Plug in America Director
Talking with Chelsea Sexton
Chelsea Sexton, who appears in Who Killed the Electric Car?, was one of the team that General Motors hired to promote the EV1. Laid off in late 2001 when the company dropped its support of the car, she has become a strong voice in the efforts to save and promote the electric car. TLC's David Cohen spoke to her the day after the film had its premiere in Los Angeles.
TLC: How did your premiere go last night?
Chelsea Sexton: So well! We had more people than we could handle for the movie and we actually had to turn away a bunch of folks, which was discouraging for the day but very encouraging for the film. And then we had a Green Day Festival after the fact that everyone was invited to. It was very exciting to see so much energy for this after spending so many years trying to tell the story.
Right. You were one of the original people in charge of marketing and developing the EV1 in that first GM test, is that right?
Yes. I started just before they launched the car in 1996. I didn't develop the car itself but I came on before we ever started marketing them and stayed through the end.
Would you say there were different factions within GM, some of whom were really working to make this work and others that were subverting what was being done?
Yes, and I think it even goes a little bit further, but I'm sure that there are a lot of different factions in GM—and any other company of that size, really. There are some folks that, to this day, love that car like I did and want to see it succeed, and there are other folks that just never really wanted to see it happen—and I'm sure that there were people who were actively working against it, and varying layers within. Personally I don't think that there was ever an initial conspiracy to kill the car—because I'm just not a conspiracy theorist. I think it was more that they just never expected it to succeed like it did. It never occurred to them that they needed any sort of concerted action to make it not happen.
Do you think that we still need the EV?
Oh, absolutely! And the coolest thing about it is, you can't kill a technology. Certainly those particular cars were destroyed, but electric vehicle technology lives on—and it lives on in some form even in hybrids. They have helped in the way of getting more Americans used to the notion of driving with electricity in their cars. (Of course we always have, but we don't think of that with gas cars.) And they have helped bring down the cost of certain components. But they're still, in the end, gasoline cars.
There are some small companies taking a go at Goliath with electric vehicles. What we'll see from the larger automakers in the nearer term are plug-in hybrids.
Tell us about plug-in hybrids. I assume these are cars that can be recharged every night.
Plug-in hybrids are kind of cool because they marry the best of electric cars with a back-up hybrid system. You end up with one vehicle that has, for example, twenty to forty miles of all-electric range, and that gives you Monday thru Friday without ever having to touch a drop of gasoline because the average commute in this country is in the ballpark of twenty-nine to thirty miles, and then when you need to go further, you have that back-up gas tank. Long term, you can even end up putting flex-fuels in the tank, so rather than just gasoline, you could use celullosic ethanol or renewable diesel or a whole range of options for what you can use without having to rely solely on petroleum products.
How long do you think it is going to be before we have those flex plug-ins?
Well, it's interesting. I would have thought it was going to be a lot longer than it is going to be. The day before our premiere, General Motors announced that they are going to show a plug-in hybrid at the next Detroit Auto Show and likely put it into production. Toyota has been sort of floating rumors of an R&D program for plug-in hybrids, but they're a little more reticent about it, and Chrysler is said to be testing a few on the roads today. So while there is still a huge difference between a concept car and something being in the showroom, it's definitely encouraging to see the automakers finally starting to be responsive to what the consumer wants, which is a complete reversal of the traditional automotive model: We're going to build something and then convince you that you want it—not ask you what you want, and then build it.
What can people do to support not just the hybrids but electric cars?
I think on the consumer level it's absolutely a matter of asking for what you want and not settling for the status quo because as long as we do, that's all we'll continue to see in our showrooms. We've also learned that as cynical we may all have become in our own way about government, it took a law to get these cars on the road in the first place, just as it took a law to get seat belts and air bags and catalytic converters. So there is absolutely a role for things like the California Mandate, which is going to be revisited in just a few months. They're going to review all the technology in September, and then make new decisions early next year about what vehicles are going to be required in order to meet that Mandate. Had electric cars not been taken out of the Mandate in the first place in 2003, there'd be up to a million electric cars on the road today. There are about a dozen states that follow what California does, so getting that Mandate reinstigated with battery electric cars and also plug-in hybrids, and letting it run its course in terms of other states adopting the policy, as well as really allowing market forces to take over, will finally put enough cars on the road to make a difference.
Great! When is that happening?
The Technology Review is late-September, I think the 25 th through the 27 th . I don't know exactly when next year the decisions will be announced, but I have to believe they are not going to want to let this go by again.
Tell us about Plug-In America. What are you doing in that context?
Plug-in America is a newer offshoot of the original activism we started last year to save different cars. Back then we were known as DontCrush.com and we did campaigns to save four different cars, and we won three of them, so there were about a thousand electric cars left. Once we were done with saving cars and there was nothing left not to crush, we moved on to try to get more built. As of last September, we became pluginamerica.com. We work with automakers to try to convince them to build cars, with policymakers to educate them and to help them develop both carrot and stick policy mandates and incentives. We also empower consumers to give them more information, help them make better choices, and encourage them to ask for what they want.
Anything else you want to say?
That's pretty much my biggest soapbox right there! Visit our websites. Get involved. And of course, go to see' Who Killed the Electric Car?' I've just come back from three weeks on the road promoting the picture and by enlarge, people have really liked it, including places we weren't real sure how it was going to be received, like Detroit. So we're really excited about the actual theatrical openings across the country this week. We have people laughing and crying and pissed off at every screening, and that's what we like: Rile'‘em up, and send ‘em out into the world!
Websites to visit: www.pluginamerica.com, www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/electric.html and hear an interview with documentary director Chris Paine on NOW at www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/index.html#here
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