GM reveals the sci-fi super team that powers your EV

If you've ever wondered how electric vehicle batteries are protected from stress, or exactly how EV engines are able to accelerate so quickly, there is good news. GM has just provided two videos to explain the process to you.

One might think that dielectric adhesives and parylene coatings help insulate and protect the battery. One might also believe that power from DC batteries are converted to AC power for the engine with the help of a controller and inverter sending signals to the motor to increase torque.

But that's old technology. New GM EVs are run on the "game-changing" Ultium technology platform, which involves a "super team" of sci-fi action heroes inside your EV engine and battery components, bathed in blue light, barking out and fulfilling commands based on how your car is performing. 

Is your battery overheating?  No worries, an efficient super team member gathers cooling cells with her hands and shoots them out in a stream of blue light. Have a need for speed? Super team members jump into pods with power handles like pilots taking out the kaiju in the movie Pacific Rim, thrusting their big machine forward as energy pours out in...yet another stream of blue light.

It's all good fun of course, brought to us by the team at McCann Shanghai and the aim seems to have been to avoid all the technical jargon that Ad Nut started to describe above.

“We aim to grab the audience’s attention by showing the features of the Ultium EV platform without using too much tech and science jargon. Our biggest challenge is to create something that is both interesting and understandable,” said Dagger Chen, the agency's group creative director. “However, science, of course, has its own charm. We were inspired by the impressive technology and hence came up with the big idea of a secret Ultium Squad who command and protect your EV.”

McCann Shanghai also point out that the idea was gleaned from insights "that Chinese consumers enjoy sci-fi movies and are most concerned with safety and performance when it comes to EVs."

But Ad Nut has to wonder if those two really need to be put together. After all, Ad Nut has watched lots of horror films with some enjoyment but wouldn't necessarily recommend brands like Henkel or Heinz getting involved. 

In fact, if Ad Nut is looking for safety and performance from an electric vehicle, putting these in the hands of a stressed out team of supernerds in tight outfits yelling orders, giving hand signals and unceasingly reacting to external conditions doesn't seem like a great idea. We've all seen sci-fi movies and we know that at some point there will be a crisis, a decision will need to be made by the bridge commander, not everyone will agree with it and at least one crew member will be too stressed out to carry out their task. The crew and vehicle will survive but not before everyone's lives are all put in danger at some point. 

For this squirrel living in a peaceful forest, it's all a bit too much unwelcome stress. It could be that Chinese EV-buying audiences might actually find confidence in the superteam's heroics. Ad Nut hopes so, because elevating human confidence in EV technology is important for the planet. And humans will be more likely to buy such vehicles if they have less to worry about, not more.