If there is one thing that unites the vast diaspora that is the green lobby, it is the incredible earnestness of its messages. Of course, like all fanatics — Tea Partiers, herbal medicine practitioners or anyone who has ever tried to defend the teachings of the good Reverend Terry Jones — devotees will claim such evangelical zealotry is required; nay, mandatory. After all, when the world as we know it is about to end if we don’t immediately start composting our own poop, one does tend to get very serious. Whether the matter at hand is the end of days or the right to life, there is just no room for jocularity. Neither Chicken Little nor Rick Santorum, you may have observed, were known for their sense of humour.
It makes for dull discourse. All debate becomes dogmatic. Yes, you will enjoy bicycling through the entire Canadian winter. No, you can’t take those Birkenstocks off. And if you really, really must use the dishwasher, will you at least install a windmill in your backyard? What started as a righteous movement to clean up after ourselves has quickly become humanity’s newest religion, and with it has come a gospel that knows no deviation.
Automobile manufacturers have bought into this claptrap lock, stock and organically cured barrel. The introduction of any alternatively fuelled vehicle is often a tortured affair with many solemn pronouncements and sincere promises that salvation is at hand if we just adhere to the virtuous path. The only thing missing is the “Yea, though I walk through the valley of …” Electric vehicles, by corollary, demand the most fanaticism. Attending the introduction of an EV is to know religious fervour without ever being Catholic.
Unless you’re Mitsubishi or, more specifically, Mitsubishi Canada, whose Electriphobia Research Institute (viewable to all at Electriphobia.com) is taking a shot at bringing levity to the entire saving-the-planet thing (though, at the Institute’s unveiling, it couldn’t help handing out pamphlets noting that its electric i-MiEV is “a breath of fresh air” and “the intelligent road to a friendly future”). Rather than piously addressing the EV’s many pitfalls with solemn messages of affirmation, the little Japanese auto company that could is — there’s really no other legitimate way to say this — taking the piss out of us all, EV absolutists and naysayers alike.
The automaker’s primary weapon is some incredibly funny YouTube media messages, all addressing consumers’ fears and phobias regarding electric cars.
Shock Therapy, for instance, has the lab-coated therapists of the Electriphobia Institute dealing with the public’s unfounded fear of being electrocuted by an EV. The therapists’ solution? Place the unsuspecting skeptic in a padded room (hey, he’s in for “re-education,” geddit?) where everything — the walls, the floor, even the doctor holding the mandatory flip chart — is highly charged. Only the grounded i-MiEV provides succor from errant electrons. Success is achieved when “the subject realizes that the Mitsubishi i-MiEV is nothing to be afraid of but rather a thing of sheer, unelectrocuting beauty.”
The second mockumentary, Treating Electriphobia, deals with the withdrawal symptoms drivers of conventional gas-powered vehicles undergo when faced with the i-MiEV’s lack of a tailpipe. The Institute quickly jumps into substance abuse action, using the tried-and-true methadone model for addiction reduction by slowly weaning the subject off his emissions-spewing dependence with an ever-decreasing dosage of a “tail patch.” With the help of the Institute’s ingenious therapists, the patient soon “makes a transition to an emissions-free life and is so over tailpipes.” Well, perhaps with a tinge of latent recidivism.
But the best spot regards the Institute’s most esoteric cognitive behavioural therapy. Worried that motorists “fear the electric car for its silent motor,” the researchers use “positive association” to teach their subject to love silence in circumstances normally noisy. However, their test subject proves baffled when shown a taciturn purse poodle, its incessant yap somehow tongue-tied. Nor is he — obviously not yet a parent — seen to appreciate a completely mute baby. But, when a mimed-up, ahem, exotic dancer suddenly starts, er, gyrating her very bodacious, uhm, posterior in his face, our now much-animated schmo finds himself “loving both the Mitsubishi i-MiEV and silence.” Not surprisingly, he’d like “to take them both for a drive.”
It’s must-see TV. Well, almost. Right now, the spots are only available at Electriphobia.com. But, Peter Renz, director of national marketing at Mitsubishi Canada, promises the hilarious spots will be coming to a television screen near you. OK, maybe not the silent stripper spot.
