In the late 1990s and early 2000s, General Motors EV1s were the Apple Macs of cars. Ahead of their time, they were only driven by an enlightened different thinking few, but those that did felt passionately about their high tech machines.
A fully electric plug-in vehicle with a range of between 70 and 140 miles depending on model, the EV1 was first introduced into the marketplace in 1996. Available in limited test markets on a closed lease-only basis (whereby no actual purchase was allowed), it was developed by General Motors partly in response to the California Air Resources Boards requirement that the seven major auto companies in the US had to make at least 2% of their output zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) by 1998 in order to sell any cars within the state (with further graduated steps stipulated up to 10% in 2003).
Though grudgingly produced by General Motors, the vehicle was beloved by the few consumers lucky enough to rise to the top of the companys reportedly vast waiting list. But it was likely a car that was never intended to succeed. General Motors seemingly put more effort into fighting the CARB mandate in court than meeting existing demand for vehicles or marketing the EV1 to create even more. It was therefore not uncoincidental that the demise of the EV1 occurred in tandem with the gutting of CARBs ZEV rules. The EV1 program was officially cancelled in 2003, and a total recall was put in motion, with repossessed cars being not only compacted but shredded for good measure too.
A 2006 documentary, Who Killed The Electric Car, chronicled the crushing demise of this groundbreaking car. In it filmmaker Chris Paine highlighted the collusion of the auto industry, oil companies, and politicians, who all had a vested interest in seeing the electric vehicle die an untimely death alongside CARBs environmentally prudent directives. Catching the zeitgeist, Who Killed The Electric was the third highest grossing documentary that year (Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth being the first).
However, a decade after General Motors presided over the funeral of the EV1, the killing of the vehicle has proven to be a costly mistake. With gas prices rising, Toyota filled the rapidly increasing fuel-efficient void with their hybrid Prius, which went on sale in Japan in 1997. Following its worldwide debut in 2001, Toyota have sold over a million Prius cars in the US alone, and the rest of the auto industry has been scrabbling to catch up.
With revenge being served on a platter less than a decade on, Paine and his documentary team were compelled to reexamine the fortunes of the electric vehicle in a follow up film. The first had centered on activists working from outside the industry, with this film Paine chose to follow a diverse group of instigators working from within. Revenge Of The Electric Car therefore features four EV evangelists (some of whom were more recently converted than others) who are attempting to drive the future of the automobile into the present: Bob Lutz (General Motors Vice Chairman up until May 2010), Elon Musk (Tesla Motorss CEO), Carlos Ghosn (Nissans President and CEO), and Greg Gadget Abbot (a DIY electric engine retro-fitter).
SuicideGirls recently visited Paine at his ultra green home to talk about his cinematic I told you so and the electric awakening of a sluggish car industry that was in need of a shock. After checking out the 2008 Tesla Roadster parked in Paines garage, the irony was not lost that we were conversing about, and anticipating the dominance of, the gas-free vehicle in the heart of LAs oil country amidst the pumpjack nodding donkeys of Baldwin Hills.
Nicole Powers: So lets rewind and talk about the first film, and how all this began.
Chris Paine: Well, I had one of those cars. I had one and then they took it away. I dropped it off to have the tires checked for something, and [the GM dealership representative said], Oh, you wont be getting your car back. Im like, My lease still has another nine months. And he says, Yeah, well were just going to keep it. I said, Well can I get my gym bag out of the car? [He said,] Oh, Its already gone. [I said,] Well where has it gone? [He said,] We cant tell you where its gone. [I said,] You cant tell me where the car is gone? And then, you know, the car companies were all saying, Well nobody wanted these cars And we go, this is just not the whole story
So that film became an issue movie about two things. One about what happened to these cars. Because the trail was so hot, we could actually follow the step by step. I think that what happened when they took out the streetcars in the 50s, a lot of those trails got very cold and it was hard to like do it. We took the title from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which was really about streetcars in Los Angeles. Thats sort of the backstory.
Then we also thought that the filmit couldve been about a lot of issues, it just happened to be about the electric car, about what happens with corporate lobbies that take over government. They eviscerate really good programs that are in the public goodfor whatever corporate reasons they have. We busted both the oil industry through the Western States Petroleum for their astroturf campaigns, where they would pose as consumer groups but really just be the oil companies. They got behind stopping public funding of charging. And then the American Association of Automobile Manufacturers, which was behind trying to gut the regulation for zero emission vehicles.
The challenge of that film was to make an issue movie interesting and to keep the momentum going. This film, we decided we did the issue movie. People are a little bit issued out. There are so many things going on. Lets make a movie thats just about pure momentum characters and momentumLike a regular narrative film. Because if we were going to do the issue movie, it would be 10 hours to do everything: coal, batteries, where does power come from, why gasoline is so bad, the history of the vehicle, etc. This would take forever to get right. And if we can pick four characters that represent different pieces of international business right now, and how sometimes from within you can get something going, it would be a different kind of message
I found in 10 years of arguing for electric cars that theres no winning the argument. Because while I think that the argument for electric cars is completely done, you cant change most peoples minds through argumentWhat turns people are emotional experiences. The experience, for example, of driving in one of these plug-in carsSuddenly all of your intellect goes to defending what you like as opposed to trying to beat someone in the argument. So that was kind of the idea for the filmLets just give people an experience, and maybe as a result theyll want to go out and try one of these cars. That will probably do more to convince people than any amount of arguing about air or oil or anything else.
NP: A lot has changed in 10 years since Who Killed the Electric Car? GM may have ended their electric car program, but Toyota and the Prius have been ruling the auto industry since then and everyones been scrabbling to catch up. There must be that temptation to say, I told you so.
CP: Well, I figure the I told you so is implicit in the word revenge. We got some push back from a couple of reviews saying, Its not a revenge. But, if you cant track that Hummer went bankrupt and that all the car companies went bankrupt and that all these things failed because they made so many stupid decisions in the 90s, then you werent paying attention because its a big reversal. The auto industry went from fighting tooth and nail to kill electric cars to being champions of them, and its just remarkable. I think its one reason that we decided to make another electric car film when we had no plans to do so when we finished the last one. Because you dont usually see things turn around like that. And from some of the same people even.
NP: I could not believe that you got [GM Vice Chairman] Bob Lutz to participate in the movie. Thats kind of amazing. How did that even come about?
CP: Hes just brave. I think he convinced a lot of people at GM that never wanted us to come in the gatesThe first interviews we had with him were pretty stiff, and over the three years that we were checking in with him, things became more relaxed and we got to really do a portrait of someone.
NP: When you decided to make this movie, how did the first contact come about?
CP: Dan Neil, [who was] at The LA Times then, asked my opinion on the Volt, because it was suddenly announced that GM was going to work on a new electric car. I told him, Hey, if theyre really going to do it, I would totally support it because thats what we want them to do to make plug-in cars. And then, I cant quite remember the sequence, but Bob Lutz and I exchanged emails. I had his email address from the first movie for some reason. He said, Are you really in favor of the Volt if we did that. I go, Yeah, I totally support that. And he goes, Oh, well, were really going to do it.
Somewhere in there Elon Musk, who I knew because of the Tesla out there [indicates his garage], I asked him if I could start tracking his journey and he said, Sure, come on in. So I told Bob Lutz, you know, I was tracking Elon, and Bob said, Why dont you come to the GM 100th Birthday Party. So my producer, Jessie Deeter, shes out of Frontline, said, Okay, well we have to be super careful because this is going to be cooption [because of the] massive spin machine were about to walk into. If were going to work with the car companies, we have to be really careful not to take any free gigs and not to go on junkets, and understand the difference between press and an actual access to something, and its going to be a very tricky balance for the next few years.
And it certainly was. But I think as time went on, we could begin to understand what was more authentic and what was less authentic, and choose those moments to put in the film. So thats how it started. Once we had GM, we went to the other car companies, Toyota and Ford and everybody else, Fisker and Better Place in Israel. Some of them said no, and some of them made it very impossible to reach them. And some of them said yes, but their stories really changed a lot and they didnt really work with our film, so we ended up with these four.
NP: Nissan, how did that come about?
CP: We approached them. We thought it would be a no for sure, because theyre a very secret company. Peter [co-writer and producer P.G. Morgan] and I were here, and they asked if they could send two people to talk to us. We met them for a ten o clock [meeting], just like this. Ding dong, two guys came in and they grilled us for about 90 minutes about the first film, what we were doing in this film, what we were doing at GM, and what our security provisions were for footage. Because Tesla had an IPO and GM was facing bankruptcywe had a super secure editing process. If any of our footage got out it could adversely price the stock.
NP: Presumably you also had to have an internal Chinese wall where you would not be passing information along.
CP: Exactly. Exactly. They were competitive with each other. We told them all of our procedures and stuff. Then they said, Thank you, and they went to the door. I said, Where are you guys going? They said, Were going back to Japan. Theyd flown in [Nissan Chairman and CEO] Carlos [Ghosn] had sent them and then they flew back. Then about two days later we got permission to come to Japan to track Carlos. So all of our Japanese scenes started there. At one point we were all in one hotel room because we wouldnt take their junket and there were no other hotel rooms. We were all on top of each other and we did sort of envy the other journalists that were there. Everybodys like, You guys, what are you doing? You think youre being purists over here.
NP: But its importantThat integrity is lost a lot of the time these days.
CP: Yeah. It hurts me sometimesWeve had a couple of negative reviews where theyve said your film felt like a commercial or you got a little close to the companies. You try figuring out this balance, its really hard to do itIts been a very tough balance. And the car companies are often annoyed at us, you know, it was challenging. But I think it came out all right, and we got kind of a portrait of different kinds of entrepreneurship in this country. It happens to be about cars
NP: I love the fact that you have the independent guy working out of his warehouse/garage. I understand hes a friend of yours?
CP: Yeah. When you drive down the road here, over the hill you can see where he used to live. Thats the thing that burned down. So he was right there. I wasnt thinking he was going to be in the film at first. Then the horrible fire happened, and he found that little controller in the ashes and its blinking, and hes going, Were going to rebuild it. Im like, well thats the spirit of the film. Even if youre in a huge corporation, youve got a lot of push back.
NP: Right, because GM were in the ashes too.
CP: Exactly. And the best people will rebuild. They dont give up at that moment. They say, onwards. Elon, hes a playboy with millions of dollars or whatever
NP: And he almost went down to his last cent of PayPal money with Tesla.
CP: EverythingHis ego stripped down and people attacking him on a personal levelYouve got to be tough.
NP: From the very little guy to the very big guy, they all have this similar rising from the ashes story.
CP: Yeah, thats sort of the story, exactly. Im glad that came through.
NP: I was surprised that there wasnt much about the Prius in the movie given that that was very much the game changer.
CP: I know. Well, we mentioned it in the beginning, that it was one of GMs motivators, that they wanted to compete with Toyota, that they had run away with the efficient market. Bob Lutz says it. But we couldnt get access to Toyota. They wouldnt let us in for whatever reason.
NP: I guess because Toyota felt that they didnt need to give you access because they already owned the green market, whereas Nissan is trying to catch up to Toyota so they have the incentive to participate.
CP: I think so, and I think our first film really helped Toyota because they had the only product that was really efficient when gas prices hit $4.00 a gallon in the States. They were the only people that had an efficient relatively green car. Their sales went from loosing lots of money to really on the up and up. The other thing is[with] the Prius, you could never plug it in.
NP: That was the frustration for me. It made no sense because it already had rechargeable batteries. All you needed was the ability to plug it into a wall, and youd have never needed gas most of the time, because most car journeys are in the realm of less than 20 miles.
CP: Yeah, well theres a reason for this. Its not proven, but a lot of people believe its because Chevron owned the technology for the nickel metal batteries which were in the Prius. There was a big closed settlement that happened about the time, right before our last movie came out, that Prius could indeed go ahead and use those batteries, even though Chevron owned the patents, but it had certain limitations. So a lot of people think the limitation was they could not put a plug on it. Whether thats true or not, the reason that the plug is now coming in the Prius is that theyre switching to lithium batteriesBut, its very difficult to prove that and we had to with all our films be very careful with our legal and all that.
NP: I remember in the first film there was the mom and pop operation that had developed this far superior battery, and their patent got bought just so that it could be put on ice.
CP: That was the company. That was it.
NP: Ah, Chevron was the company that bought their patent?
CP: ExactlyIris [Ovshinsky] passed away right after the first film came out and we miss her a lot because she was actually the physicist in that relationship, or she had the PhD, and her husband [Stanford] was like the salesman. She was the quiet brains, you know.
NP: I had a conversation with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that discussion was more on the issue of coal but one of the things that he said was that basically the tipping point will come when its just plain cheaper to use green energy. One of the problems specifically with coal is that theres so many subsidies that the price is artificially low. Are there similar economics going on in the car industry?
CP: Oh sure. I mean, the gasoline engine is almost fully amortized, because they developed it over 100 years. They know how to make thousands, and tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of these at the lowest possible price. When you start a new kind of automobile, ie. with a motor and batteries, which in theory is much cheaper because you only have a few parts versus an entire engine, it takes a while for economies of scale to kick in. Its hard for them to get their manufacturing price down to what the gas car is...Thats the first difficulty they have.
Now one thing they have going for them is that electricity is a lot cheaper. Even in the US where were 50% coal, electricity as a whole runs about $1.00 a gallon, compared to $4.00 for oil. That is a big cost advantage for the consumer. But the consumer will only make those changes when theyre really hurting at the gas pump. It happened the first time we paid $100 to refill our trucks and cars in 2008. When were paying that again, as fuel prices go up, and its hard to say how that will happen, but peak oil means that well keep going upKennedy is absolutely right, its the price of gas that will push them to alternatives.
NP: Also the price of the actual cars is a problem. I recently had to buy a new car. I wouldve liked to have bought a Prius, but the difference was just too great. The Prius cost almost double what my car cost, and I get 28 mpg versus 40-something [highway] on the Prius because you cant plug it in.
CP: Yeah, the prices are hugely important. I think that Carlos understands that. I think they all understand. But Nissan had to even raise their price on the Leaf recently. They raised it like $2,000. Theyre not going to be able to compete with the $10,000 economy car. They cant do that for a while. I think they will in time if all the people...that are buying $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 carsstep up to the plate.
The rest of us, that can only afford a $20,000 [car] or whatever else, this is where ride sharing and test drives [come in]. Because every time someone goes down and test drives a plug-in car, they become a convert and they can tell someone else about it. This is only possible really now, that you can go to a dealership and test drive an electric car to feel and see what its all about.
I hope that our film is part of the inspiration for people to go out and check these things out because they couldnt do it after they crushed all those cars in our [first] movie. They were almost impossible to findI really believe that the experience of this is as important as any argument. Ultimately, of course, youre right, its the price of these things, and the price of oil that will determine how fast this happens.
NP: Part of me wonders why GM, the moment the Prius started taking off, didnt just reboot the EV1 since they already had the technology developed.
CP: Pride, I think.
NP: I think it was.
CP: Yeah. I mean, they say its because they were never able to get the costs down and that the car was costing them $100,00, but it didnt have to cost that much. They could make that car much cheaper than that. So I think its pride. Also I think its why they got into so much trouble in California. Because they wanted to win the battle against California, they forgot about their brand. They obviously forgot about the environment and the consumer and everything else. It was a big disaster.
People say, Well dont you want General Motors to go bankrupt? Im like, I dont particularly like car companies, but if these car companies go bankrupt its a huge allocation of resources to rebuild industries like this. You think the pollution is bad, its much better to use existing factories. Of course itd be great if we rode bicycles and did public transportation, and this should happen, but the reality is we make tens of thousands of cars all the time so we should be making plug-in cars. General Motors is trying to do something about it. So why not? Because theyre American jobs. I mean, why do we need to import everything from China?
NP: When did you finish shooting this film?
CP: We finished shooting end of 2010.
NP: What updates from the intervening year would you like to have been able to include?
CP: I wanted to get in this idea of how much electricity is in every gallon of gasoline. Because you hear a lot of people say, Oh, where does all the electricity come from? Which is a very good question. And, Isnt it just coming from coal? Before you even get there, think about who is one of the biggest users of electricity in the world. The answer is: its the oil industry. Because it takes a lot of electricity to turn black crude oil into gasoline. Like 4-7 kilowatt hours of energy. How much is that? If, instead of charging up the crude oil to make gasoline, you put the energy into a battery, you could drive your Leaf 20 or 25 miles, just on that electricity alone. Just on the refining. No Saudi Arabia. No shipping it over. No driving the truck to the gas station, no anything else. Just the refining. So theres stuff like this that I would love to have in the movie because its data that people need to understandto start using electricity wisely and not waste it converting fuels into other fuelsBut again, every time we tried to detour into something like batteries from cars actually dont end up in landfill and theres actually only 1% or 2% lithium in a lithium battery, most of it is completely benign, every time we did that, the movie would stop moving
And to answer your question, we wanted this movie to end when electric cars were actually available to people to buy again. Because the first movie ended when they were destroyed, so I said this movie is going to end when theyre actually in showrooms again. That was sort of our end point. Now, if we had kept it going, right now what would the story be? Well, Volt sales havent been that good. They were hoping to sell 10,000 and I think theyve sold 4,000.
NP: Why do you think that is?
CP: Two reasons. One: they came in at a little high price point and theyve lowered their price now. Two: theyve marketed the car really strangely, probably because they had too many focus groups. Theyve marketed the car as more car than electric. Nobody even knows what electric means. They shouldve just said more car. Like it does more. It runs on two kinds of systems. GM, as good as their engineering is at least on electric cars, I think their marketing has always been a little bit confused
NP: I think car companies a lot of the time only know how to market a car on machismo. Car commercials are always very testosterone drivenAnd its hard to market an electric vehicle on testosterone.
CP: Yeah.
NP: Its like when youre watching Top Gear, its the running joke that the presenters hate
CP: Electric cars.
NP: And the reason they hate electric cars is because they feel that theyre emasculating.
CP: Yeah. Well...You know they got in trouble for defaming both Tesla and Nissan. Did you hear this?
NP: Yes.
CP: Screw those guys. Its so important that this technology get a foot hold and when they set up bullshit that is not true, just to have a laugh on their show they certainly shouldnt be running on BBC on state run money
NP: There needs to be a disclaimer if youre presenting something thats untrue during something that purports to be a consumer test on a factually based show.
CP: Of course. Im glad that Nissan busted them in such a classy way with their own GPS data from the car. Did you hear that?
NP: No.
CP: Thats how they got them. Because, you know, he runs out of power in a disabled parking space[And Nissan goes,] well actually, the GPS shows that you drove the car around the block for about 40 miles before you even started your range test and we can see it. Heres the map of where you went in your car. So why are you making this claim on your show that you ran out of power on a fair test? And they were like, Err, its just a TV show. Well, excuse me, I spent $6 billion developing a technology so we can get the fuck off of oil and youre going to set me up like our cars cant do anything? Thats not fair.
NP: Right, because its so much bigger than shits and giggles on a TV show. Its about people in Iraq and Afghanistan dying.
CP: Yeah. Yeah. Cluster bombing weddings of people that are there because they happen to be in the way, and British soldiers losing their arms because theyre trying to do the right thing. Im glad your TV show has great ratings, but to hell with you. You can tell Im pretty fired up about this. I know its a show people enjoy, but the mitts are off.
NP: I enjoy that show, but their attitude to green technology is one area of blindness that disappoints me. But I do think it does come down to this idea that electric vehicles are emasculating. People like the smell of gasoline its manly because its dirty.It goes back to your point about how GM doesnt know how to market the Volt.
CP: And it went back to why the gasoline car took off in the first place. Because the women and the doctors would have the electric cars because they could keep their hands clean, they were quiet.
NP: Right, we used to have electric cars back in the day.
CP: But the men who were making those purchase decisions, wanted noise, they wanted to feel like they were a lion roaring. Its all primal, the noise and all that. I think its one reason that Tesla did not put the word electric on their sports car, because they wanted to keep it a pure play fast.
Its not like trains continued forever. They were way sexier than a car is. More powerful. You have all the imagery from movies of trains and we thought theyd last forever And I think the whole generation that gets electronicspeople want their iPads and digital phones and none of them make noise and theyre incredibly sexyThe electric car is like that. Its a 21st century [thing]. Jeremy can live in 1955 all he wants but a lot of us have moved on.
NP: If Electric Car was a trilogy like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, what do you hope the third movie would be?
CP: The third movie?I was thinking about that this morningI thought if nobody buys these cars and the oil price drops to $3.00 a gallon again and everybody decides to get out for awhile, then its going to be Curse of the Electric Car if we kept the monster theme going. I hope that doesnt happen. Id like to see my next movie be about bicycles, because I just see in so many cities around the world bicycle is really having a renaissance right now, and its terrific.
NP: Whats happening in London with the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme, where you can just pay 1 [$1.50] and rent a bike for 24-hours, and just leave it in any bike station when youre done its amazing. When I lived in London, my commute to work used to be a bicycle ride through Richmond Park amongst all the deer. But I would not ride a bicycle in LA because Id be dead within a week. The basic problem is the cycle lanes are also the bus lanes that are also the right turn lanes thats a recipe for death.
CP: I know. Youre exactly right. If you go to Washington, DC they have concrete barriers protecting you from the vehicle trains.
NP: I think the cycle lanes here are more of a hazard than a help because it gives people a false sense of security.
CP: I agree. LA would be an interesting place to tell that story because you do have a strong community, we have the midnight rides, we have government that wants bicycles to succeed. But youre up against a huge generational pushbackThis is a generational thing, I think. Im very attracted to doing something about bicycles but a lot of bicycle movies are being made and the trick is how do you find a subject you can reach a lot of people on thats not just another bicycle movie. How do you make it exciting and sexy? I think that we figured out how to do that, to a certain extent, in our Electric Car films. Because you wouldnt know that there were maybe stories locked in there that would be interesting to most people. Im sure thats true for bicycles too, its just you never know where it is...
I think, for electric cars its going to be another five years before we get another feeling for it maybe ten. I was amazed that this turned around as fast as it did, from were going to kill every one to oh, we all want to make them. I mean, Mercedes, BMW, they all want to do it now. When they switched from horses to cars, that took about 20 years, so I think we have to give just a little bit of time.
NP: Another 10 years, halfway through the process.
CP: Yeah, I think so. And for everybody to understand that gasoline is not forever and that the environmental stuff is real.
A fully electric plug-in vehicle with a range of between 70 and 140 miles depending on model, the EV1 was first introduced into the marketplace in 1996. Available in limited test markets on a closed lease-only basis (whereby no actual purchase was allowed), it was developed by General Motors partly in response to the California Air Resources Boards requirement that the seven major auto companies in the US had to make at least 2% of their output zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) by 1998 in order to sell any cars within the state (with further graduated steps stipulated up to 10% in 2003).
Though grudgingly produced by General Motors, the vehicle was beloved by the few consumers lucky enough to rise to the top of the companys reportedly vast waiting list. But it was likely a car that was never intended to succeed. General Motors seemingly put more effort into fighting the CARB mandate in court than meeting existing demand for vehicles or marketing the EV1 to create even more. It was therefore not uncoincidental that the demise of the EV1 occurred in tandem with the gutting of CARBs ZEV rules. The EV1 program was officially cancelled in 2003, and a total recall was put in motion, with repossessed cars being not only compacted but shredded for good measure too.
A 2006 documentary, Who Killed The Electric Car, chronicled the crushing demise of this groundbreaking car. In it filmmaker Chris Paine highlighted the collusion of the auto industry, oil companies, and politicians, who all had a vested interest in seeing the electric vehicle die an untimely death alongside CARBs environmentally prudent directives. Catching the zeitgeist, Who Killed The Electric was the third highest grossing documentary that year (Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth being the first).
However, a decade after General Motors presided over the funeral of the EV1, the killing of the vehicle has proven to be a costly mistake. With gas prices rising, Toyota filled the rapidly increasing fuel-efficient void with their hybrid Prius, which went on sale in Japan in 1997. Following its worldwide debut in 2001, Toyota have sold over a million Prius cars in the US alone, and the rest of the auto industry has been scrabbling to catch up.
With revenge being served on a platter less than a decade on, Paine and his documentary team were compelled to reexamine the fortunes of the electric vehicle in a follow up film. The first had centered on activists working from outside the industry, with this film Paine chose to follow a diverse group of instigators working from within. Revenge Of The Electric Car therefore features four EV evangelists (some of whom were more recently converted than others) who are attempting to drive the future of the automobile into the present: Bob Lutz (General Motors Vice Chairman up until May 2010), Elon Musk (Tesla Motorss CEO), Carlos Ghosn (Nissans President and CEO), and Greg Gadget Abbot (a DIY electric engine retro-fitter).
SuicideGirls recently visited Paine at his ultra green home to talk about his cinematic I told you so and the electric awakening of a sluggish car industry that was in need of a shock. After checking out the 2008 Tesla Roadster parked in Paines garage, the irony was not lost that we were conversing about, and anticipating the dominance of, the gas-free vehicle in the heart of LAs oil country amidst the pumpjack nodding donkeys of Baldwin Hills.
Nicole Powers: So lets rewind and talk about the first film, and how all this began.
Chris Paine: Well, I had one of those cars. I had one and then they took it away. I dropped it off to have the tires checked for something, and [the GM dealership representative said], Oh, you wont be getting your car back. Im like, My lease still has another nine months. And he says, Yeah, well were just going to keep it. I said, Well can I get my gym bag out of the car? [He said,] Oh, Its already gone. [I said,] Well where has it gone? [He said,] We cant tell you where its gone. [I said,] You cant tell me where the car is gone? And then, you know, the car companies were all saying, Well nobody wanted these cars And we go, this is just not the whole story
So that film became an issue movie about two things. One about what happened to these cars. Because the trail was so hot, we could actually follow the step by step. I think that what happened when they took out the streetcars in the 50s, a lot of those trails got very cold and it was hard to like do it. We took the title from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which was really about streetcars in Los Angeles. Thats sort of the backstory.
Then we also thought that the filmit couldve been about a lot of issues, it just happened to be about the electric car, about what happens with corporate lobbies that take over government. They eviscerate really good programs that are in the public goodfor whatever corporate reasons they have. We busted both the oil industry through the Western States Petroleum for their astroturf campaigns, where they would pose as consumer groups but really just be the oil companies. They got behind stopping public funding of charging. And then the American Association of Automobile Manufacturers, which was behind trying to gut the regulation for zero emission vehicles.
The challenge of that film was to make an issue movie interesting and to keep the momentum going. This film, we decided we did the issue movie. People are a little bit issued out. There are so many things going on. Lets make a movie thats just about pure momentum characters and momentumLike a regular narrative film. Because if we were going to do the issue movie, it would be 10 hours to do everything: coal, batteries, where does power come from, why gasoline is so bad, the history of the vehicle, etc. This would take forever to get right. And if we can pick four characters that represent different pieces of international business right now, and how sometimes from within you can get something going, it would be a different kind of message
I found in 10 years of arguing for electric cars that theres no winning the argument. Because while I think that the argument for electric cars is completely done, you cant change most peoples minds through argumentWhat turns people are emotional experiences. The experience, for example, of driving in one of these plug-in carsSuddenly all of your intellect goes to defending what you like as opposed to trying to beat someone in the argument. So that was kind of the idea for the filmLets just give people an experience, and maybe as a result theyll want to go out and try one of these cars. That will probably do more to convince people than any amount of arguing about air or oil or anything else.
NP: A lot has changed in 10 years since Who Killed the Electric Car? GM may have ended their electric car program, but Toyota and the Prius have been ruling the auto industry since then and everyones been scrabbling to catch up. There must be that temptation to say, I told you so.
CP: Well, I figure the I told you so is implicit in the word revenge. We got some push back from a couple of reviews saying, Its not a revenge. But, if you cant track that Hummer went bankrupt and that all the car companies went bankrupt and that all these things failed because they made so many stupid decisions in the 90s, then you werent paying attention because its a big reversal. The auto industry went from fighting tooth and nail to kill electric cars to being champions of them, and its just remarkable. I think its one reason that we decided to make another electric car film when we had no plans to do so when we finished the last one. Because you dont usually see things turn around like that. And from some of the same people even.
NP: I could not believe that you got [GM Vice Chairman] Bob Lutz to participate in the movie. Thats kind of amazing. How did that even come about?
CP: Hes just brave. I think he convinced a lot of people at GM that never wanted us to come in the gatesThe first interviews we had with him were pretty stiff, and over the three years that we were checking in with him, things became more relaxed and we got to really do a portrait of someone.
NP: When you decided to make this movie, how did the first contact come about?
CP: Dan Neil, [who was] at The LA Times then, asked my opinion on the Volt, because it was suddenly announced that GM was going to work on a new electric car. I told him, Hey, if theyre really going to do it, I would totally support it because thats what we want them to do to make plug-in cars. And then, I cant quite remember the sequence, but Bob Lutz and I exchanged emails. I had his email address from the first movie for some reason. He said, Are you really in favor of the Volt if we did that. I go, Yeah, I totally support that. And he goes, Oh, well, were really going to do it.
Somewhere in there Elon Musk, who I knew because of the Tesla out there [indicates his garage], I asked him if I could start tracking his journey and he said, Sure, come on in. So I told Bob Lutz, you know, I was tracking Elon, and Bob said, Why dont you come to the GM 100th Birthday Party. So my producer, Jessie Deeter, shes out of Frontline, said, Okay, well we have to be super careful because this is going to be cooption [because of the] massive spin machine were about to walk into. If were going to work with the car companies, we have to be really careful not to take any free gigs and not to go on junkets, and understand the difference between press and an actual access to something, and its going to be a very tricky balance for the next few years.
And it certainly was. But I think as time went on, we could begin to understand what was more authentic and what was less authentic, and choose those moments to put in the film. So thats how it started. Once we had GM, we went to the other car companies, Toyota and Ford and everybody else, Fisker and Better Place in Israel. Some of them said no, and some of them made it very impossible to reach them. And some of them said yes, but their stories really changed a lot and they didnt really work with our film, so we ended up with these four.
NP: Nissan, how did that come about?
CP: We approached them. We thought it would be a no for sure, because theyre a very secret company. Peter [co-writer and producer P.G. Morgan] and I were here, and they asked if they could send two people to talk to us. We met them for a ten o clock [meeting], just like this. Ding dong, two guys came in and they grilled us for about 90 minutes about the first film, what we were doing in this film, what we were doing at GM, and what our security provisions were for footage. Because Tesla had an IPO and GM was facing bankruptcywe had a super secure editing process. If any of our footage got out it could adversely price the stock.
NP: Presumably you also had to have an internal Chinese wall where you would not be passing information along.
CP: Exactly. Exactly. They were competitive with each other. We told them all of our procedures and stuff. Then they said, Thank you, and they went to the door. I said, Where are you guys going? They said, Were going back to Japan. Theyd flown in [Nissan Chairman and CEO] Carlos [Ghosn] had sent them and then they flew back. Then about two days later we got permission to come to Japan to track Carlos. So all of our Japanese scenes started there. At one point we were all in one hotel room because we wouldnt take their junket and there were no other hotel rooms. We were all on top of each other and we did sort of envy the other journalists that were there. Everybodys like, You guys, what are you doing? You think youre being purists over here.
NP: But its importantThat integrity is lost a lot of the time these days.
CP: Yeah. It hurts me sometimesWeve had a couple of negative reviews where theyve said your film felt like a commercial or you got a little close to the companies. You try figuring out this balance, its really hard to do itIts been a very tough balance. And the car companies are often annoyed at us, you know, it was challenging. But I think it came out all right, and we got kind of a portrait of different kinds of entrepreneurship in this country. It happens to be about cars
NP: I love the fact that you have the independent guy working out of his warehouse/garage. I understand hes a friend of yours?
CP: Yeah. When you drive down the road here, over the hill you can see where he used to live. Thats the thing that burned down. So he was right there. I wasnt thinking he was going to be in the film at first. Then the horrible fire happened, and he found that little controller in the ashes and its blinking, and hes going, Were going to rebuild it. Im like, well thats the spirit of the film. Even if youre in a huge corporation, youve got a lot of push back.
NP: Right, because GM were in the ashes too.
CP: Exactly. And the best people will rebuild. They dont give up at that moment. They say, onwards. Elon, hes a playboy with millions of dollars or whatever
NP: And he almost went down to his last cent of PayPal money with Tesla.
CP: EverythingHis ego stripped down and people attacking him on a personal levelYouve got to be tough.
NP: From the very little guy to the very big guy, they all have this similar rising from the ashes story.
CP: Yeah, thats sort of the story, exactly. Im glad that came through.
NP: I was surprised that there wasnt much about the Prius in the movie given that that was very much the game changer.
CP: I know. Well, we mentioned it in the beginning, that it was one of GMs motivators, that they wanted to compete with Toyota, that they had run away with the efficient market. Bob Lutz says it. But we couldnt get access to Toyota. They wouldnt let us in for whatever reason.
NP: I guess because Toyota felt that they didnt need to give you access because they already owned the green market, whereas Nissan is trying to catch up to Toyota so they have the incentive to participate.
CP: I think so, and I think our first film really helped Toyota because they had the only product that was really efficient when gas prices hit $4.00 a gallon in the States. They were the only people that had an efficient relatively green car. Their sales went from loosing lots of money to really on the up and up. The other thing is[with] the Prius, you could never plug it in.
NP: That was the frustration for me. It made no sense because it already had rechargeable batteries. All you needed was the ability to plug it into a wall, and youd have never needed gas most of the time, because most car journeys are in the realm of less than 20 miles.
CP: Yeah, well theres a reason for this. Its not proven, but a lot of people believe its because Chevron owned the technology for the nickel metal batteries which were in the Prius. There was a big closed settlement that happened about the time, right before our last movie came out, that Prius could indeed go ahead and use those batteries, even though Chevron owned the patents, but it had certain limitations. So a lot of people think the limitation was they could not put a plug on it. Whether thats true or not, the reason that the plug is now coming in the Prius is that theyre switching to lithium batteriesBut, its very difficult to prove that and we had to with all our films be very careful with our legal and all that.
NP: I remember in the first film there was the mom and pop operation that had developed this far superior battery, and their patent got bought just so that it could be put on ice.
CP: That was the company. That was it.
NP: Ah, Chevron was the company that bought their patent?
CP: ExactlyIris [Ovshinsky] passed away right after the first film came out and we miss her a lot because she was actually the physicist in that relationship, or she had the PhD, and her husband [Stanford] was like the salesman. She was the quiet brains, you know.
NP: I had a conversation with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that discussion was more on the issue of coal but one of the things that he said was that basically the tipping point will come when its just plain cheaper to use green energy. One of the problems specifically with coal is that theres so many subsidies that the price is artificially low. Are there similar economics going on in the car industry?
CP: Oh sure. I mean, the gasoline engine is almost fully amortized, because they developed it over 100 years. They know how to make thousands, and tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of these at the lowest possible price. When you start a new kind of automobile, ie. with a motor and batteries, which in theory is much cheaper because you only have a few parts versus an entire engine, it takes a while for economies of scale to kick in. Its hard for them to get their manufacturing price down to what the gas car is...Thats the first difficulty they have.
Now one thing they have going for them is that electricity is a lot cheaper. Even in the US where were 50% coal, electricity as a whole runs about $1.00 a gallon, compared to $4.00 for oil. That is a big cost advantage for the consumer. But the consumer will only make those changes when theyre really hurting at the gas pump. It happened the first time we paid $100 to refill our trucks and cars in 2008. When were paying that again, as fuel prices go up, and its hard to say how that will happen, but peak oil means that well keep going upKennedy is absolutely right, its the price of gas that will push them to alternatives.
NP: Also the price of the actual cars is a problem. I recently had to buy a new car. I wouldve liked to have bought a Prius, but the difference was just too great. The Prius cost almost double what my car cost, and I get 28 mpg versus 40-something [highway] on the Prius because you cant plug it in.
CP: Yeah, the prices are hugely important. I think that Carlos understands that. I think they all understand. But Nissan had to even raise their price on the Leaf recently. They raised it like $2,000. Theyre not going to be able to compete with the $10,000 economy car. They cant do that for a while. I think they will in time if all the people...that are buying $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 carsstep up to the plate.
The rest of us, that can only afford a $20,000 [car] or whatever else, this is where ride sharing and test drives [come in]. Because every time someone goes down and test drives a plug-in car, they become a convert and they can tell someone else about it. This is only possible really now, that you can go to a dealership and test drive an electric car to feel and see what its all about.
I hope that our film is part of the inspiration for people to go out and check these things out because they couldnt do it after they crushed all those cars in our [first] movie. They were almost impossible to findI really believe that the experience of this is as important as any argument. Ultimately, of course, youre right, its the price of these things, and the price of oil that will determine how fast this happens.
NP: Part of me wonders why GM, the moment the Prius started taking off, didnt just reboot the EV1 since they already had the technology developed.
CP: Pride, I think.
NP: I think it was.
CP: Yeah. I mean, they say its because they were never able to get the costs down and that the car was costing them $100,00, but it didnt have to cost that much. They could make that car much cheaper than that. So I think its pride. Also I think its why they got into so much trouble in California. Because they wanted to win the battle against California, they forgot about their brand. They obviously forgot about the environment and the consumer and everything else. It was a big disaster.
People say, Well dont you want General Motors to go bankrupt? Im like, I dont particularly like car companies, but if these car companies go bankrupt its a huge allocation of resources to rebuild industries like this. You think the pollution is bad, its much better to use existing factories. Of course itd be great if we rode bicycles and did public transportation, and this should happen, but the reality is we make tens of thousands of cars all the time so we should be making plug-in cars. General Motors is trying to do something about it. So why not? Because theyre American jobs. I mean, why do we need to import everything from China?
NP: When did you finish shooting this film?
CP: We finished shooting end of 2010.
NP: What updates from the intervening year would you like to have been able to include?
CP: I wanted to get in this idea of how much electricity is in every gallon of gasoline. Because you hear a lot of people say, Oh, where does all the electricity come from? Which is a very good question. And, Isnt it just coming from coal? Before you even get there, think about who is one of the biggest users of electricity in the world. The answer is: its the oil industry. Because it takes a lot of electricity to turn black crude oil into gasoline. Like 4-7 kilowatt hours of energy. How much is that? If, instead of charging up the crude oil to make gasoline, you put the energy into a battery, you could drive your Leaf 20 or 25 miles, just on that electricity alone. Just on the refining. No Saudi Arabia. No shipping it over. No driving the truck to the gas station, no anything else. Just the refining. So theres stuff like this that I would love to have in the movie because its data that people need to understandto start using electricity wisely and not waste it converting fuels into other fuelsBut again, every time we tried to detour into something like batteries from cars actually dont end up in landfill and theres actually only 1% or 2% lithium in a lithium battery, most of it is completely benign, every time we did that, the movie would stop moving
And to answer your question, we wanted this movie to end when electric cars were actually available to people to buy again. Because the first movie ended when they were destroyed, so I said this movie is going to end when theyre actually in showrooms again. That was sort of our end point. Now, if we had kept it going, right now what would the story be? Well, Volt sales havent been that good. They were hoping to sell 10,000 and I think theyve sold 4,000.
NP: Why do you think that is?
CP: Two reasons. One: they came in at a little high price point and theyve lowered their price now. Two: theyve marketed the car really strangely, probably because they had too many focus groups. Theyve marketed the car as more car than electric. Nobody even knows what electric means. They shouldve just said more car. Like it does more. It runs on two kinds of systems. GM, as good as their engineering is at least on electric cars, I think their marketing has always been a little bit confused
NP: I think car companies a lot of the time only know how to market a car on machismo. Car commercials are always very testosterone drivenAnd its hard to market an electric vehicle on testosterone.
CP: Yeah.
NP: Its like when youre watching Top Gear, its the running joke that the presenters hate
CP: Electric cars.
NP: And the reason they hate electric cars is because they feel that theyre emasculating.
CP: Yeah. Well...You know they got in trouble for defaming both Tesla and Nissan. Did you hear this?
NP: Yes.
CP: Screw those guys. Its so important that this technology get a foot hold and when they set up bullshit that is not true, just to have a laugh on their show they certainly shouldnt be running on BBC on state run money
NP: There needs to be a disclaimer if youre presenting something thats untrue during something that purports to be a consumer test on a factually based show.
CP: Of course. Im glad that Nissan busted them in such a classy way with their own GPS data from the car. Did you hear that?
NP: No.
CP: Thats how they got them. Because, you know, he runs out of power in a disabled parking space[And Nissan goes,] well actually, the GPS shows that you drove the car around the block for about 40 miles before you even started your range test and we can see it. Heres the map of where you went in your car. So why are you making this claim on your show that you ran out of power on a fair test? And they were like, Err, its just a TV show. Well, excuse me, I spent $6 billion developing a technology so we can get the fuck off of oil and youre going to set me up like our cars cant do anything? Thats not fair.
NP: Right, because its so much bigger than shits and giggles on a TV show. Its about people in Iraq and Afghanistan dying.
CP: Yeah. Yeah. Cluster bombing weddings of people that are there because they happen to be in the way, and British soldiers losing their arms because theyre trying to do the right thing. Im glad your TV show has great ratings, but to hell with you. You can tell Im pretty fired up about this. I know its a show people enjoy, but the mitts are off.
NP: I enjoy that show, but their attitude to green technology is one area of blindness that disappoints me. But I do think it does come down to this idea that electric vehicles are emasculating. People like the smell of gasoline its manly because its dirty.It goes back to your point about how GM doesnt know how to market the Volt.
CP: And it went back to why the gasoline car took off in the first place. Because the women and the doctors would have the electric cars because they could keep their hands clean, they were quiet.
NP: Right, we used to have electric cars back in the day.
CP: But the men who were making those purchase decisions, wanted noise, they wanted to feel like they were a lion roaring. Its all primal, the noise and all that. I think its one reason that Tesla did not put the word electric on their sports car, because they wanted to keep it a pure play fast.
Its not like trains continued forever. They were way sexier than a car is. More powerful. You have all the imagery from movies of trains and we thought theyd last forever And I think the whole generation that gets electronicspeople want their iPads and digital phones and none of them make noise and theyre incredibly sexyThe electric car is like that. Its a 21st century [thing]. Jeremy can live in 1955 all he wants but a lot of us have moved on.
NP: If Electric Car was a trilogy like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, what do you hope the third movie would be?
CP: The third movie?I was thinking about that this morningI thought if nobody buys these cars and the oil price drops to $3.00 a gallon again and everybody decides to get out for awhile, then its going to be Curse of the Electric Car if we kept the monster theme going. I hope that doesnt happen. Id like to see my next movie be about bicycles, because I just see in so many cities around the world bicycle is really having a renaissance right now, and its terrific.
NP: Whats happening in London with the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme, where you can just pay 1 [$1.50] and rent a bike for 24-hours, and just leave it in any bike station when youre done its amazing. When I lived in London, my commute to work used to be a bicycle ride through Richmond Park amongst all the deer. But I would not ride a bicycle in LA because Id be dead within a week. The basic problem is the cycle lanes are also the bus lanes that are also the right turn lanes thats a recipe for death.
CP: I know. Youre exactly right. If you go to Washington, DC they have concrete barriers protecting you from the vehicle trains.
NP: I think the cycle lanes here are more of a hazard than a help because it gives people a false sense of security.
CP: I agree. LA would be an interesting place to tell that story because you do have a strong community, we have the midnight rides, we have government that wants bicycles to succeed. But youre up against a huge generational pushbackThis is a generational thing, I think. Im very attracted to doing something about bicycles but a lot of bicycle movies are being made and the trick is how do you find a subject you can reach a lot of people on thats not just another bicycle movie. How do you make it exciting and sexy? I think that we figured out how to do that, to a certain extent, in our Electric Car films. Because you wouldnt know that there were maybe stories locked in there that would be interesting to most people. Im sure thats true for bicycles too, its just you never know where it is...
I think, for electric cars its going to be another five years before we get another feeling for it maybe ten. I was amazed that this turned around as fast as it did, from were going to kill every one to oh, we all want to make them. I mean, Mercedes, BMW, they all want to do it now. When they switched from horses to cars, that took about 20 years, so I think we have to give just a little bit of time.
NP: Another 10 years, halfway through the process.
CP: Yeah, I think so. And for everybody to understand that gasoline is not forever and that the environmental stuff is real.