Revenge of the Electric Car
2011 documentary film directed by Chris Paine
Revenge of the Electric Car is a 2011 American feature documentary film by Chris Paine, who also directed Who Killed the Electric Car?. The documentary, executive produced by Stefano Durdic, and produced by PG Morgan and Jessie Deeter, had its world premiere at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival on Earth Day, April 22, 2011. The theatrical release to the public took place on October 21, 2011.
Synopsis
Revenge follows four entrepreneurs from 2007 through the end of 2010 as they fight to bring the electric car back to the world market in the midst of the 2008 global recession. The filmmakers had unprecedented access to Tesla, Inc. CEO Elon Musk during the time period in which Musk and Tesla suffered several grave setbacks to the dream of a car company without gasoline. His foils include the charismatic Bob Lutz, vice chairman of General Motors during its 2008 bankruptcy, due in part to its focus on trucks and SUVs instead of fuel efficient and electric cars. Musk and Lutz also face Carlos Ghosn, the CEO credited with saving Renault-Nissan from near bankruptcy and who now had pledged $1 billion to beat Toyota to the pure electric game. A final character, steel fabrication artist, craftsman, prop builder and television personality Greg Abbott, who is known professionally as Reverend Gadget, makes the case for independent electric car conversions in California. Danny DeVito is also interviewed, as an electric car enthusiast and owner of a Chevrolet Volt and the earlier ill-fated General Motors EV1, as well as Internet entrepreneur and Tesla customer Jason Calacanis.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 2011 documentary film directed by Chris Paine. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7317926. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 2007, 2010 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Revenge of the Electric Car” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.