Auto executives ditch Super Bowl ads promoting electric vehicles

UNITED STATES – In a Venn diagram of hardcore National Football League (NFL) fans and people who like Volkswagen’s new electric van, there is a surprising amount of overlap. 

As the latest incarnation of its so-called “love bus” hit United States dealerships last autumn, the German carmaker blitzed the football season with commercials for the ID. Buzz. The results were immediate and impactful.

The ID. Buzz ads were one of the best-performing commercials of the NFL broadcasts, driving almost 80 million impressions, according to EDO, a marketing analytics company. For perspective, American actor Will Ferrell’s PayPal spot garnered 20 million sets of eyes.

Yet, even with all of that momentum, most companies pitching electric vehicles (EVs) sat out the Big Game on Feb 9.

In the days leading up to 2025’s Super Bowl, only two brands rolled out car commercials – American carmakers Jeep and Ram, both owned by Stellantis. These were the only EV ads and, even then, both featured plenty of screen time for petrol-powered models.

“I think I saw (American actor) Glen Powell punch a dragon, which is pretty much the antithesis of EV,” says Mr Brian Dangers, senior vice-president at market research firm Kantar Group. That is indeed what happens in the Ram ad, which features one plug-in hybrid along with two trucks that run on petrol.

The lack of EVs advertised this Super Bowl follows the Trump Administration’s pledge to nudge Detroit executives and US drivers away from cleaner technology. 

Still, the White House’s anti-EV stance may have had only a limited role on 2025’s commercial strategy. For one thing, there was not a glut of ads for petrol cars either.

The entire auto industry has been spending more judiciously on advertising in recent years, and the return on investment on a Super Bowl ad can be greater for smaller brands and companies looking to introduce themselves to a broader audience.

“Carmakers are being a little conservative right now,” Mr Dangers said. “They want to be smart with where they put their money.” 

That is why, as viewers made a nacho run to the kitchen, they heard about cookware HexClad, not Japanese carmaker Honda, and personal finance company NerdWallet rather than Japanese carmaker Nissan.

American artificial intelligence research organisation OpenAI also made its Super Bowl ad debut. “We always see three or four brands saying, ‘We have to get the word out there that we exist,’” says Kantar Group’s senior vice-president of creative strategy Kerry Benson. “Almost every advertiser knows it is not buying a US$8 million (S$10.8 million) spot to sell a product tomorrow.” 

There is another reason EVs were quiet during Feb 9’s broadcast. They are kind of old news. As most of the 125 million or so people who watch the game know, this is not conventional advertising. It is Madison Avenue’s long-ball, the Don Draper moment to frame in a consumer’s mind the future of a company, brand or product – or reframe as it were.

While EVs may be the future of the global auto industry, their rosy dawn is now years old. In 2022, seven of the nine auto ads in the Super Bowl were pitching big batteries and electric motors.

That was the year people watched American actor Arnold Schwarzenegger as a grumpy Zeus, whose humdrum retirement is perked up by an electric vehicle from German carmaker BMW. “Now, my friends in the gym... these hardcore bodybuilders, they’re finally getting it,” Schwarzenegger told Bloomberg Green at the time. “No one can say any more, ‘This electric stuff, I’m not into that.’”

That same year – as the Los Angeles Rams squeaked out a win against the Cincinnati Bengals – Canadian actor Mike Myers reprised his Dr Evil character to pitch EVs from American automotive company GM; and Polestar, an EV company spun out of Swedish carmaker Volvo, trolled American EV company Tesla with a 30-second spot promising “No conquering Mars”.

EV sales took off in the years since, and Super Bowl ad dollars started flowing more freely from tech start-ups and foreign brands like Chinese e-commerce company Temu. In 2024, automakers bought up only 8 per cent of the airtime, down from 40 per cent in 2012, trade publication Adweek reports. 

To be sure, there are a number of headwinds and unknowns for EV sales up ahead.

A full-blown tariff war would drive up prices across the entire US car industry. The market is already bracing itself for President Donald Trump to slash Inflation Reduction Act EV incentives and tamp down clean-air regulations – even as some states have said they would continue to offer financial sweeteners to choose cleaner cars.

This Super Bowl also played against the backdrop of culture wars across the US, which would not have been unnoticed by advertisers. While advocacy group Science Moms ran an ad about addressing climate change regionally in Los Angeles and online, the theme was otherwise largely invisible elsewhere. 

Jeep’s Super Bowl ad showed there is a middle road for carmakers. The commercial is narrated by American actor Harrison Ford over a montage of the Wrangler’s Hemi and plug-in hybrid models.

As the Jeeps kick up dirt or ride towards the mountains, Ford explicitly gives viewers a pass to go petrol or electric: “Freedom is the roar of one man’s engine, and the silence of another’s.” BLOOMBERG