In a telling article Toyota as well as the director of the film came to the defense of GM. The fact of the matter is that not enough buyers cared enough for the program that it withered on the vine nearly eight years before it was really considered a real automotive exodus out of big oil. GM had made some missteps at that time, however, GM was also being ran by people that didn't know the car business. At all. GM was picked because it was an easy target. What really gets me is the fact that people will lambaste a company like this and cause ill will toward them and us, ultimately, as dealers, when it was an uninterested public to blame. When the larger mass of people want to buy something, they want to pay for something that fills their wants. That includes power, convenience, and some form of indulgence. An electric car doesn't fill many of those voids. Hence the ultimate death of the project. Electric cars are the future, but we need battery storage technology to improve, dramatically. I'm more interested in who will reinvent the electric car, not who killed it.From the article at Detroit Free Press:
"The movie 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' was terribly one-sided," Ernest Bastien, Toyota Motor Sales vice president for vehicle operations, said intensely. "It was not balanced at all."
We were talking in Charlotte, N.C., a couple of weeks ago. I was there to drive Toyota's new 2007 Tundra pickup, and the change in topic was completely unexpected.
If it's not surprising enough to hear Toyota defending GM, try this on for size: The film's director pretty much agrees.
"We let Toyota off the hook for how they subverted the program" to sell electric cars because GM had a higher profile, director Chris Paine told me over the phone Sunday."
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On a side note, those celebrities that claim "total greeness," should reevaluate their fuel usage.
Article: TMZ.com
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