Revenge of the Electric Car

90 Mins
2011
en

star7.1/ 10

A sequel to 2006's Who Killed the Electric Car?, director Chris Paine once again looks at electric vehicles. Where in the last film electric cars were dismissed as uneconomical and unreliable, and were under multiple attacks from government, the auto industry, and from energy companies who didn't want them to succeed, this film chronicles, in the light of new changes in technology, the world economy, and the auto industry itself, the race - from both major car companies like Ford and Nissan, and from new rising upstarts like Tesla - to bring a practical consumer EV to market.

Review

rsanek

You can really see Chris Paine's progress as a director when compared to his previous effort, _Who Killed the Electric Car?_ (2006). The production value here is clearly much higher and overall the film is much more entertaining. I liked having the multiple parallel timelines between Bob Lutz, Ghosn, and Musk. The addition of the independent maker 'Gadget' I felt was a bit weird -- it seemed like originally the idea was to provide an insight into people who didn't want to wait for bigco car company to create electric cars, but through misfortunes to Gadget it really became more of a human interest story. Still, that's a small downside when viewing the film as a whole. Would love to see an updated, 2020 version of this timeline from Paine!