A Might-have-been Tale of Electric Cars
Now the US election has hurtled to its conclusion and 45 is set to be 47. Over the last year, we’ve seen a most peculiar alliance take shape between a man with extreme views who adores the internal combustion engine and another, views equally extreme, who founded a company that revolutionized electric cars.
Almost 30 years ago, in 1996, GM produced a children’s book meant to educate kids about EVs. Daniel and his parents are shopping for a new car. Here’s a snippet of the text.
Daniel watched as his Daddy got behind the wheel. "May I have the keys?" asked Daddy.
"This car doesn't have keys," the lady replied. "See that little keypad next to the steering wheel? You just punch in a number and it starts the car: For today, you can punch in 11111." Daddy started the car. "Wow!" he said, "I can't hear the engine at all."
"That's because this engine doesn't have any moving parts," said the lady. "A battery doesn't make noise."
Literature it ain’t but hey, it’s got a concept—well, okay, the whole thing is admittedly nothing but concept. Like that first doomed project of the first electric car that GM was making at the time, the EV1, the book sinks like a stone.
And to my knowledge there hasn’t been anything since. I asked a few writer friends if I was right. We have Teslas and Leafs all over the roads in urban areas today, so did anyone know of any electric car references in children's books?
Barring a biography of Elon Musk (now there’s a complicated story, genius meets impulsive eccentric) no one did.
What’s the deal, I thought. The reading public is seen as luke-warm in their appreciation of the only existing path toward emission-free driving? That might be okay if big auto emitters like the United States and Canada were rushing headlong to supercharge their public mass transit systems, but hmm….we’re not seeing that happening either.
When something today makes no sense, and history’s pointing me to the past, it’s almost always time to look farther back for inciting events.
And it turns out that half a century ago, a couple of decades years before the EV1, California senator Nicholas Petris fought to ban gasoline cars—and almost won.
Excerpt:
On March 1, 1967, the newly elevated state senator announced his intention to introduce a bill that would limit each California family to just one gas-powered car beginning in 1975. “[The] internal combustion engine is pouring out poison,” Petris told the press. “So why not limit it?”
Why not indeed? California did end up requiring manufacturers to turn out electric cars at the rate of 2% at first, then up to 10% of their output—that is, until the auto industry pushed back, Reagan got elected, and the requirements were scrapped. I could be slightly off on the details but that's the broad story.
In the late 90’s, when I lived in Maryland, I applied to test the first EV from GM. I had to fill out a long questionnaire. It had questions about my lifestyle, my friends, who I’d be willing to recommend the car to, how often I thought I’d drive it, and plenty more. I completed and mailed it and waited, hoping they’d pick me. They didn’t. They wrote me a letter regretting that I did not fit the profile that they were looking for. I wondered what kind of profile that was.
It turns out that those early tests yielded positive results. What was more, everyone who leased the EV1 loved it, and wanted to keep on leasing it. But in 1999, GM took them all back. And scrapped them. And scrapped all the others on and just off the production line. That’s right. Groundbreaking, revolutionary cars that their drivers loved. Shredded out in the Arizona desert. There was a movie about it: Who Killed the Electric Car? The scene of police arresting those car owners for protesting the destruction of the vehicles they drove and loved and believed in has stuck with me for all these years. Car makers blamed—who else?—consumers. Not enough demand, they said. How can you demand something that the maker has decided to stop making?
Here’s a quote from the movie:
“I’ve never seen a company be so cannibalistic about its own product.”
And now? Global warming is now the climate crisis. California could easily go up in flames every summer. And we seem to be riding another wave of electric cars. British car dealers are being told to prepare for a 69% decline in used ICE car supply by 2028. Even that term, ICE car. So self-explanatory, so pointed. Time to put the internal combustion engine on ice. Or is it? And if not, what’s the snag?
The election confirms that we not past the point where the oil and gas lobby, beset by environmental science data and by citizens concerned about climate change, can pull its stunt again. Sadly, putting the electric car on the page now seems less relevant than it did 24 hours ago. Documenting our century will call for—something else. Whatever that may be.
