[ASSURAS] Revving up a revolution. Believers banking on electric vehicles drive full throttle to get more of them on the road.

[ELON MUSK] Really what matters is, are we making a difference in the world? Until we see every car on the road being electric, you know, we will not stop.

[ASSURAS] A new documentary with extraordinary behind-the-scenes access tracks the EV's highs and lows, and so do we.

[JB STRAUBEL] It takes a lot of capital to start a car company and to engineer and validate a vehicle design. It's not a cheap activity.

[ASSURAS] Many electric vehicle start-ups hit the skids but that may be about to change. We talk to one of the men banking on Tesla.

Plus, nanoscale research that could fuel a quantum leap for EVs. The next generation of batteries that could drive the industry and help make the electric vehicle the car of the future. This is "energyNOW!"

Hello, I'm Thalia Assuras. Welcome to "energyNOW!", a weekly look at America's energy challenges and what we're doing about them.

One of the biggest challenges is just keeping people and goods moving. Almost 30% of the energy we use is for transportation, and almost all of that comes from oil. And we import about half that oil to the tune of about $300 billion a year, and making America less secure because we depend on so many other nations for our energy. So the U.S. government and many private companies are working on a whole host of ways to get us off our dependence on oil.

There are alternatives -- biofuels made from plants, compressed and liquefied natural gas, hydrogen, and more. But another alternative, electricity, has been getting most of the attention from Washington...

[BARACK OBAMA, APRIL 1, 2011] We set a goal of having one million electric vehicles on our roads by 2015.

[ASSURAS] ...to Hollywood.

[WOMAN, IN "REVENGE OF THE ELECTRIC CAR"] This is the future, and it's attainable. [Dramatic soundtrack, cheering]

[ASSURAS] By one estimate, there could be more than 600,000 EVs on the road by 2014, putting the president's million EV goal within reach. Even so, that would be a tiny fraction of the roughly 140 million passenger cars currently on U.S. roads. There are now about half a dozen models available and next year, at least five more new EV models are expected to hit showrooms.

[JIM FEDERICO, CHEVROLET, OCTOBER 12, 2011] Chevrolet will produce an all-electric version of the Spark mini-car.

[ASSURAS] EVs aren't cheap, priced from about $32,000 to $120,000, but there's a $7,500 federal tax credit to bring the price closer to comparable gasoline-fueled cars, and power companies say EVs are cheaper to run, about 1/5 the cost of filling up with gasoline. The EPA says cars like the Nissan LEAF and Chevy Volt are about half as carbon- intensive as gasoline models, but they're not zero-emission vehicles, since most of the nation's electricity that's needed to charge the EV's battery still comes from fossil fuels.

And there's still so-called "range anxiety." While most EVs travel 100 miles or less on a single battery charge, cheaper gasoline-fueled cars can go 400 miles or more on a single tank. Consulting firm Deloitte recently found just 20% of U.S. drivers would consider buying an electric vehicle with a 100-mile range.

You just saw some scenes from the new documentary, "The Revenge of the Electric Car," opening this weekend in New York and Los Angeles. It's an inside look at the rebirth of the electric car. More on the movie a little later, including an interview with its director, Chris Paine.

But with the movie coming out, we wondered whether the U.S. is on the cusp of an electric vehicle revolution, or could the entire EV industry run out of juice? And we went looking for some answers at electric car maker Tesla, which recently opened a new factory in California's Silicon Valley, and is one of the companies featured in "Revenge." Lee Patrick Sullivan has more in this "energyNOW!" Spotlight.

[SULLIVAN] It's show-and-tell at the Tesla factory in Fremont, California, as the electric vehicle maker unveils its newest car, the Model S.

[JB STRAUBEL, CO-FOUNDER, TESLA MOTORS] This is the first car that will have over 300 miles of electric range. So it's breaking new ground and getting the range to a place that's directly comparable with gasoline cars.

[SULLIVAN] Tesla cofounder JB Straubel shows off the luxury sedan, which sells for about $50,000, and that's after the $7,500 tax credit. That price gets you a battery with about a 160-mile range. The 300-mile model costs about $20,000 more.

[STRAUBEL] This little door actually flips open.

[SULLIVAN] It's Tesla's second vehicle, after the more than $100,000 Roadster. But the Model S is the first to be built in the massive Tesla factory. This place is the size of 88 football fields and has the auto industry's only indoor test track. To revamp this former Toyota assembly plant into an all-electric vehicle factory, Tesla received about $400 million in low-interest loans from the U.S. Department of Energy.

How tough is it to start a car company from scratch? Especially one that's not traditional?

[STRAUBEL] Extremely hard. You know, there's no question about that. It's an extremely hard activity. The tooling required, the investment, the years of engineering and validation testing, it's all very, very difficult.

[SULLIVAN] How difficult? Well, in the past year, it's been a less-than-electric ride for independent EV companies. Fisker Automotive had several delays in the release of its extended-range EV. Modec, a British electric truck maker, has declared bankruptcy, as has Indiana-based Think Automotive. And auto giants like General Motors and Nissan, which are starting to move into electric vehicles, are also off to a slow start. They've sold less than half as many Chevy Volts and Nissan LEAFs than the companies predicted. Then there's the story of California-based Green Vehicles.

[MIKE RYAN, PRESIDENT, GREEN VEHICLES] It's a 3-wheel vehicle and an electric vehicle.

[SULLIVAN] That's the company's president, Mike Ryan, being interviewed at the Detroit Auto Show by GIZMAG.com. The maker of the 3-wheeled electric commuter car was looking for a home base to build its factory. Enter Salinas, California.

[JEFF MITCHELL, SENIOR WRITER, THE SALINAS CALIFORNIAN] Their idea was to basically incubate, if you will, a new kind of industry, and hopefully pulling some business down from the Silicon Valley into the Salinas Valley.

[SULLIVAN] Jeff Mitchell covered the story for The Salinas Californian. The city of Salinas agreed to loan Green Vehicles $535,000 to build its EVs there.

[MITCHELL] We had these cool little electric cars running around town for a while. There was a lot of hoopla around it and I think people were very excited at the idea that there was going to be some jobs.

[SULLIVAN] But the jobs never came. There were no green vehicles built in Salinas, and seven months after getting the money from the town, Green Vehicles declared bankruptcy.

This nondescript warehouse is listed as Green Vehicles' Salinas location, but... there's no one here, and nothing left behind but a couple moving vans and one green vehicle.

Mitchell doesn't think the city will ever see that money again and worries this will make city leaders gun-shy about investing in companies in the future.

[MITCHELL] I think it was a very noble effort by the city to support this start-up. The question is, is really whether, at the end of the day, the city did all of its due diligence in supporting the company.

[SULLIVAN] And Tesla had its challenges as well. Despite selling 1,800 of its Roadster model, the company was running on fumes until the Department of Energy loans came through. It then raised another $600 million in private capital to get the Model S to the finish line.

What was that boardroom like?

[STRAUBEL] Well, it's, uh... it's tense. It takes a lot of capital to start a car company and to engineer and validate a vehicle design. It's not a cheap activity. So I think key to that was demonstrating progress at milestones along the way. You know, it's not simply enough just to say, "Trust us, and we'll get to the end." We have to show that progress is there at every step.

[SULLIVAN] With Tesla's hefty price tag, some Republican members of Congress criticized the Obama administration for loaning money to a company that makes cars for rich people. Straubel says Tesla's cars are expensive because electric vehicle technology is expensive, but he says the company is working to bring prices down.

Do you see a day when Tesla will have a $25,000 car?

[STRAUBEL] Absolutely. Our vision is to drive down the price of electric vehicles and the technology that makes them possible, relentlessly. Everything we're doing internally is reducing the cost of battery packs, reducing the cost of motors.

[SULLIVAN] Next year, there will be even more EVs hitting showrooms. Ford will have the Focus EV, and expect EVs from Smart Car and Mini. And with all the established automakers joining the EV market, Straubel says the door may be closing on EV start-ups.

[STRAUBEL] As the industry matures and as more mainstream automakers get into building EVs, the barrier to new companies starting from scratch is going up. And, you know, people look at Tesla and it's kind of blazing a pathway for a start-up car company, but it has not been an easy pathway.

[SULLIVAN] Tesla's next vehicle will be called Model X, and it will be an all-electric SUV. And as of now, the company says it will not be applying for any more government loans. In Fremont, California, Lee Patrick Sullivan, "energyNOW!"

[ASSURAS] The well-established automakers are competing with Tesla, but they're also collaborating with the newcomer. Tesla currently makes battery packs and chargers for Daimler AG's Smart Car and Mercedes brands. And it's going to make the motor for Toyota's still-to-come electric RAV4 SUV. Tesla employs more than a thousand people in the U.S. and is expanding.

Still to come, what do the world's first computer hard drive and grocery store barcodes have to do with electric vehicles? Find out when we launch the "energyNOW!" Innovation series.

But first, EVs are getting their revenge on the big screen, with help from a big booster.

[CHRIS PAINE] Now's when we hope they can get a foothold so that they can expand and become a bigger part of the market over the next 20 years.

[ASSURAS] Inside documentary director Chris Paine's world when we come back.

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[ASSURAS] Much of the modern history of the electric vehicle has been captured on film, by environmentalist, documentary filmmaker, and full-time EV fan Chris Paine. Five years ago, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" accused U.S. automakers -- primarily General Motors -- of crushing EV development in the 1990s, figuratively and literally, by declaring electrics like GM's EV1 unprofitable and stifling battery development. Paine even staged a mock funeral for the electric car to make his point.

Now, the EV is back, and so is Chris Paine with a new movie. For this one, Paine had unprecedented access to auto titans -- yes, including GM. I spent some time with Paine to talk about his new documentary and to get his take on the future of the EV.

[Dramatic soundtrack plays]

[PAINE] There's a degree of excitement around electric vehicles we hadn't seen before.

[ASSURAS] Chris Paine's EV act II is "Revenge of the Electric Car," a title that suggests continued bad blood between automakers and environmentalists clamoring for clean cars. Far from it. Instead, former General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz...

[LUTZ] We're going to have to get the lithium ion technology together.

[ASSURAS] ...Nissan's Chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn...

[GHOSN] I don't want to wake up competition.

[ASSURAS] And Elon Musk, PayPal founder and now the driving force behind high-end, all-electric Tesla...

[MUSK] Until we see every car on the road being electric, we will not stop.

[ASSURAS] ...opened their boardrooms and homes to Paine's cameras for three years, starting in 2008.

[MUSK] We want to make this technology and electric cars affordable to as many people as possible.

[ASSURAS] The time frame mirrors U.S. consumers' recent slow shift to hybrids and plug-ins as gas prices continue to fluctuate.

Here's Bob Lutz -- he doesn't believe in global warming. He's a car guy, it's not that he's an environmentalist. He wants to make the EV work -- Why?

[PAINE] Because the core reason of the electric car has nothing to do with the environment, it has to do with not importing oil. So, if you're like a "real American," like Bob Lutz has a certain kind of classic American-ness about him, it's about keeping energy, energy money here. So I think Bob understands that, if we can power these things off of the electrical grid instead of Middle East oil, that's a good thing.

[ASSURAS] Paine says EVs are a U-turn for auto executives keen on capitalizing on a market in the making. Take Nissan LEAF's champion Carlos Ghosn.

[PAINE] Carlos is also not an environmentalist. He doesn't wear that on his badge. He's about the spreadsheet and the numbers. Carlos, in our film, makes sort of an unguarded comment in a car.

[GHOSN] The public is expecting this from us. It's expecting this from us. It's expecting that car manufacturers step up.

[PAINE] They're expecting car makers to step up and provide cars that are more responsible in terms of its use of petrol and the environment.

[ASSURAS] Talk about stepping up...

Hi, I'm Thalia.

Paine himself not only owns a trio of EVs -- more about that in a minute -- his eggs come from a backyard roost near a garden with a composter. His remodeled 1950s-era house overlooking Los Angeles boasts kitchen cabinets of bamboo and energy-efficient appliances. An eco-flaw, though -- plastic, which comes from petroleum, protects valuable fossils embedded in the countertops.

Uh-oh, you just busted your philosophy.

[PAINE] Hell, I'm hardly a purist. We use lots of oil here.

[ASSURAS] Hot water and electricity are provided 100% in the summer, he says, 60% in the winter, by rooftop solar systems. These panels here power the entire house and all the electric cars in the garage.

[ASSURAS] Paine's lifestyle came largely from growing up in an outdoorsy family conscious about the way they were living, he says.

[PAINE] There's a lot of messages I got when I was growing up that maybe a little bit of environmental awareness was a good idea. And then in 1995, I drove this General Motors EV1, and I thought, wow, this is really a better car.

[ASSURAS] Fast forward 15 years and we hit 60 miles an hour in less than four seconds in Paine's Tesla Roadster.

Whoa! That is fast!

At about $120,000 a pop, the Roadster isn't for the average driver. The new Model S is still pricey, at about 50 grand, even after a $7,500 federal tax credit. But Paine argues, other brands are affordable.

[PAINE] The LEAF is $32,000. And there's a $7,500 tax credit. And in California, there was $2,500 to $5,000. So the LEAF we have -- and I paid full retail price for it -- ended up costing about $24,000.

[ASSURAS] Paine also dismisses range anxiety, that fear of running out of juice. He points to GM's strategy in designing the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt, the first 35 miles or so on battery power, long distances dependent only on gas stations.

[PAINE] So it means it never runs out of juice because you always put in gasoline if you want to go farther. So, I think things like range anxiety are part of the mythos pushing back on this.

[ASSURAS] And what does Paine think about zero-emission claims from some EV companies, even though most of the electricity to run their cars comes from fossil-fueled power plants?

[PAINE] The issue is the word "zero emissions." That's the ideal of what they can be, if you have solar power. But I think the fact that you're guaranteed 50% less emissions is, you know, 100% improvement.

[ASSURAS] So the bottom line is, Paine is an unabashed EV booster. But will the electric car's revenge be fleeting without continued government support?

[PAINE] You have to have the government leading this. The car industry is not like making an iPhone that's a $200 appliance that you could probably -- You're talking about $20,000, $50,000 industrial machinery that's trying to break into a monopoly industry that's a hundred years old. You've got to incent this technology or it won't happen.

[ASSURAS] Chris Paine has answers for just about everything to do with electric vehicles, including where to plug them in when you park on the street. He says, look to Europe, where companies like Siemens AG are building parking meters that double as EV charging stations.

When we come back, charging into the future. A look at how one company with a big background in innovation is now working on a battery technology that could revolutionize the electric vehicle.

[BREAK]

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Laugh now or the planet gets it.

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[ASSURAS] Welcome back. Earlier, we told you about range anxiety, that fear of EV batteries running out of juice while you're on the road. Well, there's one well-known company you might not expect to be involved in electric vehicles and it's developing new battery technology that could eliminate range anxiety. That innovation is the first in a new segment we're introducing on innovations and innovators in clean energy technology. So here's Josh Zepps on the development of a super-long-range car battery and the company leading the charge.

[ZEPPS] It tells you something about how fast electric vehicle technology is moving that I'm driving to report on the future of electric cars and this is the first time I've ever even driven one. It also tells you something about how fast electric vehicle technology is moving that to get from my hotel to the interview 45 miles away and back, I need to get a ride with my camera operator, because the fully charged battery won't make it.

To gaze into the future of a battery that won't quit, I drove to IBM and its Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, to meet nuclear physicist Winfried Wilcke.

[WILCKE] There's been a long history of IBM doing completely new things, like building computers was very far away from the original things they did, like punch cards, cheese slicers, and...

[ZEPPS] The famed IBM cheese slicer.

[WILCKE] Precisely.

[ZEPPS] In addition to the cheese slicer, IBM invented the floppy disk, the personal computer, the barcode, and... world's first hard drive. It's impressive. You should have seen the size of the laptop. IBM has created a lot of things in its time. And now...

[WILCKE] Most people on the planet want to own a car. I think that's not going to change.

[ZEPPS] Can they?

[WILCKE] [Laughs] Not if we continue with oil.

[ZEPPS] So Wilcke is working on a battery he hopes could be 10 times more energy dense than the best batteries today and could power a car for 500 miles on a single charge. Let's put that in perspective. According to the EPA, Nissan's all-electric car, the LEAF, has a range of 73 miles. So if you live, say, in Detroit, a single charge will get you... to Flint. But a 500-mile battery would get you to Toledo, Ohio, and on to Cleveland, then Pittsburgh, and just about to Washington, D.C., without having to stop once to plug it in.

Using electricity instead of gasoline could cut U.S. oil consumption and make America less dependent on imported energy. So if the 500-mile battery succeeds -- and that is still a big "if" -- how would the technology actually work? Let's start with conventional lithium-ion batteries, the kind used in cell phones, laptops, and today's electric cars. These batteries contain lithium and include heavy metal oxides like cobalt oxide or manganese oxide, which makes them bulky and heavy. Lithium shuttles between a graphite anode and a metal oxide cathode as the battery is charged or discharged.

A lithium air battery is different because it doesn't carry around all the chemicals it needs to work. Instead, when it releases electricity, the battery borrows oxygen from the surrounding air to form lithium oxide. And when the battery is plugged in for recharging, it gives that oxygen back. That saves both space and mass, meaning a lighter battery that can store much more energy per pound.

[SALLY SWANSON] The reason we're using lithium -- it's a metal that is very, very light.

[ZEPPS] Sally Swanson is a researcher on the IBM 500 team. One of the project's big challenges is working with a metal as volatile as lithium.

[SWANSON] It reacts with the nitrogen in the air in the presence of water. It reacts with CO2 in the air. And, of course, it reacts with oxygen, which is what we're going to use.

[ZEPPS] And the air is pretty much CO2 and oxygen and nitrogen. Are you saying it reacts with everything?

[SWANSON] Yeah, we have a challenge, and we're going to have to figure out a way to get those things away from our batteries.

[ZEPPS] Swanson demonstrates what happens to lithium when it gets wet.

So this is just water?

[SWANSON] This is just water.

[ZEPPS] Whoa! What gas is that coming off?

[SWANSON] That is hydrogen.

[ZEPPS] And it's just gone.

[SWANSON] And it's gone.

[ZEPPS] Okay, so you don't want that happening.

[SWANSON] No. Well, you notice, there wasn't a flame, so that's good.

[ZEPPS] So your car won't explode, it just won't work.

The second way in which the lithium air gets its weight down is by ditching something that other batteries have -- heavy metal oxide cathodes. Instead, the IBM team is trying to nanoengineer a super-lightweight carbon cathode.

Now it's time for the IBM Cookie Bake-off.

Luckily for the team, when it comes to designing microscopic things, there's more than a little institutional experience at the company that developed the microchip.

Why is it necessary to nanoengineer the carbon?

[SWANSON] Well, surface area, we've found, has been critical. We've look at a lot of different carbons, and one of the things that we've found is that if we have a high-surface-area carbon, then we can get much more capacity.

[ZEPPS] Winfried Wilcke is the first to admit the lithium air project is a complicated gamble, but the prospect of an electric car engine with the same size, weight, price, range, and performance of a gasoline engine is a prize too big to resist.

[WILCKE] So a high-tech company really should, has an obligation, really, to help the environment and the world.

[ZEPPS] So do you see what you're doing as a larger mission than just a job?

[WILCKE] Absolutely, yes.

[ZEPPS] If Wilcke's bet pays off, then in 50 years' time, the idea of IBM as a computer company might be just as out-of-date as the idea of IBM as a cheese slicer company is today. In San Jose, California, Josh Zepps, "energyNOW!"

[ASSURAS] IBM hopes to start commercial production of the long-range battery by 2020, and Big Blue just gained another title. Newsweek named it the greenest company in America. Rounding out the top five... Hewlett-Packard, Sprint Nextel, Baxter Healthcare, and Dell.

Some Americans are actually just fine with the range of today's electric vehicles and are proud to show their EVs off. That's what's in this week's "energyNOW!" hotZONE.

[WOMAN, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA] No oil, no gas! No sounds, beautiful day.

[ASSURAS] EV lovers joined together for National Plug-in Day, in 26 cities last weekend, including Santa Monica, California, where drivers paraded Fisker Automotive's luxury Karma, Coda's more compact sedan, and what looked like a batmobile. A big standout, though, was this delivery truck, whose driver said it gets about 100 miles per charge.

The debate last week on "energyNOW!" between authors Amanda Little and Robert Bryce on whether America can compete in the global energy race got a lot of comments on our Web site and Facebook page.

Monica Dalvi from Atlanta wrote, "The price paid for fossil fuel energies never includes the actual cost to the environment. If the price for fossil fuels took into consideration those costs, then there would be no need for subsidies for renewable energies."

And regarding government subsidies for any business, Steve Callahan wrote, "How many times must it be said? The government SHOULD NOT be in the business of trying to pick winners and losers in any business, and that includes energy."

We love getting your comments, so reach out to us on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. Search for us at energyNOWnews, and read our blogs and watch extras on our Web site at energyNOW.com. That's it for this week's "energyNOW!" I'm Thalia Assuras. See you next week.

Next week on "energyNOW!", garbage trucks that run on the trash they collect. Plastic made from sewage, not oil. And how you can continue being green, even after you die.

[BREAK]

[ANNOUNCER] Help us make "energyNOW!" a continuing success in our second year. To keep growing, we want to form new partnerships with foundations and corporations who are equally concerned about America's energy future. Join us in bringing our message to more and more viewers. Please have your company or foundation contact "energyNOW!"

[TEXT ON SCREEN] Please contact our General Manager, Hardy Spire, 202-621-2916, sponsor@energynow.com.

[END BREAK]

[END SHOW]