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| Documentary evidence: attacks on auto industry |
July 1, 2007 |
Two documentaries made a big splash last year, but were their attacks on the auto industry fair?
By Michael Bettencourt
Ever since Michael Moore made a name for himself with his 1989 documentary Roger and Me, stalking then-GM CEO Roger Smith in an attempt to find out why the then-profitable company laid off so many workers in Flint, Mich., GM has become a popular whipping boy for non-fiction filmmakers looking to emulate the success of this first “docu-buster.”
Last summer, two highly regarded documentaries were released that once again took aim at GM: indirectly in Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning An Inconvenient Truth, and directly in Chris Paine’s Who Killed the Electric Car?, which focused on GM’s EV1 electric car program. Neither will challenge Spider-Man or Pirates for box office domination, but the DVD release of both documentaries this year gave these low-budget films considerable populist momentum, riding and fuelling a growing wave of environmental awareness.
Does Gore go too far?
For those who haven’t seen it, An Inconvenient Truth is essentially an Al Gore PowerPoint presentation. The man who was almost the U.S. president has strutted his environmental stuff more than 1,000 times all over the world with the presentation, including this spring in Regina, Calgary and Toronto. He uses current climate research to argue that modern society has a moral responsibility to fight global warming. He discusses the possible ramifications of inaction, including a rise in ocean levels of up to six metres, potentially displacing 100 million residents; the increasing frequency of extreme weather incidents such as hurricanes; and the disruption of the Gulf Stream warm-water current by melting polar ice caps, which could throw parts of Europe into an ice age-like climate.
Gore addresses traditional arguments against taking environmental action, both on a macro (government, industry) and micro (individual) level. This is where he deviates from the science with controversial arguments. He posits the traditional Big Three automakers are in financial trouble because they’re selling inefficient vehicles nobody wants to buy.
But while Gore is correct in stating that the average mileage of new vehicles hasn’t changed in two decades, sales trends indicate North American buyers are driving demand for larger and thirstier vehicles, said Aaron Bragman, a research analyst for the Americas for consulting firm Global Insight.
“Americans and Canadians like big vehicles, they like to carry a lot of stuff, and they have over a long time,” Bragman said from his office in Troy, Mich. “If you look at the fuel economy of sedans they’ve improved quite a bit; but look at consumer tastes over that entire period and they’ve been headed toward thirstier vehicles—until very recently, when fuel prices spiked.”
Gore also lambasted the U.S. in the film for low mileage standards, arguing that higher standards are coming in Canada and Australia. Yet Canadian fuel efficiency standards are strictly voluntary, unlike America’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules. The closest thing Canada has to fuel economy guidelines is the 1981 Motor Vehicle Fuel Consumption Standards Act, but this proposed legislation was never proclaimed into force. With no government agency tasked with enforcing its measures, and only a memorandum of understanding between the federal government and the auto industry, Canada is not a good example of a fuel efficiency standards leader.
Since An Inconvenient Truth was released last year, progress has been made. President George W. Bush proposed an increase in CAFE standards of four per cent early this year, while the state of California and others have moved even further. The current Canadian federal government has stated that mandatory vehicle fuel-efficiency standards will come into effect by 2011 as part of Bill C-30, the recently tabled but not yet passed Clean Air Act. In late April of this year, the American and Canadian governments announced an agreement to align Canadian fuel-efficiency standards with American ones, but it’s not certain whether those regulations will be the more lenient Environmental Protection Agency standards (which seems likely) or the tougher California rules, which have since been adopted by nine other populous states. So all over North America, fuel efficiency standards are becoming more stringent, just as Gore argued for in the film.
Electric car: the usual suspects
Who Killed the Electric Car? opens with the electric car’s origin in the early 1900s, and then discusses its quick death due to mass production of internal combustion vehicles, electric starters and low fuel prices.
Fast forward to 1990: GM showed an electric concept car at the LA Auto Show. Called the Impact, it prompted California’s Air Resources Board to enact legislation a few years later which stated that by 1998, two per cent of new vehicles sold in that state should be zero-emissions vehicles. That meant electric cars. However, by April 2003 that legislation was repealed at the behest—many say—of big businesses, which realized electric cars were bad for profits.
And thus began the controversy surrounding the disappearance of the electric car. The film features Hollywood celebs like Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks and Alexandra Paul (Baywatch) discussing their EV1s, GM’s first electric production car. Narrated by Martin Sheen, the film focuses on battery experts, electric car engineers, a Pulitzer Prize-winning auto journalist and even a former electric car salesperson who was laid off from GM and became a leading protester against the decision to end the electric car program.
The film finds many parties “guilty” of electric car murder: car companies, oil companies, the California Air Resources Board that gave into those firms’ heavy lobbying, the American federal government and even—somewhat surprisingly—hydrogen fuelcells, described as “the jack rabbit chased in dog races that will never be caught.”
While electric cars from Toyota, Ford and Honda are mentioned, the film’s main focus is GM: its program was the most heavily marketed and the company had invested more design dollars than anyone else.
So did big business secretly plot to kill electric cars? Dennis DesRosiers, head of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants, argues that, in fact, other technologies simply proved more usable.
“Once other clean technologies were found that could travel more than 80km at a time without stranding their drivers (with no way to recharge/refuel and return home), electrics came down a notch in priority.” This is especially true of the advent of hydrogen- powered fuel cells, he said. “The good thing about the fuel cell craze is it crystallized all the research dollars; now it’s gone more to a multi-pronged approach.”
All about batteries
Analyst Bragman argued the electric program simply became too expensive to continue, given the EV1 was leased by only 800 people in California and Arizona over four years, according to GM.
“I don’t think there was any evil involved, it was simply a cost issue,” Bragman said. “And [that research] provided a lot of knowledge being used today.”
About the only “suspect” found not guilty of contributing to the electric car’s demise are batteries, the one technology GM says is still not sufficiently developed. The company unveiled a concept vehicle called the Volt at the Detroit Motor Show in January. It can be plugged into any regular outlet, unlike the EV1 which needed a special recharger kit. The Volt also runs on gasoline power once the electric-only 64km range expires.
GM hopes to have a vehicle based on the Volt on sale between 2010 and 2012, if the new-generation lithium ion batteries are ready, as opposed to the last EV1’s nickel metal hydride units. Batteries are key to the potential viability of this next electric car, Bragman said. “It’s all about batteries,” and especially what they cost. “That’s really what they’re working on now, not the technology but the costs.”
SIDEBAR
Already under the hood
A fuel-efficient shopping list for your next purchase
The need to save fuel is a hot topic right now, not only because the price of gasoline continues to rise, but because of the increased global geopolitical pressure to become more energy independent and environmentally conscious.
But while there’s a great deal of talk in automotive circles about green technology, there’s also a lot already going on already under the hoods of modern cars. Fuel economy is up, and not only on hybrids. Here’s what an environmentally conscious driver can look for on their next auto-buying trip:
1. Hybrid electric motor: provides power for hybrids at low speeds, either for full electric operation (full or parallel hybrids) or partially if combined with engine power (mild or series hybrids).
2. Re-generative braking: an invisible “cordless recharging” system on hybrids, it uses brake friction energy to charge the batteries.
3. Electric motor: can either consume or replenish power to the rechargeable batteries, such as when sending electric power to the wheels or slowing the car down to add re-generative braking when coasting.
4. Auto-start/stop system: typically seen on hybrids but coming on nonelectric vehicles (BMW 1 Series now in Europe, and coming to North America), these systems automatically turn off the engine at red lights.
5. Advanced aerodynamics: the more serious the focus on aerodynamics, the closer it will get to the classic tear-drop shape, as exemplified in the no-compromise design of the Honda Insight.
6. Cylinder deactivation: typically used on V6- or V8-powered cars and trucks, half the engine “goes to sleep” when cruising on the highway and “wakes up” with a step on the gas pedal.
7. Transmission gear inflation: adding more speeds in automatic transmissions allows for better fuel economy, especially on the highway.
8. Continuously variable transmission: takes the “more gears is better” theory and expands on it; now in some hybrids and gas-only cars.
9. Tire pressure monitoring systems: a yellow light warns when a tire is low, as low pressure wastes fuel and increases tire wear.
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