‘I think I saw Glen Powell punch a dragon’
Donald Trump made history on Sunday as the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl. The NFL celebrated Trump’s appearance by removing the phrase “End Racism” from the end zones for the first time since 2021, an acknowledgment of the president’s successful efforts to eradicate bigotry. It wasn’t the only thing missing from this year’s contest. In another promising development attributable to Trump’s leadership since taking office, there wasn’t a single Super Bowl ad touting electric cars as the vehicles of the future.
By contrast, seven different ads for electric vehicles ran during the Super Bowl in 2022, several months after President Joe Biden signed an executive order compelling U.S. automakers to ensure that by 2030 roughly half of all cars sold in the country would have fully electric or plug-in hybrid engines. General Motors, for example, ran an ad promising 30 new electric vehicle models by 2025, which turned out about as well as Biden’s promise to cure cancer. Six more electric-focused car commercials aired during the Super Bowl in subsequent years, including “Premature Electrification,” a Ram Trucks ad narrated by former Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones that compared being skeptical about electric vehicles to suffering from erectile dysfunction.
“How interesting,” said Larry Behrens, communications director of Power the Future. “Things have changed.” They certainly have. One of Trump’s first acts as president was repealing Biden’s executive order on electric vehicles. “With my actions today, we will end the Green New Deal, and we will revoke the electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto industry and keeping my sacred pledge to our great American autoworkers,” Trump said last month during his Inaugural Address. “In other words, you’ll be able to buy the car of your choice.”
On Sunday, only two automakers—Jeep and Ram—aired ads during the Super Bowl, and while both featured electric vehicles alongside gas-powered ones, they also channeled Trump’s remarks by emphasizing the importance of choice. They also evoked the familiar themes—masculine patriotism and patriotic masculinity—commonly found in car commercials before American corporations went woke. “I think I saw Glen Powell punch a dragon, which is pretty much the antithesis of ‘EV,'” marketing executive Brian Dangers told Bloomberg.
Indeed, Ram’s ad for pickup trucks featured the Hollywood star Powell as Goldilocks reimagined as “a rugged woodsy dude” who punches (and eats) a dragon while testing out three different models, including the all-electric Ramcharger, which he uses to power a chainsaw. The tagline—”Drive your own story”— encouraged consumers to choose what’s best for them, as did the Jeep ad starring Harrison Ford, in which the actor delivers a sermon on “freedom” over images of American flags and U.S. troops during World War II. “Freedom is the roar of one man’s engine, and the silence of another’s,” Ford says. “Choose what makes you happy.”
Just last week, Ford (the company, not the actor) announced that its electric vehicle business lost more than $5 billion in 2024.
Related: American Commercials Used to Be Great. Then Woke Stepped In.