"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?” (released in the U.S. by Sony Pictures Classics) 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 has its world premiere Friday night at the Tribeca Film Festival.
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.
What got you interested in the electric car in the first place?
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. And I thought, I have to get that car. I wasn’t really an electric car person, per se. But two 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 this really is better. 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. I tried to get 60 Minutes and Frontline to look at the story, and we 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.
In the first movie, the car companies were clearly the villains. Here, you still present them as suspect. What do you think of them now?
They’re definitely not the villains [this time]. They’re like all of us. When we finished the first film, change got stopped in its tracks because the new technology threatened too many entrenched interests. Change can happen if you put entrepreneurship into the hands of the right people, even inside corporations. I am not against corporations. I am against bad decisions.
How hard was it for you to gain such close access to Nissan’s Carlos Ghosn and GM’s Bob Lutz?
I give my producers a lot of credit. The basic deal was that we would not show a frame of footage until 2011. They knew that their car programs were slated to come out then. I think each of the companies made calculated risks that a) we wouldn’t betray them and b) they wouldn’t show up in the daily media cycle. When I approached Ghosn, we had already secured an entrée to Tesla, which had a potential IPO, and GM, which had every reason to distrust us, and so Ghosn said if those guys are on board…
And Lutz?
Dan Neil [now a reporter for the Wall Street Journal] wrote a story for the LA Times after Lutz announced the Volt. And he asked me for a quote about whether I was skeptical. But I said, “If they’re going to do the electric car, I’m in support of that.” And Bob Lutz sent me an email. So we emailed for about a year. And that was the beginning of the film when he ended up allowing us in. Originally, we thought we’re going to get sucked up into the PR department of GM. So we had to be careful of that.
You have a Tesla Roadster, a Leaf, and a Volt. What do you think of them?
I think they all fit into different niches. I got the Tesla over two years ago, I’m really surprised that it hasn’t had mechanical problems as a first edition car. It’s fun and even faster than the EV1. The Volt replaced my Prius, and what I like about it is that the car is really tight; it’s like driving a BMW; we call it the “phonebooth” at my house. And we just bought the Leaf as a replacement for our RAV4, which is a great around-the-town car. I think all these companies really want the electric car to succeed and I think they’ve done a really great job.
My understanding is that sales of these electric cars are pretty slow to get out of the gate. Are the companies meeting their targets?
This is definitely year one, and I think the production numbers for the Leaf are in the tens of thousands at most in 2011, and the Volt is being made in only one factory right now. The waiting list, at least in Southern California, is very heavy. I think you’ll see the ramp up on these in 2012. No one wants to go full throttle until they feel secure about it, and streamline their costs, and they also know how much they have riding on it. The movie is freshly minted, and the idea was to hit at the point where people can order these cars. This electric car thing is going to fail if people don’t take a risk on it. If they don’t, then it’s going to get pushed back until gasoline goes to $6 a gallon. And that would be a shame. Because this is a technology that the market really needs. One of my main reasons for making this movie is to help give the electric car a better shot in 2011. Because the last time, in 2000, I don’t think they got a really good shot.
At the end of the film, there is a very brief discussion about the effect of electric cars on the power grid. Isn’t there a concern that a switch to electric cars will present a problem for the grid?
Power companies say they can charge 180 million cars at night using the existing grid. The amount of time that it will take for car companies to get to a 180 million cars on the road is quite some time. So, if a 180 million cars plug in at 3pm, that’s a problem. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon. The power companies have every incentive to make the adoption of electric cars successful, because for the first time in years they can take on the oil companies’ monopoly on transportation fuel; and the government wants them to succeed because it means less dependence on foreign oil; and environmentalists want it to succeed because it means cleaner air."
Em: http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2011/ ... ctric-car/