Did we kill the electric car?

A film documentary, “Who killed the Electric Car” was released last weekend in New York and LA. Its about the short and tragic life of the EV-1 electric car launched by General Motors in 1996. According to the film, the car was a technological marvel – cheap, fast, and with zero emission. After a few years into the program (2002), it was suddenly cancelled and the cars scrapped.

The film poses the question, Who killed the electric car? Was it “Big Oil”, Washington, infrastructure costs, lack of consumer interest, poor GM marketing and promotion.

Today, the market has dozens of hybrid vehicles and the sales numbers have increased year over year. Below is a quote is from Hybridcars.com

“Hybrid car sales have risen consistently in the U.S., since the Honda Insight debuted in the American market in 1999. In that year, only a couple of hundred Insights were sold. U.S. hybrid sales have generally doubled every year:

9,350 in 2000
20,287 in 2001
35,000 in 2002
47,525 in 2003
88,000 in 2004
205,749 in 2005
116,871 in 2006 (thru June) ”
If the EV-1 had launched in 2006 instead of 1996 how would market react to it? Was the EV-1 just ahead of its time or was GM just not visionary enough to stick with the program?

More info:

http://www.hybridcars.com/ Great source of information about hybrid cars

The Director of the Film, Chris Paine was guest of NPR show, Science Friday. Click here to listen to the pocast.