TOW 29

The documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? was an piece about why the electric car did not thrive after one of its initial pushes into the market in California in the ‘90s.  I can say that I agree with many of its assertions in the fact that they were many of the important reasons, but I feel like it would have been much easier to present.  The documentary was long, well over an hour, and said little more then I can explain in the next three sentences.  The people who killed the electric car were the direct producers of the car because they did not see it as profitable as a gasoline-powered car.  This profitability laid not in the actual demand, which would have likely been similar to gasoline powered cars, but in all of the after market products from engine parts to maintenance to even the gas to power it.  With all of this money as stake not many companies who are well invested in the way things are are willing to make a change because they will result in losses, and so these companies instead invest in the limiting of change through lobbying and PR.  Essentially what I said in the last three sentences are all that the documentary had to say as a whole to get their point across.  From there I just believe that it was a strongly spirited and emotionally tied team making this movie and think that they tried to make this show.  I believe that this documentary could have easily been slipped into 30 minutes but in an attempt to make their rhetoric more convincing and their back story more full the crew added a lot of essentially unnecessary fluff, which may have made the piece better, but detracted from the abruptness in attaining their initial point.