The big oil companies and their political allies may
hate the very idea of the electric car, but writer-director Chris Paine
remains an unabashed fan of the technology. His informative and
entertaining documentary, which makes an explicit link between carbon
dioxide emissions and global warming, traces the evolution and eventual
marketplace failure of the innovative vehicle.
Laying the blame at the feet of General Motors (which
eventually reclaimed the first models leased to consumers and crushed
and buried them in the Nevada desert), apathetic politicians, and an
unrepentant oil industry, Paine also gives voice to the car’s staunch
defenders, Mel Gibson among them. He may have a clearly defined axe to
grind but, in this war-ravaged and environmentally distressed day and
age, Paine’s passion is worth attending to.
Filmmaker Chris Payne explores the many factors that
played into the ultimate failure of the electric car to catch on with
consumers, even as gas prices began to skyrocket, in a thoughtful
meditation on the increasingly important role that renewable energy
plays in modern society. Introduced as a means of providing an
alternative to increasing oil consumption and reducing pollution in
1996, the electric car was all but a forgotten memory only a decade
later – but why?