MANHATTAN — New York City is still trying to jumpstart the switch to electric cars.
A year after installing 200 charging stations across the city, the Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability has teamed up with Nissan to present a free screening on July 12 of the "Revenge of the Electric Car" documentary at the Central Park Band Shell.
The film, which debuted at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival and has yet to open in theaters, looks at the development of this new breed of car as the global economic crisis hits the auto industry.
Director Chris Paine, who gained inside access to Tesla Motors, General Motors and Nissan to get a better understanding the resurgence of electric cars, tells a different tale than his "Who Killed the Electric Car?," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006.
"It's a rare privilege to be able to tell the story of how sometimes change has too much momentum to be stopped," Paine said in his director's statement about his new movie. "You can't kill an idea whose time has come."
In the first movie, Paine followed activists fighting from the outside. In the "Revenge" movie, he spent three years with four entrepreneurs fighting on the inside.
"Bob Lutz, GM's Vice Chair, stakes the entire brand on the very technology it once tried to kill," Paine said. "Nissan's CEO, Carlos Ghosn, bets the farm on a car almost no one believes can happen."
Before the screening, the public will get a chance to ask experts questions and check out electric vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt, Ford Transit Connect, Navistar eStar, Nissan LEAF and original electric Toyota RAV4.
The event is at Central Park's Naumburg Bandshell, Tuesday, July 12. The car display starts at 7:30 p.m. and the screening of "Revenge of the Electric Car" starts at 8:30 p.m.
