If you ever wondered why General Motors is going down the tubes then see Who Killed the Electric Car? This is another well-crafted US documentary in the vein of Enron: The Smartest Guys In the The Room, that looks at how corporate self-interest squewered the electric car baby no sooner had it got out of the factory gate.

Interviewees, including here a bearded Mel Gibson and Tom Hanks, are a passionate crowd when it comes to their electric vehicles - perhaps no surprise given the bum rap their machines have had in recent years.

Chris Paine's doc follows the story of the the EV1, the prototype electric car that GM brought out as a response to California legislation to limit exhaust emissions. The EV1 found devoted drivers who fell for its stylish contours, quiet engine, smooth ride, and eco-friendly credentials. However, GM successfully recalled and destroyed virtually all the EV1s, in spite of its popularity.

The EV1 drivers prove a highly determined crowd. Led by a former GM employee, EV1 owners staked out the last repossessed electric vehicles and even offered, in vain, to buy them off GM before they whisked the cars off to be crushed and shredded without trace. As one former EV1 owner puts it, "I've never seen a company be so cannibalistic about its own product before."

Framed playfully as a whodunnit, and a little too self-conscious that it will be denounced for espousing conspiracy theories, the film posits convincingly that the time was right for the electric car, but the usual suspects of big oil, with around $100 trillion of oil still in the ground, car manufacturers, heavily invested in the traditional combustion engined machines, and good old lack of political will and consumer inertia, sent the car to an early grave in 2002.

The interviews are wide-ranging from celebrity stars to industry insiders. More a story about corporate intrigue and consumer action, than a serious discussion of how green electric cars really are, it does highlight some important issues around this very topical subject.

Interesting, for instance, given all the rhetoric that we hear about how new technology, in particular hydrogen fuel, will save us from the potential disaster of peak oil and climate change, the film suggests that mass produced hydrogen cars are years off. "Disneyland," is how one fuel-cell car developer puts it. The film ends on a muted optimistic note, by suggesting that electric powered vehicles are set to make a come back.