Tom Hanks: I DID Save the Electric Car, Gosh Darn It
Actor Tom Hanks recently defended himself against the New Yorker, who called him out on his appearance in “Who Killed the Electric Car?” Here’s his letter to the editor:
Peter J. Boyer, in his otherwise spot-on piece about the car industry, assumes that I once leased G.M.’s sadly fated EV1 electric car and, like other drivers of that twin-seat rocket of a vehicle, watched the emission-free car be wrested from my garage, towed away, and busted up into pieces of metal, glass, and rubber smaller than razor blades (“The Road Ahead,” April 27th). Luckily, I did not. The source of Boyer’s slight inaccuracy may have been the documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car?,” which used a clip of a visit I made to the “Late Show with David Letterman,” during which I claimed to be saving America one electric car at a time. However, by the time I began shopping for an all-electric car, in 2003, the EV1 had already been yanked from showrooms as if the car had never existed. Instead, I found what was purported to be the very last electric car available for sale in the state of California—a Toyota EV. It had four doors, a rear hatch, room for my family, including a dog in the back, power windows, A/C, a great sound system, and the fastest, most effective windshield defroster known to mankind. When the car companies collectively, and, to some, diabolically, decided to take these cars back, the electric vehicles disappeared. But not mine. I have the pink slip. I own that car, and it is still driven every day, albeit by one of my crack staff of employees. My electric car recently crossed fifty thousand miles on the odometer with its original battery but without so much as a splash of gasoline.
Tom Hanks
Los Angeles, Calif.
More by Robert Farago
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Dear assorted troglodytes: The typical coal power plant, dirty as it may be, is still cleaner per generated watt than is the typical internal combustion engine, even if you don't take into account the possibility of more efficient future emissions improvements, and the whole idling thing.
Don't be too impressed. A letter to the editor doesn't necessarily mean he reads new yorker. I'm sure one of his assistants (perhaps even the one who drives the tomoco EV) have google searches running, and/or pay a press-clipping agnecy to send them hits on the brand of Tom Hanks. Similarly, a letter to the editor of new yorker, in his name, doesn't necessarily mean he wrote it.