Toyota Executive Defends GM For Killing The Electric Car

It's the kind of thing you hear over dinner every week in Detroit, but it comes as a surprise when a top executive with Toyota leans across the table to make the point.

"The movie 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' was terribly one-sided," Ernest Bastien, Toyota Motor Sales vice president for vehicle operations, said intensely. "It was not balanced at all."

We were talking in Charlotte, N.C., a couple of weeks ago. I was there to drive Toyota's new 2007 Tundra pickup, and the change in topic was completely unexpected.

If it's not surprising enough to hear Toyota defending GM, try this on for size: The film's director pretty much agrees.

"We let Toyota off the hook for how they subverted the program" to sell electric cars because GM had a higher profile, director Chris Paine told me over the phone Sunday.





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Rupert - 12/20/2006 4:02:41 PM

+1 Boost

i swear electric cars are worse for the environment than hybrids, as hybrids make electricity out of wasted energy, yet elelctric cars take from polluting powerstations...
we need more nuclear power, it's way greener.

truckmen - 12/21/2006 6:13:28 AM

0 Boost

I saw the show and thought it was great!Nobody benifits from the electric car exept the consumer!The goverment doesn't get the gas tax and the car company doesn't like them because there is less moving parts = less parts to sell = less money.Good point about how the power station is powered! Hydro electricity is the best.I hear there is a guy in California that has a house that is powered from solar and wind that powers his electric car.WOW ! Another big obstacle is time to charge the batteries; Toshiba/sony has made that battery in a smaller scale and presently desighning them for cars.The electric car would be hard to ignore with fast charging batteries.The car body could be a solar paint combined with regenerative brakes and a gas generator this would be hated by goverment and gas companies.I wan't this teck im a hummer H-1

bagwell - 12/22/2006 11:22:35 PM

+2 Boost

AGREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

fuzion - 12/20/2006 6:41:22 PM

+2 Boost

we need better stories/posts to read..

JRSPEWING - 12/20/2006 8:59:26 PM

0 Boost

BEST COMMENT EVER..........

evperry - 12/21/2006 10:08:58 PM

+1 Boost

if you believe that anything about that movie was on sided then you also believe in the Iraq war........

evperry - 12/21/2006 10:09:10 PM

+1 Boost

if you believe that anything about that movie was one sided then you also believe in the Iraq war........