Ford has just barely gotten into electric vehicles, but now that the ultra-popular F-150 Lightning is finally shipping to customers, it’s ready to make some jabs at its competition.
A new ad highlighting Ford’s “Made in the U.S.” bona fides also takes some time to indirectly drag Elon Musk’s incessant tweeting, and the several other companies he runs (SpaceX included) that might mean his eye is off the EV ball.
Rockets —
Ford’s not brave enough (or rather, too restrained) to call out Musk, Tesla, and SpaceX directly, but its target is pretty clear anyways. “Right now it could seem like the only people that matter are the loudest,” the ad says over a hand scrolling a smartphone. “Those who want to tears things down, and then fly away on their personal spaceships when things get hard.”
Trying to be the loudest person in the room is more or less Musk’s M.O. on Twitter, something that’s certainly benefited Tesla, Musk, and various minor cryptocurrencies financially. It’s also a possible motivator for the Tesla CEO’s takeover of Twitter.
Escaping to space, besides being every self-respecting billionaire’s past time, is also a long-term goal of SpaceX. Musk’s aerospace company has lucrative, and fairly practical deals with NASA, but Musk likes to style the company as humanity’s ideal Mars-based salvation. Despite Tesla’s environmental posturing, dying on the Red Planet seems to be the solution to global warming Musk prefers.
Favorable comparison —
Tesla is Ford’s closest competitor in the EV space: Ford reported it’s best ever EV sales quarter in January 2022 “second only to Tesla.” Comparing itself to Musk’s company also just puts Ford in a favorable light, in general.
Tesla has historically mistreated its workers — rushing to reopen during a pandemic and reportedly operating as a racist cesspool. Ford’s by no means perfect, but at least the workers making the company’s EVs are represented by a union.
