Is it normal to drive an electric car? Is it normal to plug in your cell phone?
A new ad campaign from Electrify America says it is.
In the face of new surveys that show American carbuyers still voicing the same objections to electric cars that they have for a decade—range anxiety, higher prices, lack of charging stations—Electrify America's new Internet ad campaign focuses on how normal electric cars are.
The page, designed to look like the Web in the late 1990s, has 11 screens, each addressing how normal EVs are compared with gas cars, from charging, to range, cost, owners, and test drives.
Many of the pages link out to other resources for electric cars, such as a page from Plug-in America with testimonials from EV owners, and PlugShare, to help potential buyers see how widespread the selection of chargers is in North America today.
One page contains a short series of 15 second video clips with the same messages—comparing cars with progress in email and online dating services.
As part of Volkswagen's agreement with the Justice Department and the California Air Resources Board, Electrify America is required to spend money promoting EVs alongside its efforts to expand charging infrastructure in the U.S. Electrify America is a VW subsidiary formed to fulfill VW's obligations under the settlement agreement.
Under the agreement, its advertisements can't promote Volkswagen vehicles over plug-in cars from any other automaker. A previous ad from Electrify America channeled Fred Flintstone driving a dilapidated Subaru next to his alter-ego, George Jetson, driving a modern Chevy Bolt EV.
The latest EA ad campaign may not be as funny as those, or even the Arnold Schwarzenegger ad from Veloz (another brand-agnostic EV promoter) that won our last Twitter poll asking about readers EV ad preferences. But it does accomplish addressing the main objections for first time EV buyers with a dose of humor.
