Student Post: Electric Cars! Or not...

Watching the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car” in class on Thursday brought up a few interesting ideas that I hadn’t thought much of recently. With the discussions we have had in class about various types of cars and how much pollution should be allowed, I found the film’s view of electric cars to be a nice refresher on their history.

The first part of the film that went through the history of electric cars really surprised me. I had no idea how prevalent electric cars had been when the automobile industry really started up. With the lower costs of oil and all of the reasons stated in the film, it is easy to understand how electric cars faded in the past, but it was interesting to see how the film went about explaining how the more recent round of electric cars met their end.

With the more recent rise and fall of GM’s EV1 and other companies’ similar attempts at electric cars still in the recent past, it’s interesting to see the path that automakers have taken us down. With all of the technological advances we’ve had since the 1900’s, it’s amazing that we haven’t figured out how to get cleaner and more efficient vehicles on the road.

Regardless of who is to blame for the recent failure of pure electric cars, I would think that the automobile industry will soon be forced to develop better vehicles that either get dramatically improved gas mileage or that are better hybrids with electricity, hydrogen, or whatever power source they can come up with. Increased gasoline prices are becoming a bigger issue again, and consumers will be doing everything they can to save money.

The film and the discussions we have had in class have also caused me to think more about public transportation. In much of America it seems there is no practical way to make it useful on a large scale, but in bigger cities there is a lot of room for improvement. With the technology that is out there for electric or hydrogen vehicles, why can’t public buses and trains run on this cleaner energy? If public transportation is advertised and promoted as being environmentally friendly in these ways, more people might be willing to take the electricity-powered bus rather than drive their own gasoline-powered car.

I realize that there is currently a lack of infrastructure to really put that into effect, but it can’t be a bad idea to consider broader transportation issues like that instead of only thinking about individual cars.