Revenge isn't a great film but it is good and yes much much better film the WKTEC. WKTEC like so many documentaries wasn't really a documentary but a political editorial on film.
I did watch it while prepping dinner, so maybe 3/4 attention. Some aspects of it were interesting. The first 10 minutes almost had me shutting it off, as they repeated the same (counting to 10....), ummm, 'viewing angle' as WKTEC.
It's hard for me to say much w/o going full-bore rant mode, but looking at it glass-half-full mode, there were definitely some interesting things. I was not aware that the CEO of Nissan was a Brazilian-Lebanese-French businessman (wiki description), and he was pretty interesting too. And I got the impression he was not into the Leaf for short-term profit or for 'save the environment' issues, but it seemed he was just trying to hedge his bets - if EVs take off, he wanted the Nissan name to be associated with EVs. If not, whats a few million in R&D to a big corp?
And I do think Elon Musk was brilliant to realize that by the time you got enough batteries together for a 200 mile range, you had enough torque and power for world-class performance. And world-class performance was going for ~ $250,000, so a $40,000 battery pack wasn't an issue in that neighborhood. So they put a $40,000 battery pack in a spin-off of a Lotus Elan, and had a modest hit. I don't think the film really covered that though. And whether that can 'trickle down' to more mid-range priced cars, well, we will see. Also brilliant to get the govt to subsidize the purchase of a rich guys toy. Subsidies to the 1%, yet it's all cool, since it's 'cool'?
OK, a mini-rant (did not want to disappoint
). They seemed to be fine using the 'zero pollution, zero particulates' claim with EVs, with no caveats. But later said that an advantage of EVs is that as the grid becomes cleaner and cleaner, EVs become cleaner and cleaner. Wait a minute, how do you get cleaner than 'zero pollution, zero particulates'? How very convenient. And why wouldn't I be impressed with Danny DiVito's comments, considering he holds an advanced degree in the Environmental Sciences
and several decades of experience as an Automotive Engineer (oh wait, he never even played those parts on TV?)?
The difference between space the ocean is pretty simple in my mind. Elon wants humans to be a multi planet species and the boy in me wants to meet all the hot alien chicks like Captain Kirk and giant glowing squids just aren't the same.
You hold out for your hot alien chicks, I'm going for the sure thing - deap sea mermaids - we've already had actual sightings!
-ERD50