It looks like Chevrolet is borrowing a page from Kia’s playbook to pitch cars this Super Bowl. After all, Kia had reasonable success using aliens to highlight its Optima sedan last year, so Chevy has enlisted the little-green-men-brigade to sell Volt sedans and Silverado pickups during this year’s big game.

We’ll start by saying that Chevy’s ad for the Volt is one it should have run two years ago, prior to the car’s launch. Although we’ve written thousands (if not tens of thousands) of words on the subject, the vast majority of consumers don’t understand the difference between the series-hybrid Volt and the parallel-hybrid Prius.

Worse, many have formed an opinion of the car based on often-inaccurate soundbites from the media. We doubt one commercial will change all that, but if it educates the public even slightly about Chevy’s extended-range electric sedan, we’re all for it.

If Chevy’s ad for the Silverado pickup is any indication, perhaps we should have been a bit nicer to our intergalactic visitors following the whole Roswell thing in 1947. In Chevy’s view of the future, the Mayans were right, and it’s end-of-the-world time, courtesy of (you guessed it) alien invaders.

Unless, of course, you drive a Chevy Silverado. In which case, you and your faithful canine companion simply fire up the engine and emerge from a pile of rubble to drive though debris-choked streets, meeting your Chevy truck-driving buddies for a Twinkie.

Drive a Ford, however, and you’ll wind up dead, along with most of the other seven billion people on the planet. We know the ad is all in good fun, but given the current global political and economic situation, we’re not laughing quite as hard as we once would have.