Getting Zapped.(Column)

Byline: Kevin A. Wilson

General Motors got a raw deal from the makers of the film Who Killed The Electric Car? That's not just my assertion; it's that of Toyota Motor Sales exec Ernest Bastien, vice president for vehicle operations, as reported by Mark Phelan in The Detroit Free Press recently. The Dec. 20 story even quotes the film's director, Chris Paine, saying that, "We let Toyota off the hook for how they subverted the program'' in the documentary, released on DVD Nov. 14.

GM's EV1, said Paine, was the "iconic'' electric car while Toyota's RAV4-EV was basically a conversion on a standard vehicle. Paine owns a RAV4-EV, which highlights another aspect that skews perspective on the issue: GM took the leased vehicles back and consigned them to the scrap bin while Toyota left some of its electrics in the hands of consumers. But Paine claims neither vehicle was "properly marketed,'' which apparently means automakers were supposed to convince people that they wanted what they didn't want.

"Customers are not willing to compromise on things they need,'' Bastien told Phelan. "They need cruising range... and they don't want to wait five hours to recharge. The movie didn't give any consideration to that fact.''

Neither GM nor Toyota admits to "subverting the program,'' but the point is that GM pretty much gets painted as the perpetrator of some great evil for ...