The natural followup to Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is, of course, a documentary about alternative energy transportation, being that Truth is essentially an indictment of the world’s dependency on fossil fuel (and the primary cause for this nation’s oil addiction is, of course, cars). Enter Who Killed the Electric Car, a scathing exposé on the untimely (and unsurprising) death of the electric vehicle initiative at GM (and to a lesser extent, Toyota, Honda, etc.).

Not unlike Truth, it’s my opinion that this film should be seen by anyone who uses fossil fuels directly (or indirectly) — basically everyone who lives in this country, anyone who drives, participates in transportation. But this post isn’t about why you should see the movie, it’s to ask why technologists haven’t stepped up to the plate to create an electric car company.

It’s obvious that electric cars aren’t coming back. The government and the auto industry are too heavily invested in fuel cell technology, which Jimmy Carter’s former energy advisor S. David Freeman likens to a dog race chasing the white rabbit they’ll never catch. Fuel cells are forever 10-15 years away, and even if they finally make it to market in 2015, guess what, it’s too late. The compromise: hybrid vehicles, that get significantly better mileage, but that still use gas. Sipping — not guzzling — doesn’t mean we’re no longer drinking Middle Eastern oil, or putting global warming gasses into the atmosphere.

What we need in the US is a true, competitive all-EV car company. The technology is cheap, available, and ready to deploy; there are already numerous European (even American) EV car manufacturers. What is the US market so afraid of? All we need are some leaders to stand behind the initiative and bring forth some product designed to appeal to the US market, manufactured by a company that operates outside the influence of the oil industry.

Would it be so unheardof if a wealthy technology visionary (say, Marc Cuban) got together with, say, a green-oriented politician who’s fought the auto industry his entire professional career (like, say, Ralph Nader), and perhaps the one man most suited in this country to fight the powers that would surely try to shut such a concerted effort down (Al Gore)? Maybe that kind of triumvirate is a little silly sounding, but the idea of a green car company absolutely is not. Do you think these people could raise enough money to start a car company? Would you buy such a car? Why not?

Inventor and creator of the NiMH battery that powered the original GM EV1 fleet, Stan Ovshinsky, hit the nail on the head: it’s our obligation to use technology to better mankind, and as such, our world. We’d be foolish to invest thousands of dollars a year, each and everyone one of us, on a solution that finds us deteriorating our atmosphere, causing global air-related health issues, and possibly most prevalently, warring in foreign nations securing oil. So, how’s going to resurrect the electric car?