I thought of this ad idea for the Smart Car when I was watching coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and there were long gas lines everywhere. Well, at the time, I thought it would be in bad taste to post an ad idea like this, so I have waited until now. The idea for this spot is that the Smart Car gets such great gas mileage, when people waiting in the gas line in their car run out of gas, the person in the Smart Car begins picking them up, one-by-one, and shuttling them to and from their stalled-out cars to get gas at the gas station.
This would not work so well as an ad for an electric car, because the power lines were down, and nobody had electricity. I believe most people waiting in the gas lines at the time were there to get gas for their generators more than anything else. And with a generator needed to run the house’s electricity, I doubt it would charge an electric car too. But you know, the gas mileage of the Smart Car is not nearly as good as I expected it to be, so maybe it wouldn’t be any more dishonest to show an electric car, like the Nissan Leaf, doing this very same thing, but basically in a gas shortage situation unrelated to a power outage situation, like the gas shortages during the Carter Administration. If the California oil refineries were damaged in an earthquake, for example, gas might become scarce, and it might lead to rationing, and presented as a fictional but possible scenario, it might make for a good disaster movie vignette-turned electric car commercial.
