If the Super Bowl ads are any indication, we are all driving electric now — six out of the seven car ads shown during the football playoffs featured an electric car model, according to research from online car marketplace Cars.com.
For decades, the playoff game watched by what averages out to around 90 million people each year offered some of the most expensive and coveted advertising time slots — a 30-second ad sells for roughly $6.5 million.
And this year, those slots were purchased by car companies like BMW (BMW) , General Motors (GM), Polestar, Kia and Nissan (NSANF) . Each of these carmakers chose to feature their new electric vehicle models to the one in four American households who tuned in on Sunday.
Everybody And His Brother Is Promoting EVs
The preponderance of electric vehicles during the Super Bowl caught the attention of everyone from your bar neighbor to President Joseph Biden, who wrote on Twitter (TWTR) that “the ads during last night’s Super Bowl were clear” in that “the future of the auto industry is electric.”
Even prior to Biden’s tweet, many waxed poetic over how the floodgates had finally opened and electric vehicles had moved from the niche to the mainstream — Cars.com reported that searches for the Kia EV6 surged by 921% after its ad aired during the Super Bowl.
Does EV Hype Live Up To The Market?
But the hype around electric vehicles may be more wishful thinking than actual reality — according to research from market research company Canalys, only 9% of passenger car sales in 2021 were electric vehicles.
While that number is rising fast and is already a 109% increase from 2020, electric vehicles still make up a tiny percentage of the global car market overall.
Many of the cars featured in the ads, including the 2022 BMW iX and the Hyundai Ioniq 5, are not yet available for purchase. While many popular models have months long waiting lists, releases are still tracked primarily by car enthusiasts and industry insiders.
As ads are always meant to foreshadow the future and play with the limits of what is currently accessible to the general population, many saw the abundance of electric vehicles ads as an attempt to ramp up excitement for new models among the general population — a strategy that many automakers enthusiastically admitted to.
“We're working hard to create an all-electric, zero-emissions future for everyone,” GM Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl told reporters in a media call this week. “And one really important part of that is getting people excited about electric vehicles.”
Will it work? In large part, yes, because demand for electric vehicles is expected to continue growing at a snowballing pace all on its own — the electric vehicle market -- including hybrids -- is expected to quadruple to $957 billion by 2030. But at the same time, generating hype is a well-known marketing strategy that was on full display during the Super Bowl.
“Automakers don’t control demand, but they can work to build it to get everyone’s attention and start driving [it],” energy think tank RMI’s Managing Director Britta Gross told Vox.
Rising interest rates, inflation and market volatility are on the horizon. You don’t want to miss out on this exclusive opportunity to unlock Action Alerts PLUS at our lowest price of the year.
