Detroit Auto Maker Ad Takes Aim at Elon Musk over Chinese Tesla Factories
There are a lot of people who have a dual effect on society. Elon Musk, for instance, has the ability to make people love and hate them in large numbers.
Musk is nothing short of an amazing human being. His ideas for space travel (SpaceX), digitalizing monetary transactions, (PayPal), and autonomous vehicles (Tesla) have all been home runs in the game of business ventures. And that hasn’t gone unnoticed by some people in Detroit. Author Matt Novak has a piece on gizmodo.com this week regarding Musk and his many fans at the Ford Motor Company.
Ford Motor Company has just 2.5% of the U.S. electric vehicle market. But if a new ad from the carmaker is any indication, Tesla CEO Elon Musk should look out, because Detroit is gunning for him. Ford has a new ad that pokes fun at the notoriously thin-skinned billionaire, albeit without naming Musk explicitly. And America’s wealthiest oligarch will likely see it as a shot across the bow. For instance:
“Right now it could seem like the only people who matter are the loudest,” the narrator says over footage of a hand scrolling on a smartphone in the new Ford ad. “Those who want to tear things down and then fly away on their personal spaceships when things get hard,” the narrator continues. “But we’ve got 182,000 people and they’re building.”
The new ad wants to highlight Ford workers but is also doing so as a way to contrast the way that workers are treated at Musk’s companies. Tesla, which has roughly 53% of the electric vehicle market in the U.S., is a non-union shop that has a stunning history of worker abuse.
The ad also notes that Ford assembles more vehicles in the U.S. than other car manufacturers, likely another jab at Tesla, which recently opened a huge factory in China. Here is the ad for you to take a look at what Ford is trying to say about Musk.
And now we wait for Elon’s expected response on Twitter. It’s bound to be something clever.
Expect Musk to say something like “Ford? More like Bored!” or he’ll compare the people who work at Ford to Adolf Hitler, as he did with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau back in February. There’s no middle ground with Musk.
read more at gizmodo.com
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