Tesla Steals Super Bowl Spotlight Without Spending a Dime

By Kevin Armstrong
Popeyes commercial unmistakably features a Tesla with edited features
Popeyes commercial unmistakably features a Tesla with edited features
Popeyes

A 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl costs approximately $7 million, and the legacy brands were paying up for the big game. But, it was Tesla that was cashing in. According to Google Trends, Tesla, Model Y, and Model 3 were hot topics during the game.

The undisputed king of electric vehicles, which doesn't spend a dime on advertising, was getting all the attention as legacy brands promoted their (slow) transition to EVs. Tesla did appear in the game to make matters worse for those old-school brands. The face of Tesla, Elon Musk, scored some face time during the broadcast. The Tesla CEO, sporting a Doge Coin t-shirt, was spotted watching the game from a private box.

Legacy Brand Advertising

General Motors aired a one-minute ad in conjunction with Netflix. Will Ferrell starts the commercial by stating, "General Motors is going electric." Well, better late than never. Ironically, he is surrounded by zombies while saying the line, which could signify just how behind GM is; however, the ad states that more EVs will be in Netflix-produced shows and movies.

Dodge also produced a one-minute ad, at the cost of $14 million, to advertise their Ram 1500 Rev, a truck not slated to be on the road until well after the next Super Bowl in late 2024. Titled: Premature Electrification, the commercial was cringe-worthy, awkwardly trying to link medical conditions with electric vehicle myths.

Ads That Used Teslas

A Tesla did appear during the Super Bowl festivities in a Popeyes ad. There's no doubt it was a Tesla, but some post-production editing was done to make the vehicle described as "electric, of course," not a billboard for the automaker. The side repeaters were removed, and the door handles were altered.

Popeyes Superbowl Commercial

One commercial was unmistakably the world leader in electric vehicles but was a negative spot. The Dawn Project, a self-proclaimed safety advocate group, paid for a smear campaign aimed at Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) system. The 30-second ad aired in Washington D.C. and some other state capitals, including Austin, Tallahassee, Albany, Atlanta and Sacramento. Dan O'Dowd, the founder of the Dawn Project, funded the ad. He is also the CEO of Green Hill Software, a company working on its automated driving systems. By the way, Teslas with Autopilot engaged are shown to be ten times safer than human-piloted cars.

As Musk enjoyed the game, the number of Google searches for his car company skyrocketed. That could mean a repeat performance of last year when Tesla reported a significant spike in orders after the Super Bowl. The competition must keep advertising - on Tesla's behalf.

How to Create Your Own Custom Cybertruck Wrap for Visualizations

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

One of the upcoming features of the 2024 Tesla Holiday Update is the ability for Tesla owners to make custom wraps for their vehicles. The wraps will be displayed in the vehicle’s visualizations and in the Tesla app. You’ll also be able to select one of the wraps Tesla has provided if you prefer not to make or download your own.

This feature will roll out to the Cybertruck next week with the Holiday update, but it will be available for other models in the future as well.

Making your own wrap is super easy and takes just a few minutes. It doesn’t even require any special tools or software because Tesla provided a template.

Making a Custom Wrap

We’ll walk you through the steps to create your custom wrap. All you’ll need is an image editing program and an image editing program.

Download the Template

Tesla has all the details on their Github repository for Custom Wraps, but you can simply download the template below and open it in your favorite image editor like Adobe Photoshop, GIMP or even Windows Paint on Windows 11. Any software that supports layers will work.

Image Editor

Open the template in your image editor and create a new layer on top of it. You’ll want to edit on this new layer, not on the template layer, which we’ll hide later.

The template, in all its glory.
The template, in all its glory.
Not a Tesla App

Create the Wrap

Go ahead and work your artistic magic—here, we’ve taken a graffiti rendition of Not A Tesla App and our logo and placed it within the template's bounds.

Flex those creative muscles!
Flex those creative muscles!
Not a Tesla App

Hide the Template

Go ahead and hide the template layer - you can also delete the layer if you want. This standalone image doesn’t look like much, but this is what we need for the final step.

Looks a bit simple right?
Looks a bit simple right?
Not a Tesla App

Export

You’ll want to export the image with transparency - so it needs to be a .png file. You'll be good to go as long as it's the same dimensions as the template. We’ve gone ahead and exported our custom NATA wrap here - feel free to download it and let us know how it looks once you get the 2024.44.25 update.

The completed product.
The completed product.
Not a Tesla App

A couple of technical limitations:

  • The image must be 1024x768 pixels.

  • File Size max is 1MB.

  • You can’t use any special characters in the file name, and it must be shorter than 30 characters.

  • PNG is the only acceptable file format

  • You can load up to 10 images on your USB drive

Add Wrap to USB Drive

The last, and easiest step. Grab your USB drive, and create a folder called “Wraps” at the root level of the drive. Place your images in there, and you’re all set.

Load a Custom Wrap

Not a Tesla App

After placing the images on your USB drive and inserting it in your vehicle, you can then open Toybox > Paint Shop, and tap on Wrap. From there select your wrap from the custom list of images.

Tesla Confirms Custom Wraps & License Plate Visualization Coming to Other Models

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

Tesla’s upcoming Holiday update introduces exciting new personalization features, giving you even more ways to customize your vehicle.

Building on the existing Colorizer feature, which lets you change the car’s color, the update will allow you to add a custom wrap and a license plate to the vehicle’s visualization. Both of these features will affect the vehicle's visualization on the screen and in the Tesla app.

While these features were originally announced to be exclusive to the Cybertruck, Tesla has now clarified and said that they will be available for other models in a future update. We expect them to be introduced for the Model 3 (new and old), Model Y, and the redesigned Model S and Model X.

Custom Wrap Visualization

Tesla announced custom wrap visualizations as part of the 2024 Holiday update for the Cybertruck. They’ve provided a template and instructions on how to design your own custom wrap and also included a few in-house designs, including the “unhinged” Doge wrap, the Cybertruck Graffiti wraps from the Baja Off-Road testing, and the Release Candidate wraps, amongst plenty of other simple ones. In all, it looks like Tesla will be providing 27 designs.

However, making your own wrap is actually very simple, and we’ll be providing instructions on how to create your own. Once these arrive for other vehicles, the instructions will likely be the same.

License Plate Visualization

Not a Tesla App

You’ll also be able to create custom license plates to show on your vehicle visualization. You’ll be able to choose custom text, and then also include a background - with plain colors, a stock image, or upload your own image.

If you have custom plates in real life, this is your chance to make your visualization perfectly match your vehicle.

Release for Other Models

Tesla hasn’t provided a timeline but said the feature would arrive in “future updates” in their post on X. It seems that it won’t be arriving with the upcoming Holiday update for all vehicles but will instead make its way to the S3XY lineup over the next few months.

We expect it to arrive sometime in early 2025. We’re super excited to see these come to more vehicles, so in the meantime, show us your best custom Cybertruck wrap on social media or our forums.

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