In 1996, General Motors leased a small fleet of all-electric EV1s to drivers in California, cars that outperformed expectations, inspired loyal waiting lists, and were then recalled and crushed in the Arizona desert a few years later. Director Chris Paine, a former EV1 lessee himself, investigates why a car people loved was taken off the road and destroyed rather than sold. The film builds its case through interviews with GM engineers, EV1 drivers including Mel Gibson and Peter Horton, oil executives, California Air Resources Board officials, and consumer advocates, laying out a set of suspects: automakers protecting service revenue, oil companies protecting fuel sales, the Bush administration's hydrogen fuel-cell push, battery technology limits, and consumer indifference. Archival news footage tracks the EV1 from its unveiling to the protests staged by former drivers trying to stop the crushings. The verdict the film reaches assigns blame unevenly across those suspects, but the central image, rows of working cars hauled to a junkyard, carries the argument on its own.