A Look Back at Electric Cars

In Brief: Did Detroit kill the electric car? Bill Curtiss explains.

03/21/07



A note from Buck: Back in the 90's, Earthjustice investigated the Big Three automakers to see if they unlawfully avoided producing electric cars. Deputy Director Bill Curtiss explains.

I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago about Chris Paine's film, "Who Killed the Electric Car?", which highlighted the role that Earthjustice played in the story that is the film's subject. As its title suggests, the documentary is about the fate of the all-electric (not hybrid) car, which was thought by many in the 1990s to represent the future of the automobile. In those days, the concern centered around the damage to public health from air pollution; today, the concerns also include the need to reduce the largest single source of the greenhouse gas emissions that are slowly cooking our planet.

In 1995, Earthjustice was approached to help analyze and present evidence suggesting that General Motors, Ford and Chrysler had colluded to avoid producing electric cars as required by a 1990 California Air Resources Board regulation. The regulation was adopted to reduce tailpipe air pollution, and it required that auto manufacturers would have to offer "zero emissions" (which in practical terms meant electric) cars starting in the 1998 model year. Two percent of the fleet sold in California in 1998 would have to be electric, with the fraction rising to ten percent by 2003. CARB understood that the regulation would require car makers to develop and implement new technology. But with the production requirement eight long years off, Detroit was willing to play along -- GM had just introduced the electric Impact concept vehicle at the Los Angeles auto show with much hoopla and was suggesting the car could be on sale as early as 1995.