Thanks for the feedback, everybody. I hope I've been careful not to represent myself as an expert, but maybe I can elucidate the argument the film is making.

Yes, there have definitely been studies to determine the ultimate upstream and downstream costs of electric vs gas cars, including the pollution and greenhouse gases emitted by power plants. Opinions are mixed on this one, but engineers Paine quotes in the film say that electric cars are still more efficient, even when you factor in dirty electricity, like that from coal-fired plants. If you use "clean" power, like from, say, nuclear plants (ahem) the difference only gets bigger. I'm not advocating for nukes, just passing along info as I understand it.

Secondly, as to the question of why the Big 3 automakers would have colluded with the oil companies on killing electrics? Well, for the oil companies it's pretty obvious: Electric cars use no fossil fuel, at least not directly. Furthermore, the oil companies have put all their chips on hydrogen as the technology of the future. You can view that cynically (first, it's really far off; second, it requires an expensive form of fuel they hope to control control) or you can believe in it, whichever. As to the automakers: A tremendous percentage of their profits come from servicing the cars they make and selling replacement parts, from $8 oil filters to computer-driven engines that cost $10,000 or more. The electric car doesn't need any of that! Servicing it basically means rotating the tires, checking a few connections and topping up the wiper fluid. Every few years you put in a new battery pack. That's about it! So a major profit center of auto manufacturing simply evaporates, if the fleet shifts to electrics.

GM has a big ad in newspapers today (Thursday), discussing how much they loved building the EV1 and how it got them started on thinking about all these other wonderful cars of the future. No mention of the fact that they killed it, buried it, drove a stake through its heart and scattered the grave with garlic. It's standard counter-propaganda in the face of the film's claims, but it certainly does nothing to diminish their plausibility.

Thanks for reading.