Who Killed The Electric Car?

If you haven't seen this documentary, and you care about the environment, I highly recommend you go rent it. It was actually my wife's suggestion for a movie night at home. Really? A techno-dork movie for me? What a sweet gesture! She actually wanted to see it too. What a great, yet disturbing flick. A few years back California had mandated a small percentage of vehicles on the road had to be zero-emission. GM responded with the EV1. A cool little electric car that plugged in and charged in your garage, could outrun a 300Z and was universally loved by everyone that was fortunate enough to lease one. For whatever reason GM didn't want to be in the electric car business and effectively lobbied the California legislature to lift the zero-emission requirements. The EV1s were taken from their grief-stricken drivers and summarily crushed and shredded; never to see the road again. I felt like my wife did when we watched that Penguins documentary. "What? The penguins die?!" "They're killing the EV1s! Oh the humanity! Monsters! Monsters I tell you!" They should put a warning on the cover of that documentary saying some scenes are considered too graphic for engineers, scientists or car enthusiasts. Watching cool little cars get dropped into a shredder is not the way I prefer to spend movie night. I find sad irony in the fact that GM has finally decided that since every other car manufacturer on the planet is pursuing not only hybrid technology, but plug-in hybrids and even hydrogen fuel cells that they will have to keep up. It's an idea whose time has come. I disagree with the president about E85 ethanol. But then again I don't have Archer Daniels Midland in my ear. Plug-in hybrids, plug-in electric and eventually hydrogen fuel cells are the way to go IMHO. Even technology laggard Kansas City has jumped on the bandwagon premiering a plug-in hybrid bus. I want to bring anything to do with these emerging industries to Kansas City. We have the engineering schools, we have the affordable cost of living, and gosh darn it people like us!