There’s Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z. Now, General Motors is proposing another new generation—one based not on age, but on a personal preference for electricity over gasoline. GM calls this new generation, Gen E and posits that this generation is plugged into something the rest of us are not.
The commercial itself is plugged in to something that many of us are not.
Let me ask you a question… If you had academic Malcolm Gladwell over for dinner in the post-COVID future, would you introduce him to your guests or let them guess if he was a professor at a tweedy East Coast school?
EVs are for Everyone. No, They’re Not.
The 60-second corporate spot is from McCann Worldgroup seeks to raise awareness for electric vehicles by positioning them as fun, clean and safe, while pushing GM’s proprietary Ultium battery platform. GM has said it would invest $27 billion toward electric and autonomous vehicle development and launch 30 EVs through 2025.
83% of Our Electricity Come from Where?
Renewables made up just 17 percent of net U.S. electricity generation in 2018, with the bulk coming from hydropower (7.0 percent) and wind power (6.6 percent). Ergo, an accurate statement on EVs would be that 17 percent of them are environmentally sound (provided you forget all about the energy and natural resources that it takes to make a car).
Marketing EVs as pollution-free has never has made sense. To get to a better place as a society, we need high-speed trains and a new electric grid that runs on solar and wind. Damming rivers for power may officially count as ‘renewable’ but it’s not. Hydro is a problem, like coal, and nuclear.
