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? (Barnes & Noble)

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It begins with a solemn funeral…for a car. By the end of Chris Paine’s lively and informative documentary, the idea doesn’t seem quite so strange. As narrator Martin Sheen notes, “They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust and ran without gasoline.” Paine proceeds to show how this unique vehicle came into being and why General Motors ended up reclaiming its once-prized creation less than a decade later.

He begins 100 years ago with the original electric car. By the 1920s, the internal-combustion engine had rendered it obsolete. By the 1980s, however, car companies started exploring alternative energy sources, like solar power. This, in turn, led to the late, great battery-powered EV1. Throughout, Paine deftly translates hard science and complex politics, such as California’s Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate, into lay person’s terms (director Alex Gibney, Oscar-nominated for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, served as consulting producer).

And everyone gets the chance to have their say: engineers, politicians, protesters, and petroleum spokespeople–even celebrity drivers, like Peter Horton, Alexandra Paul, and a wild man beard-sporting Mel Gibson. But the most persuasive participant is former Saturn employee Chelsea Sexton. Promoting the benefits of the EV1 was more than a job to her, and she continues to lobby for more environmentally friendly options. Sexton provides the small ray of hope Paine’s film so desperately needs. (Amazon)