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MAN: Ladies and gentleman, we are gathered here today

to bereave 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.

MARTIN SHEEN: 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 and smooth and could be charged at home.

Gas cars, by comparison, required cranking and produced exhaust.

Well, the reason I'm here, I'm so old I remember electric cars

when they were around in the beginning.

I would have 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 of a huge lamp.

What happened?

Why did the gas car win over the electric car?

SHEEN: 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 more apparent.

Smog.

JANANNE SHARPLESS: California has the worst air quality in the nation.

And it impacts some of our largest population centers.

Up 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, uh, lung development in children,

children not being allowed to play outside.

SHEEN: 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,

then it's gonna be going up into the atmosphere,

and CO2 is a global warming gas.

WALLY RIPPEL: I believe the problems

of, uh, global warming will be far greater

than the problems of social security

or even the problems of war on terrorism.

DAVID FREEMAN: 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,

uh, we're gonna be in bad trouble.

ALAN LOWENTHAL: And there's a public health crisis.

But we have to have incentives,

and we have to have alternatives.

SHEEN: Car companies experimented with alternatives

over the years, but none of them ever seemed

to make it out of the proving grounds.

I remember I--I was the chairman of the board

of the Tennessee Valley Authority,

and we were promoting the electric car back in the late '70s.

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 realized

that we'd get a lot of national publicity,

but there were no-- there were no cars in the showrooms.

SHEEN: 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,

uh, for the purpose of winning a race.

SHEEN: 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's CEO, Roger Smith,

challenged the same design team to build a prototype

for a practical electric car.

RIPPEL: 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.

MAN: Now, you built the--the prototype for this in--in your garage?

Yes. Well, my garage isn't quite the average garage.

It's actually a pretty good machine shop

and electronics lab. But, yes, I built it there.

It's like a three-channel stereo amplifier.

It provides the right-size sine waves

and right frequency to drive the motor

for all the different driving conditions.

So it's a 100,000-watt stereo amplifier.

SHEEN: Alan's breakthrough power system helped create an electric car

unlike any that had ever been driven before.

They'd kept this car also a secret

and much better than any other Detroit secret,

'cause it was all developed out here in California.

So it--it truly was a surprise when it was introduced

to the 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,

um, it was very impressive. It was very high-tech

and it had an interesting premise,

that we've got this sort of Corvette-electric-type car,

two-seater, slick styling and all that,

and that we can make a business out of it.

It was interesting.

I--I had worked with the program manager who then called me and said,

"Would you like to be on the electric vehicle program?"

And I said, "That's fine. What do you want me to do?"

And he said very simply,

"Develop demand for electric vehicles worldwide."

And I said, "Do you have any instructions?"

And he took a blank piece of paper and shoved it in front of me and he said,

"No instructions. You go figure it out."

And so at that point I joined the program.

Uh, it got a lot of interest flowing in the industry,

uh, but it did something else.

It caught the attention of the California Air Resources Board.

SHEEN: California's Air Resources Board,

or CARB as it was known,

saw the electric car as an opportunity to solve another problem.

SHARPLESS: 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 sort of the technology

of greatest promise.

SHEEN: 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.

GREG HANSSEN: They decided they were gonna ramp it up.

We're going to say 2% in '98,

we're gonna say 5% in 2001 and 10% in 2003.

SHEEN: For the car companies, there were only two options,

comply with the law or fight it.

In the end, they would do both.

WOMAN: The electric car is here.

The EV1 from General Motors.

SHEEN: The Impact prototype became the EV1,

the first modern electric production car

from a major US car company in nearly a century.

GM chose its Saturn division to market it in California and Arizona.

CHELSEA SEXTON: I bought my first Saturn at 17 and they said,

"Do you want to come work here?"

So I thought, okay. It would be a good college job.

I'll put myself through college this way.

And turned out I loved the cars more

than I loved-- what I was studying in college,

and three years later they announced

the EV1 program, and I jumped on it.

There were the 13 of us, most of whom were mid-20s, unattached,

single, no kids, willing to do anything for little money.

We all handled a particular geographic region.

Mine started as LA, and--and I worked with everybody

from engineers and students to celebrities.

ALL: * I say! I say! I say Alexandra! *

I have a picture of myself

just hearing the Saturn song and just being so happy.

LOWENTHAL: I had one of those early EV1s,

and I used it here in the capital.

I loved the car.

COLETTE DIVINE: It's sort of like everything Americans want in a car.

They're cool, they're fast, they're sexy.

I mean, I got in the car and I felt like...

It was fairly reasonably priced.

It was between $250 and $500 a month.

I haven't tried accelerating too much,

because there're too many cops around.

I'm afraid I'll get a ticket. I'll be too excited.

TOM HANKS: Believe it or not, that sucker goes.

It will take you down the PCH so fast you could get a ticket.

I did kind of feel like Batman, you know, that sort of, like...

And the way it takes off out of the cave.

You know, I have this gate that opens and it goes...

(TIRES SQUEALING)

KAREN THOMAS: You get inside,

and the console is really near you

and the lighting is beautiful.

It was quiet.

(WHOOSHING)

The car was so fast it looked like it would outrun its own shadow.

Oh, it's an awesome car to drive.

It was the--the crest of a wave that we thought was coming in.

It was the new thing that was going to, you know,

change the way everybody travels.

SHEEN: Other car companies began to comply,

often with conversions of gas cars,

but with many of the same advantages of the EV1.

ALEXANDRA PAUL: I'm not mechanical at all,

and I love dealing with my electric car 'cause it's so easy.

I plug it in at night, and when I need to drive it, I unplug

and drive it away.

They're for people who love the environment.

I say, they're just for people who love cars.

They're for people who have to go somewhere.

HANKS: Well, this is amazing.

What you do is with this electric car, Dave, you put the key in

and you turn it. DAVID LETTERMAN: Wow.

And then there's this thing on the floor called the pedal. A pedal.

The exciting thing about this is the cost of operating the car

is the same as if you were driving a typical gasoline car.

But the gasoline only costs 60 cents a gallon.

Going to the gas station is a hassle, believe it or not.

Plugging a car in is not.

The battery, which you charge at home,

it, uh, gets about, between 70 and 80 miles per charge,

which for me is more than all the driving

that I need to do in the course of a day.

HANSSEN: People started seeing the cars on the road

and getting a better understanding of what they could do.

Friends and neighbors and relatives started saying,

"Hey, that's a neat idea." You know,

"I should get one of those."

And we started seeing the momentum building for this

and the waiting lists being created for these cars.

Cut two. Cut two.

I go online to look for other Toyota RAV4s, and I see Toyota RAV4 EV.

And I said, "What's that?" Click.

Wow, my whole world opened up.

It's this electric vehicle.

It goes, you know, 100 miles to a charge, blah, blah, blah, blah...

I was just like, "I didn't know this existed.

"I--I didn't know this was a possibility.

"How come I don't know about this?

"W-W-Well, have you seen this on TV?"

When I first tried to buy the Honda EV Plus,

I drove in it and I said, "Hey, this is a great car." I said, "I'll take it."

Uh, the--the person who was trying to sell it to us was dumbfounded.

He didn't know what to do. He'd never--never leased one before.

Didn't know how to do it, and it took me six weeks of negotiations

before I was able to get the car from their hands.

T-There's nothing like driving a car

when you realize as you're sitting in traffic,

there's no pollution coming out of your tailpipe.

There's, you're just sitting there with batteries on.

LETTERMAN: By driving an electric car, what are you sparing us from?

I'm saving America, Dave, that's what I'm doing.

(LETTERMAN CHUCKLING) I am saving America,

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) uh, by driving an electric car.

SHEEN: Not everyone was sure that electric cars would save America.

Even as GM rolled out its first batch of EV1s, there were skeptics.

Consumer acceptance and understanding

has been a key issue in all this.

Um, and what we discovered is that people

are very cautious about the electric car.

I would consider it, but I--I don't know.

I haven't done enough research,

and I don't know if they're, like,

gonna be strong and big and dependable.

I have to know where I can go to, like, recharge it,

or how to, what I got to do for the battery.

RAMI KHOURY: People don't want a mini tiny car

that has 15-inch wheels on there.

How is he gonna fix that up and go around town and parade it?

SHEEN: While some consumers expressed skepticism about electric cars,

California was pressured to drop the mandate.

A group called Californians Against Utility Company Abuse

fought a small utility surcharge to build charging stations.

They would go to local city council meetings and say,

"You don't want to put in an electric vehicle charging station there.

"That's a waste of--of taxpayer money."

They had this list of supporters.

You know, companies like Trader Joe's

and others which you'd say like,

"Why would they support something like this?"

So the EV drivers actually got together and started writing letters

to some of these people that were listed on their website

as being supporters and said, "Do you realize what you're supporting here?"

And they-- and they got all these names removed from the list.

SHEEN: Further investigation revealed that these groups

were consumer organizations in name only,

funded almost exclusively by the oil industry.

Oil companies also paid for editorials in national publications.

They even argued that the environmental benefits of EVs were dubious.

With electric vehicles, we're gonna have to shift our energy away from oil,

and if we shift it to coal,

there are some environmental problems

that are just very disconcerting.

BILL REINERT: Right now in the United States, we're 55% coal.

If you run the numbers with standard coal power plants,

you don't end up with a better environmental performance,

you end up with a longer tailpipe.

Well, there've been numerous studies conducted

by the California Energy Commission

that clearly show that electric drive is substantially more efficient

and substantially less polluting

even if you get your electricity from coal-fired plants.

SHEEN: But the arguments against electrics did not stop there.

They even made the ridiculous argument

that there was an environmental justice issue involved,

because they said only rich people could buy electric cars.

Well, the air doesn't know a boundary

between Brentwood and South LA.

SHEEN: Car companies began to argue that the mandate was too strict.

W-We had to help with the regulations.

The regulatory people knew nothing about this stuff,

and we began to get the eerie feeling

that we were going over a cliff.

It wasn't going to be possible.

California was faced with the prospect of, "What do you do

"if the car companies don't comply?"

And so rather than, you know, do brinksmanship

about what would happen if they didn't comply and stick with it,

they started negotiating,

um, you know, certain flexibility in the mandate.

SHEEN: California compromised with the automakers,

adopting a memorandum of agreement.

One of the agreements with the state

was that the automakers would build

and market electric vehicles in accordance with demand.

SHEEN: If they didn't want to build more of them,

the car companies would have to make the case that there was no demand.

The person will go unnamed,

but we were having, uh, lunch in the executive dining room

at the GM Tech Center one day.

And just the two of us, and he leans over to me and he says,

"Dabels, you know something? You're my worst enemy."

And I said, "Why is that?" And he said,

"Well, I'm out there lobbying to show

"that there's no demand for electric vehicles,

"and you're out there proving me wrong."

We would sit down with Hal Riney or with executives

from GM and make, you know...

"How far? How fast? How much? These are the three questions we're getting.

"Please put it in the advertising. It's not rocket science."

And they would go back and do the exact opposite.

You know, we never saw a TV ad

with an electric car scampering up the side of a hill

with a good-looking man or woman draped around it.

That's the way they sell cars.

WOMAN: How does it go without gas and air?

How does it go without sparks and explosions?

How does it go without gears or transmissions?

How does it go, you ask yourself?

And then you will ask,

how did we go so long without it?

The electric car.

It isn't coming,

it's here.

SHEEN: What was the objective of these advertisements?

Was it to entice consumers or to scare them away?

Our goal at GM was to make the full-functioning battery electric vehicle

a commercially viable business opportunity for General Motors.

SHEEN: GM's spokesman, Dave Barthmuss,

has worked for GM for nearly 10 years.

We spent in excess of one billion dollars

to drive this market, to build the market.

That means award-winning advertising, developing the vehicle,

developing the recharging infrastructure.

And in a four-year time frame, from roughly 1996 to 2000,

we were able to lease 800 EV1s.

So we started this waiting list

in order to prove demand to GM,

but no matter how many people we got on that list,

it was never considered enough demand.

Everything was anecdotal to GM.

We have heard about these l-l-long waiting lists,

and frankly we did have a list of roughly 4,000 people

that raised their hands and said, you know,

"I would be interested in getting a new EV1 and being an EV1 leasee."

We contacted each of those folks

and we whittled that list down,

and when we actually got down to a point where we were able

to have somebody sign on the dotted line,

that list from 4,000 people shrunk to about 50.

CHELSEA: Only recently did they finally admit

that there actually was a waiting list

and tried to explain in the way of,

"By the time we explained all the limitations

"of the car to them, only 50 would sign up."

Well, if you sincerely want to market a product,

you don't start out by describing

the limitations of the product.

SHEEN: Tom Everhart is president emeritus at Caltech.

He served on GM's board of directors for 13 years.

I do not think General Motors tried hard

to get the electric cars out rapidly.

Now whether the CEO of General Motors

understood that, I don't know.

We had to ask permission of whoever we wanted to give a car to,

and then, by the end, when we were low on cars,

we had to write case statements.

And we tried to put the cars in hands of celebrities,

because they were, number one, the only ones that stood a chance of getting the car.

The third grade science teacher didn't stand a chance.

I had to write a resume for Mel Gibson

and what he'd done and accomplished

because the people I was talking to didn't believe

that he warranted a car.

I was wondering, "Why do I have to fill this out?" you know.

You had to tell them where your birthmarks were, you know.

I mean, it was everything, you know.

"Have you recently had a proctoscope, uh, inserted into your..."

"Well, no."

Uh, you know, you had to-- you had to get really specific

about a whole bunch of things.

Consumers wanted it, but they regarded it as a limited vehicle,

and they expected to pay a limited price for it.

And there's nothing irrational about the consumer that said that to us.

That's a perfectly reasonable statement.

"You're giving me a vehicle that does less, I wanna pay less."

Okay.

But unfortunately I couldn't make it for less.

They argued things like money,

and they're too expensive to build,

and yet they're building four a day.

I mean, they were very hand-built cars with specialized components.

And had they mass-marketed them,

they, of course, would have come down.

SHEEN: As car companies made the case there was no demand,

electric vehicle advocates thought they had a sympathetic ear

with the appointment of environmental scientist, Dr. Alan Lloyd,

as chairman of the California Air Resources Board.

First time I presided over that,

I felt that the car companies weren't making significant effort to it,

so I felt that, "Well, flog them harder,

"flog them often. They need to do better."

For the regulation, we felt, needed to be changed drastically.

And there was some movement that way, but--but it didn't go away.

SHEEN: While the car companies fought the mandate in Sacramento,

GM quietly closed its EV1 assembly line

and began laying off its sales force.

CHELSEA: All of a sudden we were not only taken off

the project but taken out of the company.

They started with the ones with the most...

The biggest waiting lists and the most customers,

and, you know, the primary areas

were the ones they dismantled first.

And so at the end of 2001, you know, that was it

in terms of my employment with General Motors.

Studying General Motors' practices over the years,

and I don't speak for the engineers and scientists

who would really have liked to have done

a better job with motor-vehicle technology,

but the executives at the top,

their motto seemed to have been,

"Going backwards into the future."

And that's what they've been doing for decades.

SHEEN: As a veteran consumer advocate,

Ralph Nader used grassroots campaigns

to make cars safer and more fuel-efficient.

He's familiar with the tactics used

by the auto industry to resist change.

RALPH NADER: There're all kinds of ways

that they can bring politicians to their knees.

Once the auto companies get a long lee time,

then they go to work eroding, eroding,

and then when the deadline is approaching, they say we can't do it,

and there are gonna be terrible consequences.

SHEEN: Automakers took the fight to a new level.

They sued California's Air Resources Board.

GM lead the lawsuit, soon joined by Chrysler

and several auto dealerships.

As California withered under the pressure,

the carmakers found a powerful new ally,

the federal government.

Shortly after joining the suit,

the Bush administration made another announcement.

Tonight I'm proposing $1.2 billion in research funding

so that America can lead the world

in developing clean hydrogen-powered automobiles.

(CLAPPING)

SHEEN: The federal government joined the car and oil industries

to embrace a new clean car of the future.

With more than a billion federal dollars up for grabs,

over the next few years the campaign for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles

began to sway California.

MAN ON TV: Hello there and welcome to the California Fuel Cell Partnership

where we're fueling the future in a new

and environmentally friendly way.

Automakers, energy and technology providers,

along with government agencies

are voluntarily working together

to commercialize the fuel cell for cars and buses.

Soon you may see some of these cars

cruising through your very own neighborhood.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: We wanna just dream about the hydrogen fueling stations.

We wanna just dream about the hydrogen cars. We will build it.

The hydrogen Hummer is not a production vehicle, it's a concept vehicle.

It's a way for Governor Schwarzenegger to have a property

at various events that he goes to when he unveils

a new hydrogen refueling station. At LAX, for example.

SCHWARZENEGGER: I am going to encourage the building

of a hydrogen highway

to take us to the environmental future.

SHEEN: While hydrogen fuel cells offered

an exciting alternative sometime in the future,

what would happen to the technology of today?

What would happen to the electric car?

It all came down to a decisive meeting

at California's Air Resources Board.

Citizens and industry alike testified

as CARB prepared to vote on the fate of the electric car.

I'd also like to thank all the other stakeholders,

particularly also the auto industry

who is going to also have a major impact here.

I like the fact that hydrogen might be in a position

to, uh, displace, uh, the petroleum, uh, products.

DORENE D'ADAMO: I share your optimism on fuel cells, just not to the extent.

I think it's a bait-and-switch, um, uh, strategy.

I hope I'm wrong.

I'm concerned that we've picked numbers

that are based entirely on fuel cells.

What if fuel cells don't work?

It seems that most of the recent changes

to the mandate have been designed

to ease the burden on the automakers.

You're part of the environmental protection agency,

not the corporate profit protection agency.

I think that we've been a contributor to this marketplace, too...

ALAN LLOYD: I agree, I agree, I agree.

But, remember, there are many of you.

We're not giving more time to the auto manufacturers.

Lou Browning, I think, had--had the, uh, job to present the EPRI report,

and he'd been promised 10 minutes.

Uh, one of the things we've found...

Dr. Browning, I would appreciate if you could

summarize this in three minutes.

Okay, I thought I had 10 but...

Alan Lloyd cut him off, whereas he had given the automakers,

uh, sort of unlimited time earlier in the day.

And the improvements we need in fuel cells

are to get, uh, mainly to get the cost down.

In addition, we've recently certified and introduced

the Honda FCX fuel cell vehicle.

Largely, this work is being pushed forward

through the California Fuel Cell Partnership,

which has been very valuable in pulling together the diverse interests.

Any new information on batteries that--that sort of didn't-- didn't mesh

with the overall conclusions was really just shut out

very fast by Alan Lloyd.

Let's get it clear. I'm not trying to show any-- any bias or anything here.

And there were 80 people who came to speak for electric cars

and only two industry representatives

on the side, uh, to kill the mandate.

We have four people out of 78

who are supporting this proposal.

How did we end up with this?

This is a tough, tough program.

It's a revolutionary program.

It pushes the automakers hard.

And they don't like it, and they push back hard.

As you deliberate today on the fate of this program,

I urge you to summon all of your political courage

to make the hard choices that you know

you need to make on this program.

Because when it comes to protecting the health

of the people of California,

there are simply no more easy choices to make.

I saw this as losing this wonderful opportunity,

that we had really invested a great deal

in the infrastructure, in the technology.

It was like the rug was pulled out.

They gave it away. And to me that's just sad.

It's a sad commentary on the way our society

and our system in--in the United States works.

When GM introduced the EV1,

California was setting the toughest

auto pollution standards in the nation.

10% of all cars sold here this year

were to be zero-emission vehicles.

But California dropped those standards

after being sued by automakers.

A lot of the vehicles, the Honda vehicles, the General Motors vehicles,

were all leased and nobody had the option to buy.

So the automakers took advantage of that

and pulled all the cars off the road.

They weren't willing to let people take the cars

and actually drive them and keep driving them like normal cars.

I'll tell you when I noticed that GM was losing interest

was when I wanted to re-lease my car and they wouldn't let me.

I've never had a product I've had to beg and fight

and--and, uh, cajole

and persist so much to get.

And then I had to try and beg and--and fight

and find any way possible to try and keep.

Well, they did not give you... They didn't give you an option to buy.

They said, "Thank you for leasing the car.

"Bye-bye." That's it.

"Turn it in by such and such a day

"or you're gonna be held liable."

CHELSEA: GM had very quietly gone about taking cars back

without anybody saying very much

other than some of the drivers

that complained about having their cars taken away,

but never in a big organized fashion.

They had no choice but to turn them in

or, you know, face the legal consequences of basically stealing a car.

To my knowledge all the cars were turned in

because people had too much to lose.

To this day, the automakers have fought anyone actually understanding

how much demand there was and how much demand that there is.

And so we decided we were going to fight them

in whatever way we could, and we became organizers.

SHEEN: Across California, drivers held protests to save electric cars.

"...turned my head around about electric cars.

"And it broke me of my addiction to oil."

(BAGPIPE PLAYING)

SHEEN: Unable to change policy,

activists staged a funeral to raise public awareness.

It was the same month as the first stage-one smog alert

in Southern California in five years.

I was an EV1 driver, still am,

from 1998 until December of this year

when GM will have to pry it out

of my charger's dead cold hands.

(CROWD LAUGHING)

What the detractors and the critics

of electric vehicles have been saying for years is true.

The electric vehicle is not for everybody.

Given the limited range, it can only meet the needs of 90% of the population.

(CLAPPING)

People used to ask me, "Why do you do what you do?"

And I, especially after I had my son, told them,

"I figure if I do my job well enough,

"my son will never know a time

"before there were electric cars on the road."

And he rode in an EV1 on the way over here, and he said,

"I wish we could keep the EV1 for a long time."

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

SHEEN: By the summer of 2004,

there was only a single EV1 left

in private hands in southern California.

PETER HORTON: 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 cannibalistic about its own product before.

It's-- It's such an odd experience.

MAN: What makes that car go?

You press this button.

GIRL: Press that right there.

HORTON: It's an electric car like Daddy's was.

Hey, you got here just in time.

I know. I see that.

So sad.

This is the EV specialist I was talking about who gave me her car.

It's completely sad. Heartbroken.

Are you kidding me?

They're my babies, every one of them.

A lot of-- a lot of human potential just drove off.

The fight continues.

CHELSEA: It does.

SHEEN: With no more electric cars on the road,

General Motors now had possession of their entire EV1 fleet.

Why did they want them back?

What were they going to do with these cars?

We had discovered 78 EV1s parked in the back parking lot

of a facility that GM owns in Burbank.

But 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.

MAN: Where're you guys from?

SCOTT: We're from the EV1 Club,

and we want to come and take a--a look at our cars.

I know they're being mothballed here.

Yeah, I have no authorization for you guys

to come back there and look at the cars.

Can we just go and like...

No.

SHEEN: There were no clues as to where the cars were going

until a rumor surfaced on the Internet.

We had the understanding, uh, through back-channels

that these vehicles were about to be taken

to the Arizona proving grounds.

SHEEN: Many EV1s had apparently been trucked out of state

to GM's vast proving grounds in Mesa, Arizona.

MAN: ...so large and it has the track denoted...

The location was off-limits to the public,

and there was no way of knowing where the EV1s might be.

CHRIS PAINE ON RADIO: We're flying over GM.

No where around.

There they are.

Wow.

Well, we flew over General Motors,

and looking down we could see right next to the race track

where the EV1 was first tested, we saw,

I don't know, maybe 50 EV1s crushed

and put on top of semi-flatbeds

right next to the yellow crusher.

General Motors is almost finished off, I think.

I don't imagine there's very many EV1s left that haven't been--been crushed up.

It's pretty sad.

DAVE BARTHMUSS: There's one of four things that will happen with the EV1s.

They'll go to colleges and universities and 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 EV1s

at the end of their life is recycling.

But know that every one, every 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 crush it

and send it off to a landfill.

When I saw the picture of the pile of crushed cars,

it--it hurt and I, you know, I thought it was, uh, pretty spiteful.

To see, on the, you know, on the computer, on the I-Internet,

the--the crushed EV1s that GM did...

It was-- it was wrong. It was wrong.

Tragic. That was tragic.

But more wrong is the reasons for it.

All of a sudden we were sort of left at odds. You know, "What do we do now?"

And at the time that most of this was going on,

no one had any idea that every automaker was going to jump ship.

SHEEN: More Internet tips revealed that the EV1s

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 truck-load of Toyota RAV4 EVs.

Fearing the destination was a crushing facility, they chased it.

The next morning, the truck turned back.

LINDA NICHOLES: That guy was going as fast as he possibly could

in a big transport 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,

truck goes inside and-- and then the security guards come out and surveil us.

Somehow we ended up at--at this godforsaken place.

Which 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 EVs,

instead of selling them to willing customers.

SHEEN: No one had seen Honda's electric cars

since they were taken from customers.

Then, an episode of California's Green aired on PBS.

So we're gonna be able to see cars shredded today.

Absolutely.

Which is not something most of us get to see.

We shred the cars, about a car a minute,

1,000 cars a day on a good day.

And what's interesting, the first thing

we noticed when we drove up here,

you're gonna be shredding some new cars here, too.

These look like perfectly good cars.

Why are you shredding them up?

Uh, little bit of a mystery really

since I've been here the last eight years.

They bring us these cars from the dealerships

and 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.

HUELL HOWSER: Boy, that seems like a shame.

I'd like to drive off in one of these things.

(ROARING)

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 in the streets anymore,

to remind people that there is such a thing as an electric car.

CHELSEA: People keep making all these analogies about,

you know, crushing the EV is a betrayal of the American dream.

It's not a dream. I mean, it's here and now.

It may be a betrayal of my dream,

but it's a betrayal of the American reality.

SHEEN: After the discovery of the crushed EV1s in Arizona,

electric car drivers took action.

They vowed to keep watch over the remaining EV1s

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-out action

on General Motors to give them back.

You know, we ended up rallying enough troops

in terms of interests and organizations to join our coalitions,

and then simply didn't leave,

and stayed, you know, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It's 6:00 a.m., and I've been here for an hour, part of the 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,

and it was kind of depressing to be out there,

but at the same time, there was such a sense of mission.

I was here this morning from about 5:45 a.m.,

and, you know, it's pretty-- it's pretty quiet.

Finally, on day 15, we did this announcement of this offer.

SHEEN: As the EV activists recorded the VIN numbers of the cars in storage,

Chelsea led a last-ditch effort to buy the cars from GM.

CHELSEA: "Okay, General Motors contends that no one wants these EV1s here.

"Would anybody be willing to buy them

"for the residual price of the lease?"

And within 48 hours, over 80 people had signed up.

There were only 78 cars in that lot,

and already we had a waiting list

for a car that wasn't available.

You know, it was a tremendous deja vu moment.

So, at this point, we thought it would be appropriate

to come full circle and join me in holding this check

offering $1.9 million to General Motors

to put these cars back on the road.

(CROWD CHEERING)

SHEEN: Despite the offer, GM did not respond.

The fate of the last 78 EV1s remained in doubt.

A small group of activists would continue their vigil,

to keep the dream of the electric car alive.

Who controls the future?

Uh, whoever has the biggest club.

It's, um, in more ways than one.

One they can bash you in and one they can belong to.

(ALL CHATTERING)

Gentlemen! Gentlemen!

I know you're all worried and I agree.

There's plenty to be worried about.

Like this solar power plant

already operational outside Los Angeles.

Photovoltaic cells,

they convert sunlight directly into electricity.

Fluorescents, lasts 10 times as long as a conventional light bulb,

uses only a quarter of the power.

Super windows, insulate as well as 10 sheets of glass.

An electric car, partially powered by solar panels.

But the truth is, gentlemen,

I'm not worried about any of these things.

Because no one's ever going to know about them.

So, there's all these conspiracy theories out there

about, "Who killed the electric car?"

So really, "Who killed the electric car?"

Well, unfortunately, I can't summarize that in one sentence.

What killed the electric vehicle,

very simply, I think, is lack of corporate wisdom.

Uh, in my opinion, it's-- it's big oil that killed the electric car.

Alan Lloyd killed the electric car program. I was there when he did it.

The California Air Resources Board killed the electric car,

under huge pressure from the auto companies.

They were an accessory to the murder,

but the murder was committed by the General Motors company.

I don't believe that for a minute.

GM would sell you a car that ran on pig shit

if it-- if it sold.

SHEEN: Carmakers argued that there was not enough demand for the electric car.

Claiming to have spent millions of dollars on advertising,

they said buyers weren't interested.

But did consumers even know that the car existed?

MAN: Did you ever see this car advertised or hear anything about it?

Never. That's what I'm trying to say.

It's totally under the scope of the radar.

I don't know who drives an EV1, actually.

MAN: You don't know anybody?

Anybody.

Maybe Fernando. I know Fernando...

Fernando, did you ever drive an EV1?

FERNANDO: I've heard of them.

He's-- He's heard of them.

So, they're not making those cars in California anymore?

No. They're not making them anywhere.

That's really too bad. We need those cars.

So, why are they getting rid of it?

MAN: Well, they, uh, said that there was no demand for the car.

Are they insane? That's a no-brainer. Of course there's a demand.

Save gas, save people, save air, save oxygen, save the world.

All sounds good to me.

JOHN WALLACE: We've been selling vehicles for a century,

and you, as you might imagine,

we've sort of figured out what people wanted.

If you ask them, they say, "Well, I want 300-mile range.

"I wanna be able to go 85 or 90 miles an hour.

"And I wanna carry four passengers and have a big trunk."

Which is basically what we were already selling.

DIVINE: I've said this time and time again.

People will buy anything you convince them to buy.

They feed people enough, and they--they believe that's the diet.

Consumers, they couldn't see the difference

between an electric car and a car they were already driving.

You know, because they don't-- they don't read environmental impact.

You know, they don't read political instability caused by oil production

in the Middle East.

All they read is, "Does this car work, and how much does it cost?"

DAN NEIL: What really killed EVs was American consumers

because they did not accept this idea, uh, did not embrace it,

uh, that, uh, vehicles could have these limited ranges

and still be functional, useful, practical.

SHEEN: Did the electric car die because of battery technology?

Did EVs really not have enough range?

And did car companies use the best batteries available?

BILL WYLAM: The battery technology at that time was lead acid batteries

and allowed the car to go 60 miles.

If you started out on a trip knowing

that you were gonna go dead in 60 miles,

you'd be nervous about making the trip.

SCOTT: People think that they need a car that will go 300 miles

and be able to charge it up or refuel it in five minutes.

For virtually, you know, 90-95%

of your driving, you really don't need that.

You need a vehicle that will go at least 60 miles or so,

and that way your--your daily commute is covered.

SHEEN: For those who wanted greater range

from an EV, 100 miles or more,

a better battery already existed.

Developed by a well-known inventor working in Troy, Michigan,

about 30 miles from General Motors Headquarters.

I'm Stan and...

And Iris Ovshinsky.

I think you shouldn't do it that way.

You should say you're Stan Ovshinsky,

and then I'll say I'm Iris Ovshinsky.

Don't do it that way. It sounds funny.

SHEEN: With over 200 patents to his name,

Stan Ovshinsky had pioneered a new battery

and GM purchased controlling share of his company.

We were chosen over 60 different, uh, big companies,

like Westinghouse and others,

who wanted to, uh, win the race to make the batteries

that would be used in pure electric cars.

And we were chosen because we had a battery.

And, uh, to us, putting it into a car

was not the most gigantic thing.

What were we supposed to do?

But you did sort of expect champagne and roses.

I expected champagne and roses.

When I said that we're going to put in

a paragraph into the newspaper

that said we had achieved this,

I really expected congratulations to flow in.

And then I knew that something was different

when the opposite happened.

SHEEN: Ovshinsky was censured for publicizing

his battery advances without permission

and asked not to run advertising in national publications.

The EV1 debuted with a weaker battery.

It would be another two years before Ovshinsky's batteries

were installed in the EV1.

The first version of the EV1 had defective Delco batteries in them,

and they kept failing.

So, that was GM's failure on those batteries.

Once they put good batteries in,

they didn't have any problems.

SHEEN: Ultimately, GM sold its share in Ovshinsky's company

to an unlikely buyer.

DOUG KORTHOF: Then when the nickel metal hydride batteries were improved,

so that they're now lasting longer than the life of the car

and cheaper than an engine,

Chevron Texaco stepped in and purchased control from General Motors

of Ovshinsky technology.

The oil companies do not feel threatened by battery technology

because they effectively crushed it.

The electric car's kind of an interesting case study.

I mean, it--it--it was such an abysmal failure

that I think there are a lot of people involved in the initial decision-making

trying to, pointing fingers at--at whose responsibility it is.

MAN ON TV: To Basra and all Iraq comes good news

with the opening of a new oil field.

The pipeline runs across the desert to the Persian Gulf at Faw.

There, tankers load up with the precious fuel the world needs so badly.

Yes, it's a big day for Iraq, and there's a feast to celebrate.

Sheep stuffed with rice and a host of other good things.

But that's only the first of the good things

that will come to Iraq, thanks to oil.

SHEEN: Oil companies have rarely shied away from global issues.

But why did they lobby so hard to build public opposition

to the electric car in California?

I find it difficult to rationalize why, um,

the oil industry got so intimately involved in this.

Other than maybe they saw it as a threat

to, uh, what I would call a monopoly they had

on--on providing the transportation fuel.

There's no question that people who, uh,

control the marketplace today, the oil companies,

have a strong incentive

to discourage alternatives,

uh, except the alternatives that they themselves control.

And, you know, just as General Motors

40, 50 years ago bought up the trolley systems and shut them down,

uh, the oil companies have opposed

the creation of an electric infrastructure.

I--I differ strongly with that.

We--We did not k-kill the electric car.

The petroleum industry did not kill the electric car.

What killed the electric car was antiquated technology.

It's a good example, and it's something that we should not repeat,

an example that we need to avoid.

RIPPEL: There's still roughly a trillion barrels

worth of oil in the Earth's crust.

And if you figure that the average price

of that subsequent oil will be $100 a barrel,

that's $100 trillion worth of business yet to be done.

However, at some point, when an alternative is good enough,

people will snap over,

uh, and that's what the oil companies fear the most.

KORTHOF: We use 280 million gallons of gasoline a week in California.

Right now, the price is $2.20.

Well, a year ago, it was-- it was $1.20.

Okay, there's a dollar more a gallon.

Somebody's making $280 million more a week this year.

It's the same gas, the same pipeline, the same refineries.

The profits are outstanding.

RIPPEL: What the oil companies feared

is that electric vehicles would--would become successful

six years from now.

What the automobile companies feared

was that they'd be losing money on electric vehicles

in the next six months.

SHEEN: Even as car companies made electric cars,

they fought them at every step.

What was their motive?

Why were they so determined to take them off the road?

I mean, I think in the beginning,

General Motors didn't believe the car was gonna catch on.

I don't think they thought they'd ever have to worry about something

like a conspiracy to keep it from happening.

They hated the mandate.

They hated it so much that they ended up not even really wanting

to be in the business of EVs.

What I frankly detected was a huge resentment about being told

what type of motor vehicle had to be made.

And it became a fight of principle rather than one of trying

to actually technologically solve the problem.

I do know that, uh, I was surprised at some of the stances

they took in Sacramento in arguing.

End of comment.

SHEEN: In a confidential 1995 memo,

the American Automobile Manufacturers Association

sought to hire a PR firm to manage a so-called

"grassroots and educational campaign"

to create a climate to repeal the mandate.

The challenge, according to the document,

was "greater consumer acceptance of electric vehicles."

Why would the car companies campaign

so hard against their own creation?

I made the case at the General Motors Board

that the reason for the EV1 was to give General Motors

a very big head start in how you transform electricity

into the drive power for the car.

And we give them two, three years lead,

and in my judgment it did.

But my frustration was they did not capitalize on the lead.

And the reason, which was discussed at the Board,

was that there was not a profit seen to be coming out

of either electric cars or hybrids.

They could not understand how Toyota could possibly make a profit

out of the Prius, for example.

They were gonna lose their shirt.

And as evidence have shown,

I don't think Toyota is losing their shirt.

SHEEN: If loss of revenue worried car companies,

then the electric car posed another problem altogether.

It had no internal combustion engine,

the cornerstone of the auto industry.

These parts represent a large part of a dealership's income

through the, uh, the replacement and the maintenance.

CHELSEA: Essentially, this group of parts

is a visual representation of the profits

that the auto industry doesn't make when they sell an EV1

or an EV in general.

I can actually identify a lot of these

that didn't get used on the EV1 program.

You know, oil filters you need four times a year.

That was probably the most prominent thing,

along with the several quarts of oil every time.

I didn't enjoy working on an internal combustion engine,

just due to the fact you got so dirty.

And working on the EV1, I'd basically go home looking like this.

Uh, servicing the EV1 was, uh, pretty simple.

It came in about every 5,000 miles. We'd put it in the air,

we'd, uh, rotate the tires,

add washer fluid to it and send it back out on the street.

It's amazing. Look how dirty I've gotten just in handling this stuff.

It's kind of sad.

CHELSEA: In order to sincerely market a clean car,

you have to suggest that your core product is dirty

and that it uses oil and that it uses gas

and that it increases our dependence on foreign oil.

And here's this product that doesn't.

It looks very schizophrenic, but I think when it started, it...

W-We can show the people in California

we can meet the zero-emission requirements.

And later on say, "Do we want to show them that we can meet it?"

That means all of our other cars...

But the more it caught on, the more that there was this dichotomy

between clean and efficient and nonpolluting versus a Suburban.

SHEEN: Car companies had convinced themselves

that they could not make money in the short term with the electric car.

In order to do that, they would need an entirely different vehicle.

TOM EVERHEART: General Motors made a commitment to the Hummer

because they could see the Hummer would make them money.

When the SUVs first came out, people were like, "I can't drive that."

"What? That big old thing?" Especially ladies. "That's a tank!"

"I can't see out of that." "I'm gonna murder somebody in that."

"That's too big." "That's too big for me."

But they convinced people. "This is safer." "You need this car."

"You need a big car." "This is a safer car."

"You need this for your family." "Bigger, safer."

The idea of a, uh, of a penny-pinching EV1 that was super green,

you know, that didn't get a lot of attraction.

Whereas the idea of a gigantic, uh, SUV

that would, you know, crush your neighbor,

that did get a lot of attraction.

Basically, that tells us what the '90s was about.

LESLEY STAHL: What began as a $25,000 tax break grew to $100,000

when Congress passed the President's economic stimulus package last spring.

We think small businesses need to have support at this time

to keep them afloat, to keep the economy moving ahead.

But there's an encouragement for the small business person,

not just to stay afloat, but to go buy

the biggest gas guzzler there is.

The 6,000-pound car, the biggest.

Does that make sense?

I--I don't think we can-- we can dictate what vehicles people buy.

I think the goal here is... This is encouraging them.

I mean, you can almost buy the whole car for the tax break.

Well, I-- I'm not gonna concede that

that would be the way these would be used or that...

Well, there's some evidence that is how they're being used.

Well, I don't know. We'll have to wait and see what--what happens.

* My Maserati does 185

* I lost my license

* Now I don't drive

* Lucky I'm sane after all I've been through

* I'm cool

* He's cool

* I can't complain but sometimes I still do

* Life's been good to me so far *

I don't want to see Hummers driven off the market by the government.

I--I want to see everything given a--a level, equal chance.

The thing that bothers me is that--that,

in fact, it's not a level, equal chance.

We're using our military to ensure the flow of oil.

We-- We're using tax dollars to support the car companies in different ways,

and we're not using our--our t-tax money

to do the things that we really need to do

to prepare for the future.

SHEEN: Federal policy has always had tremendous power to shape the future.

As it gave enormous incentives to buy SUVs,

the federal government also sued California to stop the electric car.

Some pointed to the influence of the oil and auto industries.

FREEMAN: They control things in Washington,

they and the automobile industry.

Now they've got Andy Card,

their former lobbyist right there as Chief of Staff in the White House.

And I guess they don't have to pay lobbyists anymore.

Uh, so, they're saving a little money there.

SHEEN: Andrew Card was Chief of Staff

when the Bush administration joined the suit against California.

Card had also been president and CEO

of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association

during its campaign to kill California's electric car mandate.

Industries began to see if we don't kill this cancer in California,

it's going to spread to the rest of the country.

And I think it became a strategy, um, on the part of many companies

to--to make it a national issue.

I was even told once by a very prominent congressman,

who I shall not mention by name,

that, "I can understand and tolerate

"uh, what you're doing in California,

"but if you ever try to spread your California program

"to the rest of my country, I'm going to have to do battle with you."

Sometimes I listen to the energy debate,

and I think I'm watching an old movie,

uh, that was made back in the '70s.

Because the discussion is exactly the same as it was 30 years ago.

JOSEPH ROMM: Our average vehicle, average car on the road,

is less efficient than it was 20 years ago.

And this is just a complete abdication of leadership.

Political leadership, really.

Uh, because it's impossible to get fuel economy standards

passed through the US Congress.

SHEEN: After the OPEC oil embargo in the 1970s,

the US government created Corporate Average Fuel Economy,

or CAFE standards, to improve fuel economy in American vehicles.

As a result, in less than 10 years

fuel economy increased by more than 50%.

Unfortunately, two decades later

there has been virtually no change.

Jimmy Carter was the last president

that really made, uh, energy, uh, a high priority.

And he devoted his first 90 days in office

to putting together an energy plan.

Uh, I was there as part of it.

And no president since then has put that kind of effort into it.

I am tonight setting a clear goal

for the energy policy of the United States.

Beginning this moment, this nation will never use

more foreign oil than we did in 1977. Never.

FREEMAN: There was just a radical change when Ronald Reagan came in

and took down the solar panels off the White House roof that Jimmy had put up

and essentially declared war on the sun.

I put a freeze on pending regulations and set up a task force

under Vice President Bush to review regulations

with an eye toward getting rid of as many as possible.

I have decontrolled oil which should result in more domestic production

and less dependence on foreign oil.

When Reagan came in, he was not a supporter of fuel economy,

of conservation, of renewables.

And in the mid 1980s, he basically stopped any improvements

in fuel economy standard for cars.

And then in 1985, the price of oil collapsed.

I would not lay all of the blame

at Ronald Reagan's feet, by any means.

Um, I think he had his share of responsibility, but so did the Saudis

who made the very calculating decision

to drop the price of oil dramatically,

principally, to ensure that none of these alternative fuels

and--and energy-saving measures

really produced the desired results.

So they kept the junkie hooked up, in other words.

And as a result, we are today still addicted to oil.

When Clinton came in, and I worked for Clinton,

we were definitely quite interested

in trying to, uh, come up with alternatives

and--and improve the fuel economy, the fleet.

Politically, it was still very unattractive.

The automobile lobby was quite powerful then,

so the administration kind of made

a bargain with the automobile companies,

this partnership for a new generation of vehicles

where we would develop hybrid vehicles,

a combination of a gasoline engine and an electric drive train.

In return, we wouldn't really pursue fuel economy standards.

I never met a five-year-old kid like this in my life.

When I shook hands with him, he said,

"I'm glad to meet you, Mr. President.

"I want you to make a car that runs on electricity and doesn't pollute the air."

I was so impressed, I went to get Al Gore,

and I introduced him to this five-year-old boy.

And he said, "Hello, Mr. Vice President.

"I intend to spend my life working on this."

And he said, "I am going to help you develop an electric car

"that has no pollution."

And he, Al Gore says, "That means we're gonna be partners."

He said, "Yes, I guess so.

"But you don't understand. I'm going to spend my whole life on this."

(CROWD LAUGHING)

For 8-9 years, we've spent about a billion dollars of the taxpayers' money

to develop hybrid vehicles.

And ironically, the US car companies

didn't put any hybrids on the road.

And in fact, the minute George Bush got elected President,

the US car companies walked away from hybrids.

But, and this is the irony,

the US program got the Japanese very nervous.

So Toyota and Honda, in response, developed hybrids,

'cause they didn't wanna be beaten by the US.

Now, they lure people into thinking they're doing something

by their sweet talk,

but I remember way back yonder, they used to have this joke.

And it's not a joke, anymore.

We're giving the environmentalists the music,

and the industry the action.

The second step toward making America less dependent on foreign oil

is to produce and refine more crude oil here at home

in environmentally sensitive ways.

By far the most promising site for oil in America

is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

SHEEN: While it is predicted that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

could supply America with slightly more

than one year's supply of oil,

simply raising fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon

could save the same amount of fuel within 15 years.

FREEMAN: The oil industry and the automobile companies are resistant to change.

The American people need to be reminded

that it took a law to get seatbelts in the cars.

It took a law to get airbags in the cars.

It took a law to get the mileage up

from 12 to 20 miles per gallon.

It took a law to get catalytic converters to control the pollution.

And I think clean cars are too important to be left to the automobile industry.

SHEEN: The California mandate forced automakers to make electric cars.

When California changed it, the cars vanished.

Why did California retreat from the bold law it created?

Uh, having visited all the car companies, they were saying,

"Well, look, we can't produce these increasing numbers

"of the battery electric vehicles."

And I became convinced that...

What are we supposed to do here? Is our job to clean the air?

Or is it to force a certain number

of a type of technology on the road?

ALEC BROOKS: Alan Lloyd, uh, failed in his leadership to--to really steer

the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate toward a--a successful outcome.

Oh, I know Alec very well. WOMAN: And, you know...

I know Alec very well. And we had some...

We had some, uh, heartfelt, uh, m-memos going back and forth.

And it pained me, because I have the utmost respect for Alec.

And it really pained me to be--be, uh, accused

of, uh, basically abandoning, uh, the battery electrics.

SHEEN: In addition to his role as Chairman of the Air Resources Board,

Alan Lloyd had another position.

Just four months before the meeting that killed the electric car,

Lloyd accepted the chairmanship

of the California Fuel Cell Partnership.

LLOYD: I've been involved with hydrogen since the early '90s.

When I became chair of ARB 10 years later, I knew a lot about hydrogen.

So for me, I'm very much fact, technology-driven.

And so maybe you could say that's an asset

or a handicap in terms of hydrogen,

because I--I--I knew what--what--what could be done.

Excuse me here while I watch my little baby get off here.

SHEEN: Carmakers convinced California

that the facts supported the development

of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Were they a better option than electric cars?

Toyota's National Manager of Advanced Technologies, Bill Reinert,

took their prototype hydrogen fuel cell SUV on a press tour.

One of our customers really didn't like this car

anywhere near as much as his EV1.

And the reason was not because it had anything b-bad about the car,

the reason was because his EV1,

he could charge it at home, charge it at work,

and even though it provided limited range,

uh, he didn't have to worry about getting his car charged up.

With this car, with the limited access

to a hydrogen filling station,

he said he'd spend his whole day planning

on how to get hydrogen in the car and how to get back.

It's really humbling. It's-- It's...

The--The more you know, the more you r-realize

you really don't know what the issues are gonna be going forward.

The number one worst question is,

"When can... When will that be on the market?"

When will that be on the market?

That-- That's the worst question.

Consumers are probably going to want to know how long it would be

for this to be mass-produced.

REINERT: That's quite a ways off.

We've got some real technical issues

we've got to solve with hydrogen storage,

with durability, with cost reduction.

Is it a practical solution at this point?

The cars have a limited range,

the durability of the cars isn't very good

and the, uh... Let me see, what else?

Oh, they don't do well in cold weather.

Other than that, they're great.

Have you ever been to a dog race?

You know there's the mechanical rabbit that's out in front,

and the dogs never quite reach it.

Well, the fuel cell is the equivalent of that mechanical rabbit.

We're going for it.

For the last 15 years they've been telling us

the fuel cells are 10 to 15 years off.

RIPPEL: You're an oil company. Your business is to be selling a fuel.

They think that it's a long time off, 30 years,

uh, and they want to have a product to sell.

So from that point, they're protecting themselves,

but the other side is they're protecting the status quo.

We see in Scientific American

a--a double-page ad by General Motors and Shell, both,

touting both the fuel cell that General Motors is doing

and also Shell as a potential supplier of hydrogen.

If hydrogen can do a better job as an energy carrier than electricity,

then, by gosh, it should be the-- the carrier of choice.

The problem is, it's not even close.

How far will this car ride on that amount of fuel?

Uh, it gets approximately about, uh, maybe, about 100-125 miles.

Good. Interesting.

SHEEN: A fuel cell car powered by hydrogen, made with electricity,

uses three to four times more energy

than a car powered by batteries.

This is the beginning of some fantastic technology,

and, uh, thanks for having us out here.

We're gonna look at some other vehicles in a minute,

but, uh, you know hydrogen is the wave of the future.

ROMM: Today, there's a lot of enthusiasm for hydrogen cars.

But, you know, I wrote a whole book, The Hype About Hydrogen.

I think it's pretty clear that hydrogen

is a much tougher alternative fuel

than any other alternative fuel we've ever pursued.

So, these are the five miracles that you need

for a successful hydrogen car in the marketplace.

First, your average hydrogen car costs a million dollars.

That's gotta drop.

Second, uh, no known material to humankind

can store enough hydrogen onboard the car

to give you the range people want.

Miracle number three is the fuel is wildly expensive.

Even hydrogen from dirty fossil fuels

is 2 or 3 times more expensive than gasoline.

Fourth, you have to have the fueling infrastructure.

You know, we have 180,000 gas stations.

Someone's gonna have to build at least

10,000 or 20,000 hydrogen fueling stations

before anybody is gonna be very interested.

And miracle five is you have to hope and pray

that the competitors in the marketplace don't get any better,

because right now, uh, the best car in the marketplace

just got a lot better, the hybrid vehicle.

Still runs on gasoline, you can fuel it everywhere,

it has twice the range of a regular car.

SHEEN: Current hybrid vehicles depend on gasoline,

but use an electric motor to increase their fuel economy.

ROMM: And if battery technology keeps getting steadily better,

then the best hybrid and then plug-in hybrid in the year 2020

will be vastly superior to the best hydrogen car.

You guys have filmed me long enough

to know that, you know, I like to hear myself talk,

number one, and number two, that I'm not gonna dance around the issue.

And--And-- this could be a long ways out into the future.

Toyota says, "Fuel cell cars, 30 years away." Okay.

Then I get the calls from the DOE and the State of California

and, "What in the hell you doing?"

And all the other fuel cell manufacturers,

"You know we're trying to make a living here and you're saying this."

Oh, it's awful.

Just because a lot of people want it to work, it's no guarantee.

That's Disneyland, you know. Wishing makes it come true.

So, um, I don't work in Disneyland.

I work in the real world where wishing doesn't make it come true,

and you really gotta work hard to make it come true. Hopefully we do.

SHEEN: On the 27th day of their vigil,

activists finally heard from GM.

Paul Scott calls, "Are you guys busy?

"They're-- They're-- They-re calling in the cars right now.

"GM is loading the cars on trucks right now!"

We're like, "What? What?

"Well, yeah, we'll drop everything

"and run on down there right now."

A media blast is going on out there.

Okay.

Both are closed.

They loaded them up, you know,

tires screeching and panels cracking against each other

as they shoved them onto the trucks.

FREEMAN: 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 David's in the world, we can win.

* Forever

GM, shame on you!

(SHOUTING)

General Motors is sneaking the EV1s out of here,

destroying them,

doing the work of the oil companies.

And what we're gonna ask you guys

is just to give us maybe, just to the grass here.

If you could just get out of the driveway for us,

so that we don't have to put any hands on anybody. Thank you.

Don't crush the EV1.

SHEEN: On March 15th, 2005,

the last EV1s in the Burbank lot

were taken away and destroyed.

All right, well, come on in. Cool.

We'll go down to the vault, and I'll show you the car.

(EXCLAIMING)

I miss this little car.

Yeah. We love having it.

We have a number of electric vehicles

in the collection and hybrids,

but we're especially happy about this.

This is the special one.

There she is.

My baby!

Number 99.

(KENDALL CHUCKLING)

You might recognize this car.

I do. It was Chris' car.

Sure was.

Please, have a seat.

There's only one challenge. It doesn't start up.

(LAUGHING)

Well, you know that, um, 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.

It is such an important part of automotive history.

It is. Except... To have it manufactured

by 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 there's something in another few years.

And it never came because they never intended it to come.

They make too much money with their technological stagnation

in the internal combustion engine.

If something becomes scarce, then there's economic pressures

to find alternatives.

And as along 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 6,800 cells.

And it can go 300 miles on one charge,

running about 70 miles an hour.

Now it's zero to 60 in 3.6 seconds.

So, it's a really amazing performance

for any car, not just an electric car.

Those same batteries could be put in the EV1

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

So, it's such a shame seeing these cars destroyed when you can 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's happened to date,

I would do exactly the same thing.

For most Americans, when you talk about a sensible energy policy,

what most people hear is, "You're gonna make me drive a small car,

"you're gonna make me keep my house cold,

"and essentially you're gonna 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 are 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.

And 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.

SHEEN: 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 warning is an increasingly serious threat.

What can we do to reshape the future?

STANFORD OVSHINSKY: 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.

SHEEN: Chelsea continues her work with a new group called Plug In America,

working with citizens across the political spectrum

to promote an independent energy future.

You know, 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, uh, administrations in the 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 we're so dependent on that part of the world,

is a very big national security question.

Well, behind me there are two things.

One is a Prius hybrid gasoline-electric, uh, 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 the plug-in hybrid is the natural next step,

and that is available to us today.

HANSSEN: 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 150, 180 miles per gallon

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, uh, neo-conservatives happy

because it uses less gasoline.

Well, everyone's happy because it uses less gasoline.

SHEEN: 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, nail them down.

You're in there. You've run your wires down. Everything is plug and play.

Anybody who 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.

I mean, even given everything that we've seen, and all of the EV wars,

I remain an optimist.

NEIL: One of the things that makes America work

is this rampant grassroots agitation

for things that are new.

When you get a coalition of that size and that surprising character,

you get politicians' attention.

And here we have a serious problem,

America is addicted to oil.

And I call all this a potential coalition between the tree huggers,

the do-gooders, the sodbusters,

the cheap hawks and the evangelicals.

That's a pretty good size coalition.

We are about to enter into a world

that's truly renewable and completely clean,

if we just have the willpower to implement it.

Well, you don't have to wait for major auto companies to do it.

You can do it yourself, like what I'm doing here.

Old cars, new cars, doesn't really matter. I can convert anything.

You haven't seen anything yet.

The future is going to be very bright in this area,

and the forces are all pushing in that direction,

both the economic and technological forces.

So, you know, once people see these things,

they say, "Wow, I want to do this."

And so the word is getting out.

STANFORD: That gives us hope.

Hope that we can end up our lives

having achieved what we set out to do.

And we have.

And you still have so many more years you want to do things.

I wouldn't have enough time.

I've-- I am shooting without dice right now so...

* Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

* Maybe sunshine and maybe rain

* But as for me, I'll wait and see

* And maybe it'll bring my love to me

* Who knows, who knows

* Who knows any better than I

* That it's she who's keeping me alive

* Keeping the little girl as my goal

* Makes my life worth living, you know

* Another day, another day

* Just another day I wanna live

* To share the love that only she can give

* And if she don't come on home

* I pray the Lord will help me carry on

* Another day, another day

* Just another day Oh, Lord

* Another day, another day

* Just another day I wanna live

* To share the love that only she can give

* And if she don't come on home

* I pray the Lord will help me carry on

* Another day, another day

* Just another day Oh, Lord

* For who knows what tomorrow will bring

* Maybe sunshine and maybe rain

* But as for me, I'll wait and see *

* Realize

* The greatest love

* We are

* The only ones

* We are

* So young

* Nothing

* To fear

* This

* Is forevermore

* Realize

* The greatest love

* We are

* So young

* Nothing to fear

* Don't look down

* Do what you feel

* Feel how you move

* Don't look back

* We are alone

(WOMAN CONTINUES SINGING)

* We are so young