Feature Article | Paine's Marrakesh House

Once curve-hugging machines running fast and quiet, gasoline-free and with zero emissions, they finished crushed and stacked three-deep on flatbed trucks at a remote desert facility. That’s how we last glimpsed General Motors’ all-electric EV1 in the 2006 documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car.” Introduced in 1996, the EV1 was the first modern production electric vehicle from a major automaker, available by lease-only in select states. But by 2005, virtually every EV1 had been recalled by GM.

Fast forward three years: Oil prices have stabilized after record-breaking spikes last summer, while climate change has become a top policy priority in the United States and the world. Facing financial collapse, GM and Chrysler were approved for $17.4 billion in federal rescue loans late last year. Nearly every major automaker plans to launch an electric vehicle by 2012.

It’s a reversal that astonishes even Chris Paine, the writer and director of “Who Killed.” Now in production with “Revenge of the Electric Car,” Paine sees it as a chance to revisit the earlier movie’s conclusion. “You don’t need to have the last word on electric cars be why they didn’t make it,” he says.

For the new documentary, Paine says, “We’re tracking the big car companies. We’re tracking the independent startups and we’re tracking converters, and we’re tying it in, to a certain extent, to the story of renewable energy. And it’s absolutely impossible for us even to begin to cover the magnitude of this story, because there are so many people doing so many things.” Many of these stories are finding an audience in the movie’s blogs at revengeoftheelectriccar.com.

Ultimately, he says, “I [decided] I needed to make a movie that sort of transcends the disempowerment of what happened in the late ’90s with the electric car, with the fact that change is going to happen.”

Change is tough though, and Paine notes that maintaining momentum is all the more difficult during a deep recession. But he draws hope from young people, citing the Obama election as an example. “You really feel like people, and a new generation of people — I think a lot of it is about generational change — were really ready to embrace change.” Paine sees this same generation passionately driven to move society from the oil age to electric cars and the renewable energy era. “I give college tours, and people are just on fire.”

Before Paine leased the EV1 that inspired “Who Killed,” he had little interest in cars. In fact, it was his interest in solar energy that first attracted him to the EV1. As a kid, Paine was a fan of Paul MacCready, who designed the first successful human- and solar-powered aircraft in the late 1970s. With his engineer dad, Paine even put a solar water-heating system on the family roof during the Carter administration. Years later, MacCready’s firm, AeroVironment, would build the prototype GM Impact on which the EV1 was based.

“When I heard that Paul MacCready had designed, or co-designed, a car for General Motors, I thought, well, that is my car — the future has finally arrived,” he recalls. “The first time I drove it, I was pretty much smitten.”

Driving electric cars led him back to solar.“I began to meet other people with electric cars, and they said, ‘You know, having an electric car is great, but when you have it solar powered, that’s the whole picture’ — when you run your electric car on renewable energy, you’ve reached nirvana,” he says, laughing.

In February, Paine came a step closer to nirvana, installing a 6.66-kilowatt photovoltaic (PV) system on the roof of his Culver City, Calif., home. It was the latest step in the sustainable renovation of his 1950s house, which Paine created as an event house for arts, music and community. In addition to the photovoltaic system, the house includes recycled materials, water-saving toilets and faucets, permaculture landscaping and a two-panel solar water-heating system. Inside, an educational kiosk displays real-time data about the PV system’s production.

For its Moroccan theme, Paine calls it Marrakesh House. More casually, it’s known as the “plug-in mecca.” According to the manufacturer, the 36 Mitsubishi Electric PV panels (mitsubishielectric.com) will produce an estimated 11,000 kilowatt-hours annually to power the house and garage, which has charging outlets for electric cars and hybrids. Read more about Marrakesh House >

Paine’s small fleet includes a 2002 Toyota RAV4-EV and his newest addition, an all-electric Tesla Roadster, delivered in November. As Paine related in his blog, hours after he took delivery of the Tesla, Los Angeles cops pulled him over about missing license plates (then on order). They quickly moved to gushing over the sports car’s curvy body — “This is the Tesla that I told you about. It does zero to 60 in under 4 seconds, and it’s totally electric” — and to quizzing Paine: “Does it really work completely without gasoline?”

So much for the lack of consumer interest automakers cited in discontinuing electric vehicles a decade ago. The ironies aren’t lost on Paine.

Of “Revenge,” he says, “It’s essentially about the return of the electric car from the dead. When we last checked in, it was being buried in the Arizona desert, and now the car is being used [as an auto industry strategy] to literally help win bailout monies in Washington. It’s amazingly, dramatically interesting.”

“Revenge of the Electric Car” is due in theaters next spring. For regular updates, visit the film’s blogs at revengeoftheelectriccar.com.

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Gina R. Johnson is editor/associate publisher of SOLAR TODAY.