Psych! | 2024 Super Bowl Car Ads
Hello friend!
In the media world, news cycles are a way of life.
Dr. Phil starts popping off about the U.S. border? The next day there’s a gnarly wave of journalists pounding the keys trying to parse what the f*ck he’s talking about.
But here at Climate Town, we take our sweet time researching the hell out of any little detail that’s even got a chance of being relevant. If we wanted to cover Dr. Phil’s border stance, even for this one anecdotal joke about our researching process, we’d probably spend days learning about the 1990s Texas food libel laws that led to Oprah hiring Dr. Phil and his next-door neighbor to run a fake trial for her (which is how they met).
Also, Jon Stewart already covered it on The Daily Show, and he kinda picked that bone clean.
And so we find ourselves here:
Sending you a newsletter about Super Bowl ads more than a month after The Big Game.
But we’re not monsters. We put that unsubscribe button RIIIIGHT at the top in case you’d rather read about what Shaquille O'Neal’s done lately somewhere else (probably nothing, just an example).
Pysch!
The 90s are back, Jackson, and if you don’t want to do what you just said you were going to do, all you have say is:
Psych!
Every year from 2020 to 2023, General Motors ran a Super Bowl ad touting their transition to electric vehicles (EVs). GM was officially the good guy. Gas-powered cars, take a hike because we’re saving the planet. EVerybody in. Gorgeous.
And we already made an entire video about how postposterous™ it was for GM to be bragging about making EVs (we used to make 7-minute videos).
But maybe they’re actually changing their time-honored ways–
Goddamn that’s right: after years of marketing and millions of dollars worth of sweet semi-comedic advertising, GM has decided to “[moderate] the acceleration of EV production in North America.”
A quiet revolution? Nah.
30 EV models by 2025? Really doesn’t seem like it.
Let’s give EVs the stage they deserve? Noopee (new no just dropped)!
And it’s not just GM. This year, none of The Big Three U.S. automakers ran ads during the Super Bowl. According to Ford CEO, and Chris Farley’s cousin, Jim Farley:
"If you ever see Ford Motor Co. doing a Super Bowl ad on our electric vehicles, sell the stock."
But if we can’t trust Ford or GM to lead a climate-friendly transportation transition:
Which car companies can we trust?!
There’s only one way to find out: watch their Super Bowl ads. Fortunately, there weren’t that many this year. And what the hell, we’ll even grade ‘em.
Toyota
Show your friends just how little a human life means to you with a joyride at the top of a protected nature preserve.
It’s the all-new 100% gas-powered Toyota Tacoma. And it’s still got that handle moms have clung to for dear life since the Cleveland administration.
Is it electric? No. Is Toyota pretending to care about the environment? Not on your life. Is there an extremely tired ‘shut the front door’ line that’s been thudding in commercials since at least 2011? You betcha.
Grade: Bad
Volkswagen
This one’s technically a teaser for their full 60 second Super Bowl ad, but it gets right to the point: when Volkswagen first tried selling cars in the US in 1949, why wouldn’t people buy them?
Because it was the N*A*Z*I CAR.
Volkswagen was created by the N*a*z*i*s so they could have a car that’d give them “strength through joy.” Then WWII swept through (they lost) and the victorious Allies gave control of the Nazi car factory to a British Army officer, who started producing “people’s cars” like no one would remember the N*A*Z*I*S. But they did remember. On account of how it had only been FOUR YEARS.
But as the years wore on, the N*a*z*i car image faded away, leaving us with one of the great rebrands of the post-war era: The Beetle. Cute, peaceful, and The Love Bug/Herbie.
And recently? Well, in 2021, Volkswagen said they were going all in on EVs and changing their name to Voltswagen. But then that turned out to be a “marketing prank.” Hahaha awesome.
Oh and before that, there was a massive scandal where they designed their cars to fake the diesel emissions test so they could emit way more than they were allowed.
But at least they’re actually talking about making more EVs.
Grade: Pass (they took it pass-fail)
BMW
Christopher Walken mentions that his car is electric, then endures a series of impressions of himself. Usher is there too.
That’s the whole commercial.
Grade: See Me After Class (so we can tell you not to make this)
KIA
A perfectly fine little story about a girl who loves figure skating and a man (probably her dad) who loves his Kia EV9. We don’t always agree with the New York Times, but we think they gave this an appropriate rating:
The man (probably her dad) does use the EV to power the lights and karaoke machine by the big finale pond and that’s a nice touch – something Tesla owners weren’t allowed to do until recently. It’s extraordinarily sappy, but still:
Grade: Perfectly Fine
And there you have it, all the Super Bowl ads we’re going to–
SIKE!
Coors Light
A f*cking train!
Yes it’s a beer commercial, but it’s a company from Rollie’s hometown and all we want is some goddamn decent public transportation options.
Run that shit straight through our family’s wall. We don’t care. Ice my dog’s water bowl while you’re at it.
Please. Just give us some good trains. Stop taking our infrastructure money and spending it on wider and wider roads that we now know don’t relieve traffic in the long term. They just make more people need cars.
Give us the trains.
But for the time being, it seems like we still have to live in the world from the movie Cars – a world so car-centric that when they removed the people, they didn’t need to change the design, because it was already perfect for a cars-only world. That’s our society right now.
Warning: we can’t remember who told us this Cars take recently, but this is not our original thought. We just liked it and are repeating it here for you, the reader. We have never seen a full Cars movie, but it’s an interesting perspective and we wanted to include it. If this is your original thought, please let us know.
Grade: Good, Because of the Train
Chart Town: Electric vs. Gas Vehicles
That good-looking chart is from this New York Times article (using lifecycle emissions data from the MIT Trancik Lab) about the lifetime emissions of those big ass EVs that car companies are really hoping you want.
Here’s what we’re seeing: unless you’re getting one of those 6,000 pound lithium battering rams, your EV is almost certainly better for the climate than a gas car.
And if you are getting one of those Hulked out mega-EVs – please tow something with it. Often. Or use it to build something nice for your neighbors. Maybe truck some hay around your farm or move a couch every single weekend for your legion of friends. Please do something like that.
Because if you’re not doing that stuff, you’re wasting valuable resources, including one we really need for this energy transition to go well: lithium.
But maybe there’s something we can do about it maybe?
Chart Town: It’s Time to Need Less Lithium
If the current trend continues for U.S. EV demand, the U.S. alone will require triple the current global production of lithium, just for our national EV production.
No other countries, no phones, no laptops, no other uses – by 2050, U.S. EVs alone will require three times the lithium we produce in the whole world right now.
But there’s hope – at least according to the UC Davis study we quoted, called Achieving Zero Emissions with More Mobility and Less Mining. They took the time to figure out how we can drastically reduce that lithium demand, focusing on these three factors:
How big’s that battery?
Will it get recycled?
Could we finally go back to a society designed more for people than their cars?
And now look back up to that chart above this text. It turns out the biggest way to reduce our future lithium demand:
Need fewer cars.
And of course it is! Build cities where we can walk. Or bike. Or to put it intelligently:
“A zero-emissions transportation sector that reduces car dependency in favor of expanding mass transit, walking, and cycling paired with urban and suburban planning that permits these changes would bring countless co-benefits. These include reduced injuries and fatalities, reduced tire and brake pollution, reduced financial burdens on low-income car owners, and even reduced residential segregation by race and class, while simultaneously improving physical well-being and local economic vibrancy.”
It really makes you wonder if car companies got so hyped on EVs because they were worried about a future where people wanted/needed fewer cars. Maybe they figured they’d try to stall that future a bit by saying they’re pivoting to EVs? And maybe now that the coast is clear, they’re finally free to make the truck they’ve dreamed of making for the past 30 years?
It really makes you wonder.
Official Rollie (no prize)
All this ad talk reminded us that there’s one ad phrase we really can’t stand: dilly dilly.
If you don’t remember dilly dilly, fantastic. If you do, you might also remember wazzup, one of the greatest comedy ad catchphrases of all time.
Same company. Beers with the same three first letters. You win some, you dilly dilly some.
And here at Climate Town, we want a catchphrase. But we’re frozen with fear at the idea of accidentally writing a dilly dilly of our own.
So let’s get right to the point: send us a truly wazzup-level Climate Town catchphrase and we may declare you an Official Rollie (no prize).
And speaking of which – if ever there was an Official Rollie (no prize) who deserves a prize, it’s:
Rowan Price.
Last newsletter, we asked readers to submit the date they believed NYC would receive its next one inch (or more) of snow. Having just ended a 701-day-long streak of no significant snow, this was as tough a challenge as we’ve ever given.
But within the next few weeks, NYC received not one snow (February 13th), but two snows (also February 17th) in the same week. And Rowan, Official Rollie that he is, guessed a date exactly between those two snow days: February 15, 2024.
A simpler Official Rollie would’ve guessed the first date only – but Rowan rose to the next level.
And for that, Rowan receives nothing. There is no prize.
How about that, friend?
Well that's the end of the newsletter. If you want to send in a question, all you have to do is respond to this email. Or contact us directly at newsletter@climatetown.tv. We may never answer it, but you never know.
Also, if you think you found a mistake, let us know. We try our very best to research and review our way to full accuracy, but it's a big world out there.
Edited and additional research by: Caroline Schaper
Legal support from: The Civil Liberties Defense Center
Executive produced by: Rollie Williams, Ben Boult, Nicole Conlan, and Matt Nelsen
My catchphrase suggestion:
Climate Town: Where facts are hotter than fiction!
One way to reduce the size of vehicles sold is to impose a yearly tax (for road maintenance and related things) on vehicles and have it based on weight.