Product Details

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? It begins with a solemn funeral for a car. By the end of Chris Paine s lively and informative documentary the idea doesn t seem quite so strange. As narrator Martin Sheen notes They were quiet and fast produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline. Paine proceeds to show how this unique vehicle came into being and why General Motors ended up reclaiming its once-prized creation less than a decade later. He begins 100 years ago with the original electric car. By the 1920s the internal-combustion engine had rendered it obsolete. By the 1980s however car companies started exploring alternative energy sources like solar power. This in turn LED to the late great battery-powered EV1. Throughout Paine deftly translates ha