The Washington Post has a brief review of "Who Killed the Electric Car?" today -- that stands in stark contrast with most of the generally glowing -- or should it be electrifying -- reviews. Here's a highlight from Stephen Hunter's review that focuses on General Motors' decision to take back leased EV1s, which were GM's electric cars. "You'd think it was small children or puppies being fed into the maw of that giant Arizona eater-of-cars instead of a small, nerdy-looking battery-operated near-car. The style is cinema-verite as (director Chris) Paine stays with the activists as they track the car shipments from Los Angeles eastward toward death. He cares, I think, too much for these people, as they aren't representative of anything; they're a self-selected group that clearly got on the electric-car bandwagon as early as possible out of a fanatical, predetermined environmental commitment."

This week's issue of the The Economist, the influential British magazine, weighs in on the GM/Renault/Nissan talks. They don't like the idea of a deal. "The Renault-Nissan alliance works. Adding General Motors could break it," the magazine says. "IN THE closing shots of 'Casablanca,' Rick Blaine escorts Captain Louis Renault from the airfield with the compliment that 'I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.' This week a different Renault addressed a different Rick, but the words were the same. France's largest carmaker, which already has an alliance with Japan's Nissan, said the pair of them would consider taking a 20% stake in General Motors, run by Rick Wagoner. There is no mistaking the ambition of this. The resulting alliance would command 22% of the world car market, twice as much as its nearest rival. But ambition alone does not amount to a hill of beans."

Whoever said General Motors Corp.'s alliance talks with Renault-Nissan, the Franco-Japanese giant led by industry super-ego Carlos Ghosn, were confidential forgot to tell the French. Evidently feeling a little large during this week's Paris Motor Show press days, a deputy of Ghosn's is telling eager reporters that GM is doing the slow-walk on alliance talks and that it doesn't understand how unstoppable Toyota is becoming. The implications are clear: first, that if the American were as smart as the French, they would, of course, see the colossal wisdom in a far-reaching tie-up and equity swap. And, second, to let GM Chairman Rick Wagoner know that billionaire shareholder Kirk Kerkorian isn't about to throttle back on his push to get Ghosn in the driver's seat at GM, no matter how much traction GM's North American restructuring may be getting. Ol' Kerk doesn't worry too much about niceties at times like these. Go public to push the process? Sure. During the Paris show?