Great event last night at the Petersen Museum for the Motor Press Guild, celebrating excellence in Automotive Journalism. The Dean Batchelor Award. This happens once a year where everyone picks the best in the business. And the winner for this year…?

Brock Yates.

A tremendous individual and spokesman for all things cool automotive. A huge historian and advocate for automotive enthusiasm. Hung out with the likes of super racer, Dan Gurney, Jay Leno, Hal Needham, Matt Farah from The Car Show, Paul Schmucker and Greg Lawson of Everyday Driver and many others.

Big thanks to Richard James of GM… Now for some Caddyness….

Last night I was invited by GM to check out Director Chris Pane’s “REVENGE OF THE ELECTRIC CAR.” More or less the sequel to “Who Killed the Electric Car.” And although the former was a bit of a serious downer with the destruction of all the EV1′s, this new film was tremendous and uplifting. Stories surrounds GM, Nissan, Tesla and a few others as they struggled over the last few years to make electric vehicles work. And have succeeded…

The outcome and realization was that we are all in the same boat, striving to improve conditions for all. The competition is to make the world better. It became clear to the audience and at the AfterParty that the only way this is going to happen is if we work together. Everyone doing their part, however small.

Now, I’m into gas guzzling horsepower just like the next car guy, but if that’s all you are… then you’ll be left behind in this industry. That’s a fact. Conversations with friends like Jay Leno, Tesla S Designer and Art Center Alum Franz Von Holzhausen, GM Head of Environmental Energy Communications Shad Balch and Director Chris Pane made it abundantly clear that electric cars are the future… and by 2015, there’ll be millions on the road. This is good to hear.

See this movie. Seriously. Let it work on you from the inside. It doesn’t mean go out an buy a Tesla. It means, THINK. Think about us as a whole and not just yourself. Think about your kids and what we’ll leave them. Anyone can be critical, but the real man stands up and creates change. And Chris Pane has done his part. Time to do mine.

Not only does the planet get cleaner over time, but the cars get cleaner as well. It’s time we took a serious look at doing our small part.