The conspiratorial story of the seemingly cannibalistic demise General Motor’s EV1 and a handful of other cars that you’ve 
never heard of (despite their having been manufactured within the last decade) is taylor-made for a compelling documentary. What a shame, then, that this documentary isn’t more compelling. Nonetheless, the story is so important, and the conclusions to be drawn so shocking, sad, and angering, that I would recommend that everyone see this film. And it’s not a bad film. It’s just so much worse than it should be, considering it’s subject matter.
The EV1 (and its now dinosaur cousins) was an electric car that was suitable for the daily driving use of some 90% of the American public, was loved and delighted by seemingly everyone lucky enough to be able to lease one (this sole option allowed what followed), and was the most direct, immediate step toward the environmental, economic, and national security issues created by America’s dependence on petroleum. Great right? Well, let’s just state the conclusion that the film dances around but never really posits: the oil companies flexed their immeasurable muscle and not only forced the auto manufacturers to tank their own product, but manipulated the government on every level from the California Air Review Board to the White House in order to cause every single vehicle on the road (mostly in California, where the regulations to incentivize such manufacture lived a short and meaningless life) to be repossessed (at the end of the lease term) and thrown into landfills. All the while, the majority of the consumer public, to the extent it was even made aware of the vehicles, were too dumb to know what was going on, to question the lies being propagated by Big Oil, and to effectively demand a different outcome.
It’s an outrageous story, one that deserves a film brimming with indignation. Now, I recognize that a degree of dispassion is essential to a good documentary: tell the facts and let the audience decide. That is still true, and I wasn’t looking for Who Killed the Electric Car? to preach. But with a story this compelling, a better structure, with a more strategic and persuasive presentation of the facts, would have gone a long way. Instead the film spends literally half its time blandly talking about the electric car before telling it all over again, this time with introductory graphics borrowed from some hackneyed television news show which actually cause the subject matter to appear more lighthearted. It’s a shame, because just like the issue deserved better treatment at the time, the resulting story deserved a better vehicle, if you will, to bring it to our attention now.
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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