Audi will be one-third electric by 2025. Also, here’s a ghost to tell you about it.
Audi’s Super Bowl ad stars the super-sleek, presumed Tesla-challenging e-tron GT electric sedan, currently set to go on sale in early 2021.
The commercial is pretty odd from top to bottom, in that it starts with a young man wandering through some sort of agricultural dreamscape and stumbling upon his dead grandfather in front of a large farmhouse. Grandpa takes him into the barn and reveals the e-tron GT, which the grandson gets into and does a brief Marty McFly impression. Then he’s jolted awake: He was choking on a cashew. He’s actually in a gray-on-gray-on-gray office building and not in a fancy electric car.
Everyone in the office is excited that he didn’t die, though! (His co-worker heroically administered the Heimlich maneuver, ending his sweet dreams of electric cars and rebooted dead relatives.) Also, Audi announces at the end of the commercial, one-third of its cars will be electric by 2025. “Electric goes Audi,” as it were.
As Green Car Reports points out, the ad represents a significant moment for the electric car industry. Super Bowl ad slots are $5 million apiece, not counting whatever the company spent making a highly-produced, high-concept ad like this one. That’s a lot of money for a traditional automaker to put behind an electric vehicle. GCR contrasts this with electric car advertising spending for the full year in 2017 — when Nissan spent nothing to advertise its Leaf electric car, Toyota spent nothing to advertise its Prius Prime hybrid, and Ford spent nothing to advertise its C-Max Energi hybrid, focusing all their efforts instead on more popular crossovers and typical family cars.
Whether a Super Bowl ad can really do anything to elicit excitement about electric vehicles remains to be seen — and is frankly dubious! — but at least we all got a good scare.
Author: Kaitlyn Tiffany
Read More
The debate over the Anthropocene epoch, explained. The word “Anthropocene” has gained cultural resonance in…
President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrive for a photo during…
Rescued chickens gather in an aviary at Farm Sanctuary’s Southern California Sanctuary on October 5,…
Six Supreme Court justices attend President Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address. |…
Flights to LaGuardia Airport were delayed last June due to smoke and poor visibility. |…
Jessica Gunning as “Martha” in Baby Reindeer. | Ed Miller/Netflix With the Baby Reindeer fallout, the paradox…