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Film

Auto activist is plugged in

By STEVE PERSALL
Published August 11, 2006

Chelsea Sexton was 20 years old when she fell in love. The object of her affection was the strong, silent type, had a nice body and wanted to save the world. It was a perfect match until Sexton's love was kidnapped, crushed and shredded into little pieces. She mourns to this day.

Sexton, now 30, stills remembers the first time she met the EV1 electric automobile.

"The first time I ever drove the car was in the rolling hills of Tennessee," she said from her California home. "The moment you drove it you knew this was a car that could change the world. It was cool, fast, quiet and nonpolluting. It was a car you could easily fall in love with."

That is, unless you're an oil company executive worried about losing those titanic gasoline profits, or an auto manufacturer thinking bigger gas guzzlers are better, or a consumer too easily swayed by their ad campaigns. Those are the chief suspects in Chris Paine's documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, featuring Sexton's investigation of an idea quashed before its $3-per-gallon time. The film is now showing at the Tampa Theatre and Burns Court in Sarasota.

General Motors introduced the EV1 in California a decade ago, responding to a mandate from the state's Air Resources Board that urged zero emissions technology to curb pollution. They were only available for leasing; Sexton was among 5,000 on a waiting list for the car. The EV1 could travel more than 100 miles per charge. It could accelerate to 60 mph in less than five seconds without a single drop of gasoline or puff of exhaust.

Today, Sexton is a leading advocate of resurrecting electric fuel cells to reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil and clean up the environment.

That is quite a turnaround for someone who at age 17 was selling GM cars at a Saturn dealership. Sexton requested a transfer to EV1 marketing when the product rolled out. She believed in the product and couldn't understand why GM approved an ad campaign with foreboding images that torpedoed the innovation. That is when Sexton began suspecting GM wasn't sincere about the project.

Sexton was shocked in 2001 when GM refused to renew leases for the first EV1 wave, the first step toward her layoff and closing the company's electric car division. GM towed the cars away from stunned customers and hauled the vehicles into a Mojave Desert compound where they were destroyed. That prompted Sexton to organize grass roots advocacy groups such as Plug In America www.pluginamerica.com to advocate electric car technology to auto manufacturers during a current trend in hybrid vehicles.

Becoming an activist isn't always what Sexton expected.

"Overall it's fun although not every moment is," she said. "I was an unlikely GM employee at age 17 and I'm just as unlikely as an activist.

"There are certainly nerve-racking moments. There are times when folks come to my husband and tell him his wife needs to be more careful. That's when I wonder if I'm doing the right thing for my family. There are times when you're the only one sitting on the street in front of a GM facility at 3 o'clock in the morning in the pouring rain, depressing as hell and you wonder if this will ever succeed. You ask yourself: 'Is it worth it?'

"But it is, especially those of us who were on the early part of the journey and felt this almost palpable potential. It's so addictive that you want to re-create it and show the rest of the world that this is what it can be like. It isn't about telling everyone they have to drive electric cars and I would never tell a Hummer driver he doesn't have that choice. How much of a hypocrite would that make me?"

"This is all about bringing that choice back to the consumers who do want it."

However, the only consumers who experienced the EV1's advantages have been marginalized by anti-electric car forces as typical California wackos, rich folks with toys and celebrities boasting a status symbol. Sexton disputes that stereotype.

"That's what has been occurring for the past 10 years: 'It's the California granola munchers who want this,' whether it really was or not," she said. "The automakers and the media played a big part in telling the story that way.

"Part of how we get past that is to broaden our coalition. It's already starting to happen and it'll happen more as more people see the film. As we've gotten the neo-conservatives and national security-minded folks, even evangelicals into this, we become a coalition so broad that we can't be marginalized.

The political machinery is churning, slowly as usual. Minnesota was the most recent state to demand lower emissions that only alternative fuel sources can provide. Bills to provide incentives to manufacture plug-in hybrids are circulating through the U.S. Congress. California is reassessing the mandate it canceled, which allowed GM to stop EV1 production. Who Killed the Electric Car? and its Web site (www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar) ask consumers to urge politicians to support such initiatives. Auto manufacturers seem to be slowly awakening to the economic potential of "green" vehicles.

"The domestic manufacturers that dismissed hybrids are now wishing they had gotten on that bandwagon," Sexton said. "But with the idea of plug-in hybrid that door is still open. The person who steps through that door with a really good car and promotes it will win.

"People can't change their decisions unless they have alternatives. We're trying to present an alternative that works and the technology is here, today. Let's not wait until everything is viable before doing anything at all."

Steve Persall can be reached at (727) 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 10, 2006, 08:29:07]