The EV Ad No One is Making (But Someone Really Should)
A charming family experiences the effortlees, affordable antidote to pumped explosive in a moonscape
ICE car drivers don’t realise their car continues to exist in the ~95% of the time when they're not driving it. EV drivers not only realise that their car continues to exist, but use a chunk of this time for their car to fuel itself while they live their life. For most people the most convenient spot to do this is at home, where there's already electricity, often while they’re asleep. This should be the easiest marketing message in automotive history - yet it feels like the industry's best-kept secret.
I've been thinking about this problem for years, and I have a solution: an ad that actually shows what EV ownership feels like. Here's the concept I harboured and occasionally pitched during my time at Pod (formely Point), with the brilliant Natasha Darko showing some signs of interest, alas no one has made it yet.
The Ad That Should Exist
OPENING SHOT:
Family morning collage - alarm, parents trying to shower, breakfast, getting kids ready for school. As the family moves towards leaving and heading to the car, the screen splits.
SPLIT SCREEN SEGMENT 1:
FULL SCREEN CLOSING SHOT:
Charging company logo and tagline, e.g. "Life's easier when your car fuels itself at home."
[As a father of a young daughter, and husband to an attentive mum, I am reluctant to pressurise mums about what is safest for their kids... BUT every mum I talk to HATES having to get petrol with their little ones in the car. They will instantly get this "Do I take them out and expose them to this horrid, fumey, traffic-filled moonscape, or do I leave them in the car separated from me?" dilemma. And mums decide a vast proportion of car sales.]
So Why Has No One Made This Ad?
There's an issue with ownership in EV marketing. The material convenience advantage of living with an EV - that cars continue to exist when we aren't driving them, and these EVs conveniently use some of this period to fuel themselves - is going completely unsold to drivers that struggle to express just how much they love it once they've switched.
OEMs struggle to promote this truth because they want to push features that are unique to their specific product. And unless they're exclusively focused on EVs, this message rather undermines their other products (and EV specialists have their own challenges).
The companies who should really own this space are those selling home chargers and systems to make that experience as good as possible. But these firms may consider that they have insufficient platforms/budgets to promote bigger consumer vision, and/or are too focused on selling technical features and tariff integrations to the converted, rather than selling the emotional reality to mass market.
Petrol is Deeply Inconvenient, it's Just Familiar
We're in a situation where petrol providers are better at selling familiarity to inconvenience than the EV industry is at selling actual convenience and affordability. That's not just missed opportunity - that's lunacy.
The tyranny of the status quo means that many just accept a genuinely hideous experience as an inevitability. The weekly ritual of standing in forecourts, breathing fumes while cars nip past dangerously close, and random people about you freely spray liquid explosive after a guy on minimum wage assesses they’re safe to do so judged solely on whether they are physically there - this is what EVs eliminate entirely.
Time to Step Up
Someone needs to stop selling the car and start selling the experience. Because right now, the material convenience advantage of EVs - that they eliminate one of modern life's most wretched weekly chores - feels like something this sector needs to shout about.
The ad concept above shows families what EV ownership actually feels like, not the nerdy details. It's visual, emotional, and authentic to the real experience.
If you're interested in more content, or even specialised training, about resolving EV misconceptions and accelerating adoption, follow Rapid Charge Paradox (RCP) Ltd for regular insights on how we’re really going to win the transition to electric.
So here's my question: Which company will finally make the ad that shows this reality?
