Please see the attached file, if you are familiar with the documentary movie "Who killed the electric car?"
Resource:
1. Thomas Hughes, American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm 1870-1970 (Viking, 1989), Introduction (The Technological Torrent, pp. 1-13) and Chapter 5 (The System Must Come First, pp. 184-187 and 226-243).
2. Joseph A. Schumpeter on “Creative Destruction” – a short excerpt from the 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy.
3. McMillan, Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets, Chapter 10, “No Man is an Island.”
Film A DVD copy of the film Who Killed the Electric Car? is included in your course reader. Some of the film’s content, including a useful timeline, is summarized on the following website:
https://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/electric.html. An alternative version of the timeline can be found at
https://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html.
Question: Answer the question below (which refers to the film Who Killed the Electric Car?), laying out an argument to support whatever position you adopt.
What caused the death of the EV1?
We expect you to identify a primary cause or causes. But the readings also suggest that you might do well to look also at interdependent actors or agencies in the technological system.
We know how the filmmakers chose to assign blame. We are not interested in their position – nor, you will note, did we ask the same question they did. We want to know what you think, based on your knowledge of business and society and on your readings of Hughes, Schumpeter, and McMillan.