Drive Electric Week: Friday, September 19, 2014

Drive Electric Week, MOM's Organic Market, and Affordable Electric Car NOW! are working on an event to rival last years successful Electric Car events in Herndon, VA, Waldorf, MD, and elsewhere. The Herndon event alone saw over 100 people in attendance, a great draw to local businesses in the region.

We now want to bring this experience to the Mosaic Center. This year we're planning in two phases, the first hosted by MOM's and the second as a double-feature of the two Chris Paine documentaries about electric cars. Director Paine is a strong advocate for electric cars and is helping promote this and similar electric car events around the world.

Phase 2: Movie (17:00–21:00)

We'd like to invite our guests to the display on the side of the Angelika for a double feature of Director Chris Paine's two acclaimed Electric Car documentaries: Who Killed the Electric Car and Revenge of the Electric Car.  Look for the Electric Cars parked on Strawberry Lane in front of the theater.  Look for the cars with Drive Electric flags and come talk to someone who's an experienced Electric Car driver while you enjoy the movies.

Who Killed the Electric Car (17:15)

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. Who Killed the Electric Car? is, otherwise, a tremendously sobering experience. —Kathleen C. Fennessy

Revenge of the Electric Car (19:00) 

Fascinating ... a hugely entertaining portrait. (REVENGE) makes for a refreshing and ultimately very effective change of pace compared with the strident, propaganda approach so often employed by similar documentaries. Even the most skeptical global warming deniers are apt to find themselves rooting for this disparate group of risk-takers who may well be spearheading the long delayed transition from oil reliance to new technology —The Hollywood Reporter

Riveting ... highly entertaining. With unprecedented insider access, Paine presents a film that is less an environmental jeremiad than a portrait of the automotive industry as it seeks to catch up with the 21st century. (REVENGE) boasts the richest cast of quirky, compelling characters at Tribeca. —Vanity Fair

One of the best films at Tribeca ... this follow-up to 2006's Who Killed the Electric Car? is distinguished by its unguarded access to GM's Bob Lutz, Nissan's Carlos Ghosn, and Tesla's Elon Musk three colorful super-villains who might just save the planet —Esquire

(Reviews courtesy of Amazon.com)

We look forward seeing you at the Mosaic Center and I want to thank the kind folks there and at MOMs and Stone's Cove Kitbar for all their help in organizing this project and we should all be very grateful for the support they've shown for electric vehicles.