Watch: Toyota NZ takes swipe at Tesla with Mars ad

Toyota New Zealand, famed for generations of successful advertising campaigns, has released an advert that takes an apparent swipe at Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk.

The ad centres on three teenagers underwhelmed with life on Mars and complaining that they can’t do any ‘bombs’ because there is no water, with one sneezing in their suit. You can watch the ad in full below:

“Why would anyone want to move to Mars? Mars is lame,” says one of the protagonists. The ad then transitions to a scenic outdoor scene in New Zealand, with the teenagers doing bombs into a lake.

The ad ends on the tagline ‘Let’s get to carbon neutral. Not Mars’.

The connection to Mars is likely a nod to the chief executive of Tesla, Elon Musk, and his ongoing push for space exploration.

Specifically, Musk has detailed ambitions for humans to colonise Mars. Earlier this year, the CEO said he expects that there will be a crewed mission to Mars before the end of the decade.

Alongside Tesla, Musk also owns SpaceX. The space exploration tech firm has a section of its website devoted to Mars and ‘the road to making humanity multiplanetary’.

“You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great – and that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about,” says a quote attributed to Musk on the site.

“It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”

Musk’s push for Mars exploration has attracted both praise and scrutiny in the past.

It has been suggested that Musk’s is more focused on racing other billionaire peers like Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos to space travel accolades than he is on local environmental efforts.

Conversely, SpaceX has helped forge a new wave of interest in space travel and rocket technology. Ironically, the ad comes as SpaceX prepares for its first Heavy Falcon rocket launch in three years, having previously been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Toyota has also been subject to environmental scrutiny in recent years, given the brand’s lack of urgency to launch fully electric models.

The flipside of this is that the Japanese marque has one of the most electrified line-ups of any mainstream manufacturer, having helped pioneer hybrid technology on a mainstream scale with models like the Prius.