.

I think they wanted to be sure

that none of them were driving

around the streets any more

to remind people that there

is such a thing as an electric car.

People keep making

all these analogies,

"Crushing the EV is a

betrayal of the American dream."

But it's not a dream.

It's here now!

It may be a betrayal of my dream,

but it's a betrayal of the American reality.

After the discovery of the

crushed EV1's in Arizona,

electric car drivers took action.

They vowed to keep watch

over the remaining EV1's

being stored at the GM

facility in Burbank.

There are about 70 cars left in California.

They're in the parking lot behind me,

and they have plans to crush those as well.

And we need to make a call to action

on General Motors to give them back.

We ended up rallying enough troops

in terms of interest and

organizations to join our coalition

and then we simply didn't leave,

and stayed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It's 6 A.M., and I've been here

for an hour, part of a vigil.

We're making sure that GM doesn't

sneak out their cars in the back lot.

The first two weeks we

were pretty much ignored.

It was like monsoon rains,

it was kind of depressing

to be out there,

but at the same time there

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