The Future of Car Ads Involves Taking Shots at Self-Driving Cars

A recent ad for the Infiniti Q50 begins with a shot of a man reading the newspaper in the backseat of a car. The guy gets visibly bored. As the camera pans to the front seat we see no one’s driving; in fact, both man and car are traveling atop a car carrier. The thinly veiled message here is that driverless cars just aren’t doing it for him. Then the narrator lifts that veil entirely:

It’s easy to see why some car companies might fear the rise of the autonomous vehicle. They will no longer be able to promote the (largely fictional for those of us who aren’t James Bond) joys of zipping along an open coastal highway. Beyond that, the threat of self-driving cab networks could render car-ownership for city residents far less essential to daily mobility than it is today.