The Electric Car Graveyard

“In 1996 Electric cars began to appear on roads all over California. They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust, and ran without gasoline.” This quote from the documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car” is quite a shocker when considering for decade’s cars primarily ran on gasoline. In 1996 I didn’t know this was going on, granted I was only eleven years old and had no knowledge of cars or even the potential future environmental damage cars would inevitably endorse. In the last six months the talk about the environment was the number one concern on Canadians minds due in most part to the late start of the frigid winter in 2006. It was at this point that people began to actually see the damage first hand and were starting to get scared.

In the past couple of months I have seen more commercials on TV for hybrid vehicles than I had ever seen before. It angers me to see in a CBC article entitled Hybrid cars, written on February 16th, began with, “Auto manufacturers may be touting the age of environmentally friendly alternatives of hybrid, diesel and fuel cell technologies…”. Although it is great that auto companies are finally trying to sell cars that are healthier for the environment and that will lessen the emissions of greenhouse gases, but didn’t we already have this touting age in 1996 with the electric car? The electric car seems to have been completely ignored and forgotten about for the last eleven years since its existence as if it never were, like fairies or democracy in the United States. The idea of never having to use gasoline again with the coming of the electric car seems pristine for the environment, the customers dealing with the soaring gas prices caused by the War in the East and the people dying of cancer and asthma caused by the toxins in the air. But like the documentary title suggests, someone killed that idea and has set back the public knowledge of these scientific advancements of even more and improved fuel efficient cars.

When I see an SUV, I want to take a can of spray paint and write, “I’m killing the environment”, or “I’m the reason you have asthma” across the side of it, much like the animal activists that did to people wearing fur coats. It often seems like people just don’t care, they think that one single person can’t change the environment that much, but every gas powered car that burns a gallon of gas adds 19 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere. Imagine the amount of CO2 and SUV would add.

Without a doubt the main culprits are the oil companies. It only makes sense that oil companies do not want people abandoning oil and going electric, they would lose the billions of dollars they’ve made and of course they would be out of a job, on the streets begging for food, freezing to death with a blanket made of a million dollar bills.

But are Canadians to blame as well? The director of J.D. Power and Associates in the CBC article states, “Canada is already fuel efficient and that is why hybrid technology is not growing as fast as perhaps the public might think…”. Yes Canada is fuel efficient much more than the United States but why be fuel efficient when we can be “fuel-less” and banish the idea of oil all together? It seems like a crazy proposal, but in 1996 this crazy idea was being developed by those who actually cared and people had the hope of a vehicle that would save the environment. This hope ended quickly and it was because of the all mighty dollar.

According to the documentary, “the claim that there is no demand for [an electric] car is false.” In 1996 people couldn’t buy an electric car, only lease it, which meant they had to fill out a ton or paper work and sometimes people would have to submit a resume just to lease one! And of course because all the vehicles were leased, when the auto companies were told to stop offering the cars, they could legally take the cars away from the people who leased them. Then they were all compounded; like hiding the evidence of a murder and throw in an electric car grave yard, never to be seen again. Fortunately, it seems in 2006 and 2007 a hybrid can be actually owned by a person, so it sounds like they cannot be ripped away from their proud owners are here to stay, for now.

Hopefully now that hybrid cars are being sold, eventually people will demand a gasoline and oil free car, but then again, it had been proven it would take more than consumer demand. It will take the integrity and willingness of the oil companies. Some of you probably will scoff and say, “yeah right, that will never happen.” Maybe it won’t, but if it does, it will probably come at a cost. Maybe it will be when all the ice caps melt, sinking half the world in its wake. Maybe it will be intense heat waves killing millions of people all over the world. Or maybe, just maybe it will be the realization that their children and their grandchildren won’t have the same life that they once had; or a life at all, to enjoy the billions of dollars that they’ve inherited from their relatives by knowingly destroying the world.


References:

CBC Article Hybrid Cars
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/autos/hybrid-cars.html

Who Killed the Electric Car?
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/electric.html