Revenge Of The Electric Car Movie Review

Revenge of the Electric Car is the sequel of Paine’s earlier film, Who Killed the Electric Car? While Paine’s first film featured a more conventional good guys vs. bad guys storyline, his current entry works better because of its more traditional documentary structure.
The story follows the attempts by three automakers to bring a viable electriccar to market. Paine tags on a sidebar of sorts with his tale of Greg Abbott, a cheerful fellow who converts electric cars out of altruistic love for the technology. A panel discussion, within the film, develops various theories and predictions concerning the future of electric cars here and abroad. Revenge of the Electric-Car delivers a balanced smorgasbord of opinion on this hotly debated political subject. Whether you are an electric car advocate, owner, or know nothing about the topic, you will leave the theater with a grounding in the facts, and a feel for what the future holds.In a way, Revenge of the Electric Car is a triple, melded biography.
General Motors’ Bob Lutz is the progenitor of the compan The story of how the Volt came to be is fascinating, and likely what Paine was attempting to depict. GM is, in a way, the central player in this entire drama, having played the role of bad guy in Paine’s 2006 film. GM partisans, and Volt fans in particular, view this documentary as something of an apology on Paine’s part. There is much evidence to support that view, since GM comes out as a hero here, painted as a misunderstood fumbler rather than an evil force for its earlier efforts to produce, then quash, an electric–car prototype. Lutz gives a real world account of the enormous amounts of capital needed to bring a viable electric car to the world market.
Nissan’s Carlos Ghosn and Tesla’s Elon Musk round out the trio of electric innovators. Paine tells Ghosn’s story truthfully, walking us through his typical, workaholic day. Profit motivates Ghosn in a big way, but he does not come off as a selfless miser, rather as someone who will do anything to get electric cars onto the road. Ghosn’s leadership of Nissan and Renault is put forth as a prime example of the frightful amount of single-minded dedication it takes to revolutionize a gargantuan industry.
Elon Musk is the man who brought the Tesla Roadster to the world. He heads up Tesla Motors and is perhaps Paine’s most closely analyzed subject. Musk does not have the billions of dollars nor the hundreds of thousands of employees to manifest his automotive dreams. Though a wealthy man, he is a small fish in the ocean that is now the electric_car industry. His bringing the Roadster to market in 2009 will forever secure him a place in the pantheon. Paine microscopically surveys Musk’s environment of trauma, from his sinking marriage to international economic crises that stood in the way of the Roadster. Near-disasters, related to funding, production, and labor almost killed Musk’s dreams at least a dozen times along the way. But he prevailed.
The film’s most apt metaphor tells the story as well as its protagonists do. Early cellular telephones are compared to prototypical electric autos. With phones, however, the story is easier to follow because it played out much faster, and because the technology is not nearly as costly. From those early 1980?s bulky bag-phones, which almost no one could afford and that were a nightmare to recharge, to modern, ubiquitous, smart gadgets that do everything but our laundry, cell phones are an apt lesson that Paine wisely uses to his advantage.