The official trailer for “Revenge of the Electric Car” includes a low-angle shot of Tesla Motors’ engineer-CEO, Elon Musk. Smiling broadly with arms folded across his chest, he towers as media cameras flash and curious gawkers look on.

Get used to the image, because you’re going to be seeing a lot of Musk in the months and years to come.

Musk made his fortune in the dot-com boom, then channeled his Silicon Valley know-how into the goal of ending the world’s addiction to oil. Audacious? Sure. But after a mere seven years, Tesla made a believer out of investors, becoming the first American automaker to launch an initial public offering in over half a century. The Wall Street Journal named Musk its 2011 Technology Innovator of the Year.

Even more telling is the consumer response. As with Apple, Tesla’s new models have a tendency to sell out before they hit the sales floor.

According to former GM executive Robert Lutz (also profiled in “Revenge”), Tesla also gets credit for helping resuscitating GM’s moribund work on electric cars:

“All the geniuses here at General Motors kept saying lithium-ion technology is ten years away. . . So I said ‘How come some tiny little California company, run by guys who know nothing about the car business, can do this and we can’t?’ That was the crowbar that helped break up the log jam.” (“Plugged In,” The New Yorker, August 24, 2009, page 50.)

Viewers of director Chris Paine’s first feature-length docudrama, “Who Killed the Electric Car,” will recall that GM was a world leader in electric cars back in the ’90s … until the company mysteriously decided to recall and destroy the EVs then-purring along California highways, setting off something of a chaparral rebellion among the state’s high-tech engineers and investors.

But if “Who Killed the Electric Car?” ended like “Empire Strikes Back,” with the good guys discouraged and defeated, then “Revenge” plays more like “Return of the Jedi” (minus the Ewoks).

And the cavalry is being led by a man named Carlos Ghosn. Born in Brazil of Lebanese decent, Ghosn is the ruthless, planet-trotting CEO of not one but two global car makers: Japan-based Nissan and Paris-based Renault, which together account for more than 10 percent of worldwide sales. As profiled in “Revenge,” Ghosn is the man most likely to succeed in bringing electric cars to the masses. Under his direction, Nissan is investing over $5 billion with the goal of selling seven million electric cars this decade.

The take-away? After years of riding the breaks, Nissan, GM, and others are now placing very large bets on electric cars, in the hope that consumers will be willing to give them a test drive. What do you say?

If you live in the Twin Cities, please join Fresh Energy and director Chris Paine at a special screening of “Revenge” on Monday, November 14 (details and tickets here).

Sponsored in part by Innovative Power Systems, Weber Electric, and Kinsen Noodles & Bar. Nonprofit partners include the American Lung Association in Minnesota (ALAMN), Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTs), HOURCAR, Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA), Minnesota Renewable Energy Society (MRES), Neighborhood Energy Connection (NEC).

The official trailer for "Revenge of the Electric Car" includes a low-angle shot of Tesla Motors’ engineer-CEO, Elon Musk. Smiling broadly with arms folded across his chest, he towers as media cameras flash and curious gawkers look on.