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'South Park' turns Uber, Lyft, and Tesla into 'Wacky Races' — and Elon Musk could not be happier

'South Park' turns Uber, Lyft, and Tesla into 'Wacky Races' — and Elon Musk could not be happier

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The battle between Uber, Lyft, and traditional cab companies has been making headlines for months now, and South Park took aim at all of them in last night's episode. In it, Timmy creates an app-based ride service called 'Handicar,' which spreads so fast it becomes the town's premier car service option. The South Park creators then skewer the companies by pitting them in a race for a single fare against Timmy, a ZipCar, a self-driving car, a yellow cab, and an Elon Musk-piloted Tesla D. The second half of the episode was styled a la Wacky Races, a short-lived cartoon from the 1960s that featured teams of colorful characters racing against each other in slapstick fashion, with the episode even giving a cameo to the most notorious pair in Dick Dastardly and his dog, Muttley.

In typical South Park fashion, the show deftly surfaced all of the most salient arguments of the broader discussion (like ride-sharing being as eco-friendly as electric vehicles and cabbies being advised to improve their experience before whining about competition) while blasting the pedantic practices that these companies typically resort to. Also typical, no one came out looking particularly great, but Musk at least enjoyed his unsolicited appearance:

You can watch the full episode here.