In the 1990s, Tom Hanks and other users often raved about their EV1 car on TV talk shows-but they was forced to give the car back to GM when his lease was done. (GM refused to sell the cars, i.e. only allowing leases for the entire model line.)
In short, long before the Prius hybrid came along from Japan automakers, the EV1 had taken over the state of California.
Even if Exxon hadn't bought up the patent on the EV1's battery, the EV1 was already facing a death sentence by the late 1990s because the courts in the U.S. were not willing to defend Americans from MADE IN DETROIT underdevelopment strategy for alternative energy.
NOTE: Remember-both the courts and the U.S. government failed to uphold the newest laws in California, requiring many more emission-less cars on its roads by 2003, i.e. when the new War in Iraq would send oil prices octupling in less than a decade!
I hadn't thought about the death of the EV1 car for years prior to hearing about Who Killed the Electric Car? being discussed with awe by famous speakers-including Naomi Klein, Robert Kuttner, Michael Hudson and Amy Goodman--on Democracy Now (DN) last week. Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect magazine, stated on DN, "That film is one of the most profound documentaries of our time. GM was actually ahead of Toyota, and now working our way back towards a plug an electric car via modified hybrid, but they had the technology 12,14 years ago, you can't make this stuff up. The patent for the battery that made possible the EV1 was bought by Exxon-Mobil just so it would never be utilized again. I think that is why in restructuring the auto industry, you have to get rid of the executives."
Then Kuttner took an appropriate potshot against recent Obama government appointments and at the lack of change we see in Washington (developing with the recent questionable appointments) to Big-Corporate-America-as-Usual. Kuttner laments as follows:
"Its not just enough [to]throw money at them [big money pandering Big Three Car makers]. It gives you a sense of how profound the challenge is [to change the status quo in America]-just analogizing Bob Rubin for a second, in a country where market capitalism has as much power as it does in the U.S., whether the villain of the piece is GM or Robert Rubin and Citigroup, it is bigger than any one person, its a system you have to fight."
Summarizing, Kuttner noted, "It's the mark of their [status-quo-corporate American] power-residual power of the system. Even when the system has come to a crisis of its own making, and your president as attractive and intelligent as Barack Obama, the institutional practice to reappoint the same standards are overwhelming. It is only when Obama looks over the cliff of the failure of his own administration because he has not thought boldly enough, that he may change his plans and move in a more radical direction."
On the other hand, at least some popular mainstream writers, like Thomas Friedman, popular author of The New York Times, are continuing to speak up loudly for a more radical approach to government, especially in Friedman's ceaseless promotion of Green Energy as the core development of this next decade.
SELLING GREEN ENERGY TO ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE
In a recent book review, Thomas Friedman noted how progressives and conservatives together need to spin Green Energy big-time in all Americans favors starting now, "I actually started out to write a book called Green is the New Red, White and Blue, and I came to realize that there was a bigger story going on: What happens when we enter a world where so many people can live like Americans? It's a great thing that so many people can now enjoy the kind of lifestyle that we enjoy, but with that comes much greater consumption and energy usage."
Moreover, Friedman continued, ""What do we have to do to have abundant, clean, reliable and cheap electrons?" To me, the answer to the problem is you need a market signal. I'm not a believer in a Manhattan Project. I 'm a believer in the market. But markets have to be shaped, and the way they're shaped is with price signals. You get the price signals right and it will stimulate the market to do massive innovation on the scale we need."
In other words, America cannot sit around again in 2009 and allow American energy to continue to predominantly depend on cheap oil from abroad.
Friedman and other conservative Americans believe that if the U.S. doesn't do it, China, Europe, and Japan will take over. Friedman claims that "another revolution is [emerging]. It's called the E.T. revolution-energy technology-and nobody's claimed this one yet. We made the I.T. revolution; let's make sure we make the E.T. revolution. If we don't, we will not be a superpower."
THE END OF A SUPERPOWER?-Unless we have Real Leaders
That is right!
