For my final video reflection I
chose to do it on ‘Who Killed the electric car?’ ‘Who killed the electric car?’
is a documentary about the introduction of the electric car in the nineties and
then its sudden and mysterious disappearance in 2006. The documentary states
that the internal combustion engine and hence oil is one of the main reasons
behind global warming, pollution and unrest in the Middle East with the
electric car being the solution.
The documentary raises many very
interesting and shocking points, the main being that the car industry has a lot
of influence over the government, so much so that it can effectively stagnate
change in the auto industry. Another point I found very interesting is that GM
dropped its environmentally friendly EV for the polar opposite Hummer, which
the film states is to increase dependency on petrol because Car
companies make to much money in internal combustion engines to facilitate a
change.
I believe that all designers should watch this
documentary as it gives insight to how markets can be manipulated and
controlled, but as with global warming designers cannot really I believe have a
direct strong impact on situations like that. But we can always look for
alternative solution to petrol driven products we design. The problem is larger
and needs governments and politicians that are not connected to the industry in
question to influence change. An example it uses is that it took a law to get
seatbelts, catalytic converters, and air bags so we need a law to change the
pollution of cars.
Another insight that was new to
me is that the government seemed to drop electric cars in favor for hydrogen
fuel cell cars when EVs were already drastically improving in performance and
hydrogen cars have the following draw backs: they are very expensive
cars, the cars cant hold enough hydrogen to get the needed distances, hydrogen
is expensive, and a new hydrogen petrol station infrastructure is needed.
The main three points I took from
watching this documentary are as follows. Firstly, as designers we need to try
not get taken in and influenced by manipulative corporations as much as
possible. The second is that there are very viable alternatives to petrol
driven cars and hopefully soon governments and motorcar producers start
properly taking advantage of the available technology to its fullest potential.
Lastly, the only way we can reduce our dependency on foreign oil is for all of
us to reduce our own dependency on petrol driven products, and as designers
always look for alternative solutions to it.
