If you are interested in conspiracy theories the petroleum industry has an interesting past that goes much deeper than the successful conspiracy to eliminate US electric street cars.1 Although the hand of big oil is not so present in the film, after the cars were crushed it was Chevron that acquired the world wide rights to the successful NM HI battery and worked to give us hybrids and keep the batteries from any purely electric cars.2 There is at least one place I have seen a reference that the the rights to the EV1 design were subsequently sold to a “major oil company.” Unfortunately this remains little more than an unconfirmed rumor.

Seventy percent of refined petroleum products are used in the transportation industry. An electric car does not use oil, not as a fuel or as an engine lubricant that must be changed regularly. Oil companies have posted the biggest profits in all of recorded history. 3 What height of moral standard would be required for a company not to spend all its extra cash on protecting 70% of its market? And then we see references that we would be better off based upon pollution, cost and efficiency to just leave oil in the ground.4 And that an electric car could travel further on the energy used to refine a gallon of gasoline than a gasoline car could go using the refined gasoline.5 Go figure.

I recently saw that Tesla now has a competitor, but I can’t recall the name of the company–another electric car manufacturer who needs to be told that their cars are dead.

Exxon just made more profits than any company in the history of the world. They paid NO taxes to the U.S.

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And, if you’re an environmentalist, pound for pound the energy consumption from electric cars far outpaces fossil fuels in terms of CO2 released.

By all measurements, the electric car is worse. It killed itself. Things will change though.