I had never attended a single event at NYC’s Tribeca Film Festival despite living in the city for almost five years. That changed last month when a TechMediaNetwork coworker alerted me to his friend’s new documentary film, “Revenge of the Electric Car,” having its debut at the film festival. If that sounds like a “Star Wars” sequel title, it’s because the documentary is a follow-up to the 2006 film “Who Killed the Electric Car?’
The director, Chris Paine, told me during our one-on-one interview that he had never expected to make another electric car documentary after investigating the rise and fall of General Motor’s EV1 electric car. But the remarkable resurgence in hybrid- and all-electric cars left him convinced that he needed to follow the new stories taking place.
Paine’s film follows Elon Musk’s upstart Tesla Motors, goes into the corporate board rooms of Nissan and General Motors, and showcases the DIY electric car-conversion garage of Greg “Gadget” Abbott.
But I didn’t just get the chance to review the new electric car documentary. The Saturday screening I attended featured an on-stage Q&A with Elon Musk (founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX), Carlos Ghosn (CEO of Nissan and Renault), Dan Neil (automotive columnist for The Wall Street Journal), and Chris Paine again.
Neil often played devil’s advocate by trying to pit Musk against Ghosn, or needling Musk about whether Tesla Motors could really meet its car production goals after a rough start. Musk gave as good as he got by doggedly interrupting Neil’s caveats about electric cars with his more optimistic views, and even proclaimed his belief that almost all vehicles will eventually go electric. It was all great fun to watch.
