The director of “Who
Killed the Electric Car”
talks about the electric
vehicle’s rebirth and why,
for him, it begins and ends
with solar energy.
Driving
EV
Chris Paine on the set of his new documentary, “Revenge of the Electric Car,” now in production.
By GINA R. JOHNSON
Gina R. Johnson ( editor@solartoday.org)
is editor/associate publisher of SOLAR TODAY.
Once curve-hugging
machines running
fast and quiet, gas-oline-free and with
zero emissions, they
finished crushed and
stacked three-deep
on flatbed trucks
at a remote desert facility. That’s how we last
glimpsed General Motors’ all-electric EV1 in
the 2006 documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car.” Introduced in 1996, the EV1 was the
first modern production electric vehicle from
a major automaker, available by lease-only in
select states. But by 2005, virtually every EV1
had been recalled by GM.
Fast forward three years: Oil prices have
stabilized after record-breaking spikes last
summer, while climate change has become a
top policy priority in the United States and
the world. Facing financial collapse, GM and
Chrysler were approved for $17.4 billion in
federal rescue loans late last year. Nearly every
major automaker plans to launch an electric
vehicle by 2012.
It’s a reversal that astonishes even Chris
Paine, the writer and director of “Who Killed.”
Now in production with “Revenge of the Electric Car,” Paine sees it as a chance to revisit the
earlier movie’s conclusion. “You don’t need to
have the last word on electric cars be why they
didn’t make it,” he says.
For the new documentary, Paine says,
“We’re tracking the big car companies. We’re
tracking the independent startups and we’re
tracking converters, and we’re tying it in, to
a certain extent, to the story of renewable energy. And it’s absolutely impossible for us even
to begin to cover the magnitude of this story,
because there are so many people doing so
many things.” Many of these stories are find-
ing an audience in the movie’s blogs at revenge
oftheelectriccar.com.
Ultimately, he says, “I [decided] I needed
to make a movie that sort of transcends the
disempowerment of what happened in the
late ’90s with the electric car, with the fact that
change is going to happen.”
Change is tough though, and Paine notes
that maintaining momentum is all the more
difficult during a deep recession. But he draws
hope from young people, citing the Obama
election as an example. “You really feel like
people, and a new generation of people — I
think a lot of it is about generational change
— were really ready to embrace change.”
Paine sees this same generation passionately
driven to move society from the oil age to
electric cars and the renewable energy era. “I
give college tours, and people are just on fire.”
Before Paine leased the EV1 that inspired
“Who Killed,” he had little interest in cars. In
fact, it was his interest in solar energy that first
attracted him to the EV1. As a kid, Paine was a
fan of Paul MacCready, who designed the first
