GM Super Bowl ad stars Will Ferrell taking electric vehicle fight to Norway after carmaker’s climate pledge

The American car manufacturer says that it will have 30 new electric vehicles on the market by 2025

General Motors has released a Super Bowl ad focused solely on electric vehicles in the wake of the company's  announcement that it will be phase out gas-powered vehicles for zero-emissions only by 2035. 

The 60-second ad, released on Wednesday ahead of Sunday night’s game, stars actor Will Ferrell who brings the battle for EV dominance to market leaders Norway, with help from fellow comedians Kenan Thompson and Awkwafina.

The ad, titled "No Way, Norway", sees the trio travel to the Scandinavian country in GM's new Hummer pickup and Cadillac Lyriq crossover EVs, which will hit the market in the next two years.

"With GM's new Ultium battery, we're going to crush those lugers. Crush them! Let's go America," cries Ferrell from behind the wheel. 

The closing strapline reads: "We're coming Norway. 30 new EVs by 2025.” The ad is part of GM's new "Everyone In" marketing campaign, to promote all-electric vehicles.

GM’s EV ad will air during Super Bowl LV between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The NFL championship game will be played in Tampa in front of a limited crowd due to the Covid pandemic.

Norway is the top electric vehicle market per capita in the world, and more than half the vehicles sold there are all-electric, aided by government incentives.

According to Atlas EV Hub, EVs accounted for just  2 per cent of new passenger vehicle sales in 2020. Elon Musk’s Tesla range sales made up two-thirds of that figure. 

Last week marked an inflection point in the US auto industry when GM announced it would shift from petrol-powered cars and trucks to zero-emissions vehicles by 2035, and take the entire company carbon neutral, including operations, by 2040. 

GM committed to investing $27bn in electric and autonomous vehicles by 2025, a 35 per cent increase over plans made before the pandemic.

By the end of 2025, 40 per cent of its US models will be battery electric vehicles. The company plans to include crossovers, SUVs, sedans and trucks in its electric vehicle lineup.

The 112-year-old auto giant also unveiled a new corporate logo to signify its new direction as it openly pivots to electric vehicles. 

GM scrapped its old square blue logo for a lower case gm surrounded by rounded corners and an 'm' that looks like an electrical plug.

The auto manufacturer made the EV announcement last week after President Joe Biden signed a number of executive orders to tackle the climate crisis, including phasing the federal fleet to all EVs. 

Joe Biden's domestic climate czar, Gina McCarthy, told Reuters on Wednesday that the administration has started discussions with others in the utility and automobile sectors about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The talks are part of a broad effort by the Biden administration to engage every federal agency to decarbonize the US power sector by 2035 and the whole economy by 2050.

The US is the world's second-biggest greenhouse gas emitter behind China, with the power and transport sectors making up more than half of the emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

McCarthy's first major task will be to come up with a 2030 emission reduction target under the Paris climate agreement before President Biden convenes world leaders for a climate summit on April 22.

"We're already having conversations with the utility world and we're having conversations with the car companies," Gina McCarthy said in an interview.

"The car companies understand now that the future for them is electric vehicles ... so we're going to be sort of working to make sure that we move forward with some kind of an agreement on that and a strategy to get us out of the gate fast."

She met virtually with the board of the Edison Electric Institute, the main utility lobby, which discussed its "support for recent energy-related executive orders," a spokesman for the group told Reuters.

Wires contributed to this report