A review – Revenge of the Electric Car

Question markI don’t get it

Ok… maybe it’s me.

Who Killed the Electric Car was Chris Paine’s ode to the demise of the electric car late in the last century. With Revenge of the Electric Car, I was sure he would come back with a strong story about how the electric car rose from the ashes to present a compelling alternative to the masses early in this century. Instead, we get an ode to Elon Musk – seemingly one of the most inept managers on earth.

A significant amount of footage was about Musk, his former business interests (he was an early partner in Paypal), his other business interests (Space Exploration Technologies), and oh yes… Tesla Motors. Paine follows Musk around, filming him at work, at home with the wife and kids, and in meetings where he frets about the future of Tesla. So why do I call Musk inept? The camera follows him into a warehouse full of broken Teslas, and Musk is surprised – physically shocked – to see how many cars await delivery to their owners because they all have something wrong with them. Including Paine’s car – you know – the director of this film. How could the Chairman, Chief Architect and Chief Executive Officer of the company (according to Tesla’s website) not know the dire situation of his sole product? I know… he’s too busy being Elon Musk – the man with all of the titles. The issue I have with this devotion to Musk in the film is that Tesla is not, nor seemingly will it ever be, a car for the masses. The Tesla Roadster was priced well over $100,000 and before these vehicles ever made their way into the garages of their owners prices were raised to cover Musk’s lack of ability to manage a car company. The Tesla S sedan, promoted on the home page of their website for $49,900 (after US Federal Tax Credit) will not be available at anywhere near that price as the first production vehicles will all be the ultra luxury Signature S models starting at over $80,000. Not really the electric car for the masses.

A fair amount of screen time is devoted to Bob Lutz, apparently because Lutz used to not like electric cars and now he does. Lutz is a long-time executive in the automotive industry, now retired from General Motors. To his credit, Lutz was a strong promoter of the Chevrolet Volt, and its existence is in large part due to his influence. But the Volt really isn’t an electric car. It is a plug-in hybrid marketed as an electric car.

I did find the footage devoted to Greg “Gadget” Abbott interesting, as it profiles an individual with a passion for what he does (converting existing gasoline powered cars to electric cars). The unfortunate situations that befall Abbott during the course of the film-making seem almost too Hollywood for them to have been coincidental, but sometimes that really is the way things are.

Finally we get to the inclusion of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, and the Nissan LEAF. The sense is that Nissan is included in the film because it had to be. Ghosn is presented as The Warrior in the film. He is captured in meetings, moving around the plant during construction of the LEAF, and in other settings that portray him as a distant executive. The LEAF is almost an afterthought to the remainder of the film, although there are the requisite production line worker comments to give it the feel of a real documentary.

If this was truly to be about the revenge of the electric car, one would think that it would talk about how the current electric car revolution is doing what the EV1 started all those years ago… providing electric transportation to everyman. Instead, we get Paine’s infatuation with Musk, with acknowledgements that – Oh yeah… there are some other guys doing some electric car stuff too. I just left feeling like I needed revenge against something. So I hopped into my electric car and drove home.

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3 Responses to A review – Revenge of the Electric Car

  1. indyflick says:

    I would never spend time or money to see Bob Lutz. Frankly, he turns my stomach. For example, in the face of all the peer reviewed scientific data, Lutz remains a global warming denier. This tells me he can’t read the data and act appropriately on it. It’s no wonder he was a top GM executive during it’s failure and bankruptcy. He is quoted as saying, “I tend to have a lot of ideas and strong views which are not necessarily correct…. I know I’m full of crap a lot of the time”. Yep, that about sums it up.

  2. Sasparilla says:

    That’s a bummer it wasn’t more enjoyable, especially after the first movie.

    I could see some extra focus on Tesla since they were the first ones (by a good number of years) after the CARB killing of EV’s in the 90’s to move forward and offer a, admittedly high end, production EV (and originally at least I think Musk was only an investor). I remember reading that Tesla and its Roadster was the inspiration that got GM management to seriously consider an EV which led to the Volt. Not sure where it fit in with the Leaf, but it would seem likely Tesla and its Roadster were a consideration (from Nissan Management standpoint) with the Leaf going forward as well.

    That said, it sounds disappointing. The Leaf is the closest thing to an everyman’s EV today and for the foreseeable future and should have been spotlighted at the end (even if it was difficult to get filming of the Japanese area of things).

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