What did happen to our electric vehicles? It’s something I’ve been wondering for years, as I remember thinking early in this decade that I would want to get one when I had enough money.

Who Killed the Electric Car? is a new documentary, currently playing at the Bama Theatre nightly at 7:30 through Thursday, which attempts to answer the question in its title. Its try is a very worthy one. The film goes explores the story behind the development of General Motors’ Saturn EV1, the first electric car on the market, to its death.

What makes this documentary so thought-provoking is its conclusion. It manages to place the blame for the death on a number of things, from auto makers to the California Air Resource Board, which repealed its mandate that a percentage of all cars produced in the state had to have zero emissions, to the oil companies.

The film is a credit to investigative journalism because of the lengths that the folks involved in the film went to find out this information.

What makes the film stay with you long after it’s over, though, is that the Why? of the situation is not answered. There are suspicions expressed, such as the oil companies were worried about losing business. Not only was production stopped on these electric cars, but GM pulled as many of them off the street as they could and destroyed them.

The story sounds very conspiratorial, but that’s because it really is. Why would GM go to such lengths to eliminate its own product, especially when the technology was advancing so quickly?

Oddly, this film goes hand in hand with another recent documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s global warming flick. While Gore’s film focuses its attention on a larger problem, a lot of the same issues appear in both, as well as many of the same players.

The end messages share a lot as well because both films indicate that many folks in powerful positions could care less about the world and its future as our home and only care about how much money will be entering their bank accounts this week.

For example, the federal government under the Bush administration sued the state of California to repeal its zero emissions mandate while at the same time Bush was endorsing the use of hydrogen fuel as the future in automobile technology. While zero-emission vehicles are a technology we now have, hydrogen-fueled vehicles will not appear in the near future and may never appear. Also, while electric vehicles cost about the same as normal cars, hydrogen-fueled cars would be much more expensive, to the tune of $1 million, and the fuel would be twice that of gasoline.

It is these comparisons and points that make Who Killed the Electric Car? an effective film that is getting the attention of audiences.