EV TRIUMPHANT

Director Chris Paine On ‘Revenge of the Electric Car’
Anthony Kaufman, April 21, 2011 (Wall Street Journal)

"In 2003, Chris Paine helped conduct a funeral for the electric car, in memoriam of the loss of General Motors’ battery-powered EV1. His subsequent documentary, 2006′s Who Killed the Electric Car?…examined the premature death of the electric car industry.

"Now Paine is back with a new film, Revenge of the Electric Car, a more optimistic look at the resurgence of the plug-in automobile. Focusing primarily on the makers of the Chevrolet Volt, the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Roadster, the film [had] its world premiere Friday night [in New York City]…"

Trailer

From RevengeElectric via YouTube

"While getting ready to launch both the new film, and an unrelated new website, Counterspill.org, which aims to raise awareness about oil and other non-renewable energy-related disasters, Paine spoke about his own electric cars and automakers’ investment in their new zero-emission fleets."

[[Chris Paine, Director, EV films:] “Dr. Paul MacCready, who was one of my childhood engineering heroes, developed bicycle-powered airplanes in the 1970s. I had heard he had designed an electric car for General Motors…[T]wo years later, the cars went on lease, and I leased one. In a month, I was almost always driving my electric car…And I thought, America had trumped the world again on technology. So when the program got shut down, I thought this is crazy. Yes, there were some problems, the battery wasn’t as good as it could be, but this could have been a huge niche…[W]e had an electric car funeral, which got some good coverage, but all of it was about the arrival of hybrids. So I thought, let’s make a documentary about this.”