Schwarzenegger video pits electric vehicles against gas guzzlers

The Driven

Ex-film star Arnold Schwarzenegger has returned to the screen to kick off a new campaign called “Kicking Gas”, starring as an undercover used car sales person trying to dissuade actual potential buyers from switching to electric.

Of course, the point of the campaign series, which is run by California-based electric car advocacy organisation Veloz as part of its “Electric for All” initiative, is to illustrate the how dirty, noisy and damaging to the environment gas-guzzling internal combustion engine (ICE) cars are.

As car yard customers purvey a range of zero emissions options, Arnie approaches dressed in character as “Howard Kleiner”, replete with cap, Hawaiian shirt and that unmistakable Austrian accent.

“I’m tired of spending money at the pump,” says one customer.

“I’d like to use something that could get me into the carpool lane, actually,” says another.

Others are interested in benefiting from the US tax credit, which can be up to $A7,500 depending on the manufacturer (it halves for every 200,000 new vehicles sold).

But Arnie will not have it. Bringing out a grumbling, smoking – and probably pre-emissions standards – 4WD, he yells to bemused customers, “This is testosterone. YES!”

Arnie even tries to convince one family that the electric car they are test driving is a fail because, “it’s so quiet, you hear literally everything your family says.”

The video is quite frankly, hilarious, but more importantly paints so succinctly the absolute madness in continuing to push the case for internal combustion cars.

As a new technology, there is a lot of information about the benefits of electric cars – which are quieter, do not emit exhaust or any carbon emissions, and have much, much lower running costs than ICE vehicles.

The campaign’s intention is to get these messages across using comedy to break down the barriers in the minds of people who are still clinging to a preference to cars that use fossil fuels as an energy source.

As ex-governor of California from 2003 until 2011, which is home to around half of all the 1.2 million electric cars in the US, Arnie is already known for his support of eco-friendly initiatives, having signed a number of pro-environment bills during his two terms in politics.