In director Chris Paine's 2006 documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car," viewers witnessed General Motors's mind-blowing decision to repossess 5,000 EV1 electric cars from their happy owners and then painfully crush every last one of them, thus ending GM's line of energy efficient cars. With Paine's follow-up, "Revenge of the Electric Car," viewers see the electric car come back to life. In fact even GM, the company that obliterated the beloved EV1, returns to the energy efficient car market with a vengeance.
Surprisingly Paine is invited back into the inner sanctum of GM by Bob Lutz, the executive who basically killed the EV1. The film posits that perhaps Lutz, a car-man all his life and GM's vice chair, doesn't want his legacy to be remembered as the bad guy who killed the EV1. Perhaps too Lutz believes he made a huge corporate mistake. Whatever the reason, Lutz, the cigar smoking corporate maverick, is now the bigger than life proponent of Chevy's new electric VOLT.
"Revenge of the Electric Car" doesn't just depict GM's new enlightenment but also weaves the electric car race between GM and other auto visionaries. There's the Silicon Valley dot.com billionaire Elon Musk, a man likened to the Marvel Comic character Tony Stark ("Iron Man"). Musk, who's also involved in launching rockets to the moon, creates Tesla Motors and engineers a speedy, slick looking TESLA Electric car (price tag over $100,000). Although critics and consumers agree this energy efficient car is incredibly cool, the price tag is daunting. Plus, there's the problem of manufacturing, which continually bogs Tesla Motors down.
Then Paine travels to Tokyo to Nissan headquarters and watches Nissan's dynamic CEO Carlos Ghosn surprise the car world by announcing the Nissan LEAF, an affordable, mass-marketed electric car. Paine captures Ghosn through interviews, in Nissan meetings, and other behind-the-scenes company moments; it's apparent that this is the next maverick to lead cars into the future. Paine even notes in a title card at the film's end that GM offers Ghosn the chance to run GM after Lutz retires. Ghosn declines.
Wrapping up the electric car innovators is independent auto converter Greg "Gadget" Abbott. When the film first visits Abbott, he's working out of his warehouse in Culver City and showing off his self-converted silver Porsche Speedster. He hopes to produce electric cars at half the cost of the TESLA.
With the promise not to release footage until after the cars have launched in 2011, director Paine is given intimate access to all four of these electric car entrepreneurs for three years. To the boardrooms to the manufacturing floor and then the various auto shows, Paine gives viewers an insider's look not only of these wondrous cars but the incredible risks in introducing the groundbreaking vehicles. Musk almost loses everything in trying to bring TESLA to the marketplace. Abbott's warehouse burns down and he loses over $250,000 in uninsured tools and equipment. The economic meltdown seriously hinders GM and Nissan as top executives are forced out.
It's a terrific insider's look at the auto industry today and the electric car wave of the future. Even-handed in its politics, "Revenge of the Electric Car" also includes journalists and car experts to weigh in on this revolutionary race. Chris Paine has definitely made a worthy follow-up to "Who Killed the Electric Car." Revenge has never been so sweet.
"Revenge of the Electric Car" is 90 minutes and Rated PG-13. Tim Robbins narrates. It opens October 21 in Los Angeles and New York before expanding to other select cities.
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