In 1998 I got a grant from an unnamed car company ( to make a 1 hour primetime television documentary on air pollution, on the power and meaning and longevity of the automobile internal combustion engine and on the coming EV – electric vehicle revolution including looking at battery life etc.

The grant allowed me to do whatever I wanted and the result is this documentary which PBS rejected back then because I couldn’t tell them who funded it. It was a legitimate rejection because they want to know funders and part of the deal was I couldn’t tell them.

Looked at from today, I love looking at this history. It was a time when electric vehicles to most of us seemed ridiculous and there were no batteries that could go more than 25 or 30 miles on a charge. But those in the know, especially automobile professionals with the big car companies and researchers on major universities,, knew that the revolution was coming not only for environmental reasons, but also because at the end of the day, these “experts” believe that electric vehicles would be better in a variety of ways.

Today I drive an EV – a Kia – and I love it for a whole lot of reasons just like they predicted.

This documentary looks at Los Angeles during the height of the air pollution crisis when it really was shocking to be an East Coast guy like me and landed LAX and think you were in some kind of heavy fog but it was really just air pollution.

There are all kinds of individuals who love automobile engines and automobiles and some of them are shown in this documentary. People who love the internal combustion engine. I had some friends who spent every weekend opening their hoods and fooling around with their engines. I think the section in this documentary that looks at the internal combustion engine at a university where students are training to understand it is really interesting.

In the section with the home garage built battery-operated electric vehicle, which I originally posted is a clip on my YouTube channel, presents a fantastic guy at a fantastic moment in time when driving in that car with his battery, seemed almost like you were driving in another space and time.

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