Believe It Or Not: Plug In America's Electric Vehicle Hype Campaign

Here comes another spoof on the Mac vs. PC ad campaign, this one promoting electric vehicles over combustion engines. Plug In America, an advocacy organization that wants to reduce the United States’ dependence on petroleum, created the electric vehicle hype spots and calls them public service announcements.

The first of the seven PSAs include talent from the film Who Killed The Electric Car. One that’s slated for release on Nov. 30th features male model, Fabio.

In one spot, a character representing the stodgy, traditional auto buyer demonstrates the folly that could be a gasoline-powered cell phone.

In another, the stodgy guy is accompanied by a shady corporate lawyer and a rig worker covered in oil while his nemesis, the electric car driving hipster, shows up with a hippie goddess representing wind generated electricity.

The videos are embedded below, or viewable on Plug In America’s YouTube channel.

The campaign’s release follows a late October report by JD Power and Associates that said EVs would only constitute a paltry 7.3 percent of global auto sales by 2020. The campaign just precedes the December 2010 initial sales dates (in Japan, Portugal, the Netherlands and the United States) for the first mass-produced all-electric vehicle— the Nissan LEAF.

Plug In America’s 7-spot campaign raises some good points about EVs— like how relatively quiet, emissions-free and low maintenance they can be— but it doesn’t address other concerns, like how to keep spent car batteries out of landfills, or how vehicles that run on biodiesel from waste or renewables, for example, might also help the U.S. solve its environmental and economic problems associated with fuel.

“Cell Phone”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=767XHA5KQKY&fs=1&hl=en_US]

“Ocean Crude”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QA5aLjEgfc&fs=1&hl=en_US]