It will come as no surprise to anyone that the filmmakers behind Who Killed the Electric Car? have pretty concrete feelings about the death of General Motor’s EV1. “Our frustration came from the knowledge that GM wouldn’t even have made these amazing cars without the state of California saying, ‘You have to put them on the road,’ and then they went ahead and designed and produced the most advanced cars ever made,” commented director Chris Paine during a mid-afternoon conversation. “I think what happened then was that the car industries took the thing apart because they saw their core products threatened.”

Thus began a boisterous conversation with the director, former EV1 sales specialist (and current EV activist) Chelsea Sexton and former EV1 AueroVironment research engineer Wally E. Rippel where we discussed politics, the environment, technology and what really happened to this popular car. “We expected 60 Minutes or 20/20 to come along and do some sort of investigative report on why corporations would spend billions of dollars only to destroy their product,” said Paine, “to come along and find out what’s wrong here. Nobody did.”

And so the EV1 drivers, retailers, scientists and enthusiasts banded together and tried to make some noise. But when they did, the media branded them as being sad to see their vehicles go but excited anticipating the arrival of hydrogen fuel cells. “It’s like your close relative was murdered,” said Rippel, “and then the way the press has it is that you bid them fond farewell and there will be some other family members happily joining shortly. It was a joke.”

Out of all the people sitting at our table, Rippel was the one who knew exactly how much time and effort it took to bring the EV1 to life. He might also be the one most affected by its loss. “For me it is hard. I realized what we could do, could picture what it would be like. Heck, I must have driven the car a hundred times in my mind before any hardware had even been built. And then came that moment at the quarter mile test track where we did all the acceleration tests. It was a very exciting moment for me.”

“So you see these things come together, all the technical problems that have to come together in order to get [things] solved until you can do what you thought you could do theoretically, and all those hurdles make it all that more painful seeing this [destruction] happen. And then, on top of that, seeing this need for [an electric car] grow. When we started, going back to the year 2000, oil was cheap, $12 a barrel, and realizing now, with oil at $70 a barrel,  the need for this, adding in the global warming dimensions, and it’s not just a car but something very crucial for this country.”

“Where [our] government has put money and focus is on [hydrogen] fuel cells where the efficiencies are so low it takes four times the original energy to do the same job electric cars were already doing. Listen, if we don’t do this then we’re going to be buying stuff from the Japanese and the Chinese. Instead of buying oil from the Middle East we’ll be buying technology and product from the Far East.”

But it isn’t just politicians who take the blame in Paine’s documentary. “There are no innocents here,” states the director, “except for the batteries; they’ve always gotten an unfair bad rap. [Otherwise], blame is fairly universal. I think my real overall theme, of course, was that we are all in this together. A lot of times consumers are let off the hook because they’re the audience for the movie so I wanted to make sure they felt a part of all this, too. I mean, I’m a consumer, and I had an SUV until some point, and I wasn’t aware of what was going on.”

“So I think we all need to be able to solve this problem together, we’re all in this together, so I didn’t want to make a piece that was very left wing and liberal and all of that. We’ll get accused of that; we’ve got a point of view and we’re taking on some big industries; but I think anybody who watches the film, and certainly anybody who checks all the facts, will help get the message out to those who might otherwise have written us [and the film] off.”

“It was funny,” continues Paine, “we were on CNBC talking about the film and they ran a scroll at the bottom of the screen during the interview. Remember, television media and news is the one that is most controlled by the automotive industry. They rely upon those advertising dollars and they would never talk about [the EV1 destruction] while it was happening. So we finally get on CNBC and we’re talking about the movie, and along the bottom of the screen it says, ‘an electric car takes eight hours to charge,’ ‘no one in California wanted them.’ It was the GM press release. So what happens is that with so much influence by corporations upon the media the public ends up with far less information to work with thus putting them at fault, too, even if that fault is due to the fact corporations are manipulating the information they’ve gotten to see.”

“One thing I hope comes through here is that we are not against American industry,” said Rippel, “In fact, from everything I now, when we finally do these things [in regards to electric and hybrid vehicles] it will be one heck of a shot in the arm for American industry. It is going to help them in many different ways and could really revitalize our economy. We just have to quite stalling and actually do them.”

For Sexton, she was already doing everything she could to help the economy and her own bottom line by leasing as many of the EV1s to prospective buyers. In the process she fell in love with the cars, so much so the former car saleswoman now finds herself an environmental activist trying to resurrect the California statute that brought the vehicles to life. “I was definitely passionate about these cars,” she laughs. “I used to hang out with the engineers. Heck, I married [former EV1 service technician] Bob [Sexton]. We dated by talking about and fixing cars. So, yeah, I was pretty passionate.”

“But it wasn’t a car where there was a lot of selling involved. It was about giving people choices and demonstrating potential and letting them make the final decision. I mean, a waiting list of 5,000 people sort of speaks for itself. But it wasn’t ever about trying to sell anything to anybody, nor was it trying to make this the car for everybody, it was just about choices. Hummer drivers have the choice to drive Hummers and we’ve never denied them that choice or taken that away from them. We just want the choice to drive something cleaner, especially something that proved to work and work well.”

“I mean, I wasn’t selling an idea here. Those cars I put out onto the road worked really, really well. And then they were taken back… taken back and crushed.”

That crushing proves to be one of the more intensely stirring moments in Who Killed the Electric Car? and it is a moment not lost on Paine, Rippel or Sexton, either. “It was infuriating to see those photos,” states the director. “I was so angry. The hope of a country or a society is in innovation and creation, and some of this is going to work out and some of it is going to really get things to a next level, and then to see the status quo go after these sorts of things and destroy them makes you feel like your country is in reverse.”

“Sometimes you do things and you have such memories in life,” adds Rippel talking about Paine’s helicopter flight discovering the fleet of crushed EV1s out at GM’s desert test track. “What we did on that track was truly fantastic. Then to see them back there crushed was just sickening.”

But things must go on, and as they look into the future this disparate trio isn’t as pessimistic as you might expect. “I’d love to see some of these issues out on national television,” continues the scientist. “There is the issue of oil depletion, issues about how we’re going to be relating to energy; are we going to be fighting over it or are we going to be developing technologies that help us find peace; and I’d like to see these issues out on national TV so people can really talk about [them]. Ultimately, we are in a democracy, and if people are going to be treating it as such then they are going to have to be informed. It starts on that level and, optimistically, I think we might be at a point where that could start to happen.”

“I think we’ve all had our moments of cynicism,” said Sexton. “Yet, at the same time, all of that [cynicism] informs how you will step forward. We talk about being optimists in the film. It is not by accident or not because we are naive that we do that, but it is because we know the potential of what we are doing and how important it is to accomplish that.”

“The greatest help out there right now is probably internet buzz,” adds Paine. “[The internet] might just be the life and death of a movie like ours or like [Al Gore’s] An Inconvenient Truth. And, more importantly, for information like this. Because if there is enough groundswell, if there is enough interest, then the media does have to cover it eventually and that’s where democracy still rules. Thank God for the internet.”

“Look, I think you have to live with hope and inspiration because otherwise you’re just a fatalist. You can do the math and be a fatalist really easily, but then why are we alive? So look at it all as an adventure to try and dig ourselves out of this hole, a challenge to create something brilliant for the future. We’re reaching a tipping point and it is that price of a gallon of gas. But the question is, are there going to be choices out there for people to take advantage of when that point is reached. I’d like to think that there will be, and maybe if people get out to see the film they’ll hopefully find a starting place to get the ball rolling to get those choices.”