International Political Economic Video Analysis: Revenge of the Electric Car (2011)
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International Political Economic Video Analysis: Revenge of the Electric Car (2011)
The geographic and historical setting
Revenge of the Electric Car is a documentary that was directed by Chris Paine in the year 2011. The documentary features four entrepreneurs as they struggle to bring back the electric cars to the market from the year 2007 to 2010, with all this happening in the center of the global recession that occurred in the year 2008. The documentary gets created in the company in the United States. Modern electric cars that got built by the major car companies got destroyed by the same companies in 2006, influenced by the program of clean air in California. The documentary has access to Elon Musk, who is the cofounder, in the first three years, during which he suffered setbacks brought about by the destruction of the electric vehicles that they had initially created in the year 2006 in his effort to develop cars that do not use gasoline. The events in this documentary get directed by Chris Paine as the company allows him to get behind the scenes where he takes us through the process of manufacturing from the moment it was an idea to become a wholly created electric car.
The film crew and director get behind the closed doors of Tesla Motors, which was a startup for Silicon Valley, a car converter that is independent called Greg “Gadget” Abbott, GM and Nissan in finding the story of cars that are electric that is of the resurgence that is global. We are able to observe, through the documentary, the development of the electric vehicles from a concept into a product that works as well as watch the makers of the car as they struggle with the economy, each other, the press and the public who are the buyers of the vehicle. The destr8uction of the 5000 cars in 2006 affected the players who are involved in reviving electric cars. The documentary presents a documentation of the new generation rebirth of cars that are electric that comprise of the Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Volt and the Tesla Roadster. The documentary got released first in New York and Los Angeles on 21st October 2011 and followed openings in metropolitan areas that were major.
Motivations of the principal characters
This documentary presents several characters motivated by different factors, including political, economic, and ideological motivations. The principal characters in this documentary include Elon Musk of Tesla Motors, Bob Lutz of General Motors, and Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Renault Nissan, who makes a pledge of 1 million dollars to defeat Toyota in the game of electric cars. The details on the motivations that are political, economic, and/or ideological for each of the primary characters in the documentary are as discussed below.
Elon Musk
He is the head of Tesla Motors and is a young billionaire who is ideologically motivated. His motivation is based on the fact that despite getting near bankruptcy, he is still motivated to learn, and this try as his intention of getting into manufacturing electric cars in the first place were intended to create cars that do not use gasoline. He is of the idea that Detroit can learn a few things from Silicon Valley in terms of the making of electric cars. The documentary takes us through the struggles of Elon in terms of the swerving of Tesla Motors from excitement initially in is space program and rocket launches to the moon to get to a place where it was nearly bankrupt. The economic motivation for this character is that the success of electric cars is a chance to restore the company into its former glory. In this documentary, we watch it get revived with a triumphant IPO. Musk is economically motivated as he is dealing with the financial pressures he is facing in running his rocket company as well as Tesla. As such, the success of electric cars is the last resort he has in saving his companies.
Bob Lutz
This character is motivated ideologically in the sense that he believes, “Electric Cars are back with a vengeance” after having been skeptical for some years. He is responsible for inspiring General Motors’ new program for electric cars called the Volt. Ho\is intention for returning to General Motors in the year 2001 was to enhance its development of products. He championed the concept of Chevrolet Volt in the year 207, becoming the first extended, modern-rage electric car in the world. He is politically motivated in the sense that he sees himself as a leader in the electric car market as he was responsible for its first-ever success in the world. He is also motivated economically in his effort to regain financial stability.
Carlos Ghosn
This character is the head of the Motor Company, Nissan. He astonished the world in the year 2009 when he announced the launch of an electric vehicle that was affordable and was meant for a mass population of the market. His decisions are economically motivated by in his efforts to sell the vehicles in many countries across the world, which is a gamble to stabilize the economy of the organization (Cohen, 2017). The success of Nissan through the cars produced for the mass market will corner the market in electric cars that are produced massively, but if they fail, then Nissan will fail too, and its economic position will be bad too.
Perspectives in event representation/ character motivation
The structuralism/Marxist approach exists in the sense that it gets represented in the events that led the characters in the documentary to get closer to bankruptcy in their businesses that were obviously doing well as they were popular (Andreu & Brassett, 2020). The economies of their companies took a toll when the 500 electric cars that they had to destroy after costs had been incurred in their product. This caused significant losses to the companies. In addition to that, the global financial crisis struck, leading the companies to near bankruptcy. The success of their efforts to revive electric cars is, therefore, their chance at regaining financial stability, and they cannot afford to fail. This also gets brought out in the motivation of their characters as that they are all working towards avoiding a similar scenario in the future. The structure of the economy when the financial crisis hit played a huge roll in their financial instability, and for this reason, all the characters, in this case, have one thing in common, they are economically motivated in their efforts to make the electric cars a success.
References
Andreu, M., & Brassett, J. (2020). International Political Economy (IPE). The Routledge Handbook to Rethinking Ethics in International Relations, 39.
Cohen, B. J. (Ed.). (2017). International political economy. Routledge.
Revenge of the Electric Car (2011) Retrieved from https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=revenge+of+the+electric+car&docid=607986666586768764&mid=8BB098635E5D0983BF958BB098635E5D0983BF95&view=detail&FORM=VIRE.