And although this illustration of impossibility is inspiring, one has to wonder what would have happened if things had been reversed? What would the world be like if Goliath had been the victor instead?

The Bible paints Goliath as an unflattering figure. David calls him uncircumcised, and that he insults the living armies of the one true God. But like David, Goliath is a warrior; a man trying to increase his own wealth and societal stature, while supplying his family and friends with the needed provisions to survive.

Perhaps Goliath was a true scholar than simply an infidel from the land of Gath? Perhaps he would have built roads, and libraries and elevated the pursuit of a civilized world to previously unexplored heights?

But it was Goliath’s arrogance in the end that cost him his life. As he and David approached one another in battle, Goliath took one look at the youthful David and immediately made a negative assumption about the situation. “Am I a dog that you come against me with a staff,” Goliath laughed.

Little did Goliath know though that it would not be a staff or sword that would drag his body down towards the dusty ground, but rather the small stone from a shepherd’s pouch; ultimately extinguishing any hope of his words and actions leading to some sort of positive outcome.

Goliath could have been a brilliant man; an individual worthy enough to progress the current society. But it was his own self-gratification that led to his demise.

In the documentary Who Killed The Electric Car, director Chris Paine chronicles the life and mysterious death of the GM EV1, examining its cultural and economic effects and how they dramatically impacted both the United States government and big business.

In 1990, at the height of the California smog pollution crisis, the Air Resources Board begins targeting the primary culprit auto exhaust, and in turn initiates the Zero Emissions Mandate, requiring 2% of new vehicles sold in California to be emission-free by 1998 and 10% free by 2003.

Trying to get a jump on the competition, GM launches its EV1 electric vehicle in 1996. In many respects it is a revolutionary vehicle, requiring no gas, no oil changes, no mufflers and rare brake maintenance. A typical checkup for the Ev1 consists of replenishing the windshield washer fluid and a tire rotation.

But the excitement surrounding the EV1’s launch quickly disappears, in part due to a mysterious lack of advertising and interest from GM.

By January of 2000, despite GM’s claim that it was still committed to its electrical vehicle program, vice-chairman Harry Pearce says that “there is no particular need” to continue building electric vehicles. It also begins, in the following months, shifting its production from the Ev1 to gasoline-powered cars at its plant in Lansing, Michigan.

In the spring of 2005, all EV1 vehicles, including those all ready occupying the residences of customers are forcibly taken away and dumped into the Arizona desert, where they are crushed and piled on top of one another.

Who Killed The Electric Car truly is a David vs. Goliath story; the difference being that Goliath manages to survive the blow from the slingshot. But what has come out of this battle is a growing grassroots movement; one dedicated to the advancement of electric automobiles, and one that wishes to expose the corruption and outright lying brought upon by individuals connected with the American government, big business and the GM EV1 program.

Recently, I was able to sit down with director Chris Paine and EV1 specialist Chelsea Sexton. With eagerness written all over their faces, they excitedly talked about the filmmaking process and the desired goals they wished to accomplish with such a project.

Chris Paine: I was doing internet stuff and beginning to work on some documentaries and I happened to get one of these electric cars. And I got in the car and I was blown away by how amazing this car was. And I wasn’t thinking about doing a documentary about it at all of course. But then when the cars started getting taken away and the news media wasn’t doing anything on it I began thinking you know what, I better start documenting this car. Because I figured billions of dollars were spent putting these cars on the road, and how many millions of meetings of people putting in charging stations and it just looked like a big project. And then we had that funeral, and at the last second we decided just to film it for fun and we thought we’d do like a Spinal Tap thing about electric cars and celebrities and something really silly. And when the media reported the story as electric car owners bid fond farewell to their cars and get ready for fuel cell cars, and I was like no, we’re pissed we want to keep our cars. And everyone’s really upset about so we thought okay we’re going to do a documentary and that was three years ago.

One of the major issues examined within the film is the lack of advertising with the EV1. Many of the commercials and print ad campaigns tell little about the EV1 and rarely does such an advertisement reveal a clear-cut picture and demonstration of the vehicle’s capabilities.

Chelsea Sexton: I think if the commercials were done differently they would have been far more effective for sure. I think GM knew that. Based on my own experience and just talking to the ad companies and to GM directly, but also some of the stories we’ve heard since, that the ad companies themselves have sort of come to us in frustration and people who used to work on the campaign are just as sad because there name’s on it. You know, brought to by Bill or whatever. But at the same time if you have a program you don’t really want to promote they do a fantastic job of looking like they’re making a sincere effort, and at the same time making totally ineffective commercials. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t necessarily have been a good thing if the commercials were more effective from our standpoint because we couldn’t fill demand as it was, and we had 5,000 people on the list as it was. If there were more effective commercials there would have been that many more frustrated people and GM pretty much demonstrated their absolute unwillingness to build more cars. So it was a bizarre phenomenon.

Chris Paine: When I first saw that commercial I thought it was a commercial for World War 3. Did you ever see Fail Safe? It’s basically they drop a bomb on New York City and a big metaphor they use is Battleship Potemkin. They have something come down, the bomb goes off and all these shadows of New Yorkers are burned into the sidewalk. So I saw the ad and I thought oh its Fail Safe.

Chelsea Sexton: Well this is coming from a company that has a hundred years of marketing experience under their belt. They know how to make a commercial that works.

People want to know how far, how fast, how much? I mean we heard it constantly. Maybe if you put a picture of the car in the ad that would be real cool. Tell people where to go to see one. Most of the ads never had go to Saturn, or anything like that. So it was incredibly frustrating for us. And we got to the point where we sort of discarded the corporate marketing. They’re going to do what they do we can’t affect it one way or the other and adopted what we called EV specialist marketing and went out in our own way. Because we figured there’s nothing to do about this situation.

Chris Paine: That’s one of the reasons why we made the movie. Because if people had known about them and had gotten a chance to know them over the last ten years Detroit would have this huge product right now; because nobody wants to pay four dollars a gallon. And maybe people are like, well I could deal with a plug.

One of the more bizarre actions of GM as portrayed within the film is the company’s insistence to almost cover up the existence of EV 1’s completely. By taking the cars out into the middle of the desert and crushing them, it’s almost like a child trying to sweep a broken lamp underneath a carpet. The difference here being though is that many contend that the lamp was not broken, and one would expect that if you try to stick a whole lamp underneath a carpet, not only is it difficult, but eventually someone’s going to find it and plug it back in.

Chelsea Sexton: Well, once you see the film and see all the reasons that go into it, why they took the cars back seems to be the simplest component. Because the cars were hands down their own best advertisement. And the more they were on the road the more people wanted them; the more they were proven to work. And they have since come up with all sorts of goofy things like liability and they don’t have parts and they’re not safe. And you know something’s up when a car company is ever tying to make the case that they put an unsafe product on the road. There’s something behind that. It becomes sort of baffling after a while.

Since the EV1 is the protagonist of the film, many of the shots and photographic choices are meant to highlight and illustrate the character of the vehicles and the other surrounding mechanical devices. Many of the major inanimate objects contained within the film, such as the GM headquarters in Michigan are depicted as if they themselves are living, breathing entities. Much of this has to do with Paine’s choice of angle and shot design.

Chris Paine: Well, initially they wanted us to shoot on HD, but I said well I all ready have a 100 hours of real verite film stuff. So we were like, well okay, let’s try to rebuild the film in HD. So we went back and did all the interviews again and we had also done a lot of B roll before the electric car was taken away and that we had done in HD. And the two D.P.’s I worked with Jim and Thad, had a really nice sense, and basically the strategy with interviews is to always create a lot of depth of field behind people and create a real saturated feeling of place. GM wasn’t going to be so quite heavy handed in terms of an image. But we were driving to the GM building and we had two hours left in Detroit and we thought let’s film GM; and it’s a maximum-security compound there. We got thrown out of a garage building in about 15 seconds because they thought we were going to open up a rocket launcher or something. So we’re driving past the building just on a regular street and the sun came out from under a cloud, there was this beautiful mass transit train passing by, and we just slammed the tripod down and just watching it. So there was no let’s try to make GM look evil. It was just so beautiful in that moment. And I think that’s kind of it with documentaries. If you ever deny you’re always just looking for things. And we have so many great shots, but they don’t really work with any B roll. So B roll is the place where you can really do your art. Especially if you have a film that has so much information in it. And you’re audience is going to go no more facts, no more facts. So you have to give them other things to look at.

In the film, GM states that the EV1 was not a commercially viable product, and that it was not a secure investment for consumers or corporate shareholders. But the filmmakers point out that the EV1 was exceptional in terms of design, and would have appealed to the public more had it been given a better chance to hold its own against the competition.

Chelsea Sexton: Well, electricity for powering a car is the equivalent of right now about 60 cents a gallon of gasoline, give or take a little bit depending where you live in the country. But it’s a fraction of the cost of gasoline however you want to measure it. In terms of the emission and environmental impact right now the national grid is just over half coal. It’s about 52% or so coal. And certainly we’re not excited about that fact. But all studies have shown that even if you’re charging off that national mix, you have some coal involved, you’re still about half of the green house gas emissions of gas cars. The other interesting aspect to all of that, and oil companies and the auto companies did a great misinformation campaign about this whole thing, and really got some huge environmental organizations coming out against electric cars because of all of this. But the utilities estimate that we could probably charge tens of millions of plug-in cars on existing generating capacity. Not having to build more power plants, not having to build more coal plants that the industries are making the case for. In the time it will take to get all those cars on the road, more renewables will be added to the grid, and the grid will become cleaner over time making EV’s the only kind of cars that get cleaner. Gas cars can only get dirtier as they age. And it’s so much easier to monitor the emissions of one electricity generating plant than to monitor a million tailpipes. So there’s all sorts of reasons that charging up makes more sense than going to the gas station.

And that’s the thing, we’re not anti-corporate at all. I would love to see all these car companies make tons and tons of money. Accepting the fact that they’re there to make money, we’re not trying to go against their efforts. We premised our protests on that idea as well. Nowhere did we come out against the car companies. Nowhere on record do I say GM sucks, because I don’t think that and I have a lot of friends there and I don’t want to see them lose their jobs. People tend to assume oh you’ll love it once GM companies go bankrupt. No, not particularly at all. If anything they’re learning that they have to reverse the traditional model and start building cars we want to buy and that’s the bottom line.

Progress has been made in recent years though with finding a compromise that will satisfy both the needs of the government and the car companies.  This primarily rests in the development of hybrid vehicles, which will incorporate both gasoline and electrical elements, allowing the exhaust emissions of previously all petroleum powered vehicles to be diminished.

Chelsea Sexton: We can see little rumblings in that direction, and there’s some smaller car companies introducing EV’s again. And also we have this newer technology that’s a great technological and political common ground and that’s the plug-in hybrid. And it has in theory 20 to 40 miles of electric range. You can get through your daily commute, Monday through Friday without ever touching gasoline, and when you need to go further you have a backup fuel tank that operates as a hybrid. And they can make them so you can put gasoline in it, ethanol, renewable diesel, bio-diesel any number of things, and have a flux fuel component to it as well. And different fuels will be available in different parts of the country so it’s the best of all worlds. And it can be used with all of these fuels that people are pursuing. In theory you could even put hydrogen in it if you wanted to. So we are starting to see some interesting changes. And both Toyota and Chrysler have announced upcoming plug-in hybrid programs. But with that said, the only way those cars are going to get into the showroom are the government getting involved again, because however cynical we may feel about the government they definitely played their role in forcing the companies to build these cars and do what’s right. This is not the only example at all. They did it with seat belts and air bags, and it’s kind of proven that the car companies aren’t pursuing the general good on their own. But also in the consumers to ask for what they want and not settle for less. Toyota recently said last year to a major media outlet in response to the question why don’t you guys build plug-in hybrids? There seems to be all this grass roots demand for them, and there response was we really don’t have to. So many people are buying the gas burning vehicles, and it will continue to be that way. As long as you’re buying what we build, we’re not going to build anything else. Why would we? So it’s very important that we vote not only politically but also with our wallets.

Chris Paine: Yeah, they say hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Unfortunately, none of it is found on planet Earth.

Chelsea Sexton: Or hydrogen is the car of the future and it always will be.

With Who Killed The Electric Car, Chris Paine examines the development and ultimate fall of the EV1 vehicle. Some could view the film as a mere smear job on both the government and big business, but it’s something much more than that, and as Paine contends, more of an informative message to consumers rather than an attack on political injustice.

Chris Paine: Well we want electricity to be back in the game. Everyone talks about bio-diesel and ethanol, but electricity is the most efficient way to do things. And you can clean up electricity a lot. And even if you have dirty electricity it’s still almost twice as good to use dirty electricity with an electric car than it is to use oil on a well to wheel analysis. Which means, from dragging it out of the ground in the Middle East, to shipping it, to refining it, to spilling it on the way to the gas station, to filling up the tank, to burning it through your engine, to coming out your tailpipe, the total amount of crap that goes into the air is a lot more than when you have an electric car. It really should be the way we push cars around as much as possible.

And then there’s fuel. One of the reasons we did this story is that it’s not just about the electric car or a car in general it’s a metaphor of how difficult it is to move us out of the 20th century and into the future. And I hope our film gets people fired up to go okay, I want an electric car, and we’re going to have the government mandate it if necessary and we’re going to give the car companies money to build these cars and not hydrogen fuel cells.

Shortly after David has slain Goliath he comes to a situation in which he needs a weapon. Hey says to a priest, “Do you have a spear or a sword on hand? I brought along neither my sword nor my weapons, because the king’s business was urgent.” The priest replied, “The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed in the Vale of the Terebinth, is here. If you wish to take that, take it; there is no sword here except that one.” David said, “There is none to match it. Give it to me!”

Goliath was no doubt a powerful warrior, and the weapon he yielded in many battles was quick, effective and allowed an intimidating reputation to develop.

So when that weapon falls, should one simply ignore it and allow it to rust in the ground, or mend it and sharpen it so that it once again is ready to do battle?

The filmmakers feel that the EV1 was GM’s greatest weapon, and still hope to raise it from the dirty, murky basements of the past and send it flying forward into the future.

And perhaps in the end no one really needs to be slain? What if Goliath and David had worked together? With the minds of two brilliant warriors working together, the possibilities for success appear endless.

Chris Paine: The Smithsonian has the car in their basement. Next to it is a sign that reads GM’s failed experiment. You’re future is in a basement.

Matthew Vasiliauskas is a writer and filmmaker living in Chicago.

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