Since early this month GM of Canada has been ramping up its Volt marketing activities, creating interest, and taking pre-orders for the first deliveries expected in the third quarter of this year.
The Canadian roll-out is happening a little later than GM predicted it would when last April Lyle reported on the subject.
This past weekend, the “all-new 2012 Chevrolet Volt” was included in GM’s National Test Drive Tour along with other GM cars at London, Ontario. The Volt will be on tour every single weekend through to its launch, said GM of Canada Corporate Communications Manager, Jason P. Easton.
Canadians are expected to welcome the award winning car on about the same scale as the Americans.
The first regions in Canada were selected for the same reasons that initial regions in the U.S. were – they are progressive areas where hybrid cars previously were well received.
These are Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Oshawa, Ottawa-Gatineau, Montreal, and Quebec City.
In Canadian dollars, the Volt has an MSRP starting at $41,545, and reactions to the first test drives have GM’s people hopeful the car will be received as well as it has been in the U.S., Easton said.
“We put our first Volts into those [test] fleets this weekend and got tremendous response in London, Ontario so we’re very excited to get going with it,” Easton said, “Outside of the seven launch markets we will be expanding our rollout in the spring of 2012 to a number of secondary markets. Essentially the next wave of urban centers which include places like Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg. There’s a bunch of major cites in the prairies as well as some on the Atlantic which will start seeing the Volt in the spring of 2012 and within 12 months of our initial launch it will be available at dealers across the country.”
The car will be outfitted essentially the same as in the U.S. This will include one very well equipped standard trim level, as well as two option packages: a Premium Trim Package and a Rear Camera and Park Assist Package.
Aside from this, Easton said, minor changes to meet Canadian safety regulations were made.
It won’t be long before Canadians are driving their own Volts.
“In general, the option packages are exactly the same but there are some slight regulatory differences – from bumper standards, some variation of seat belt standards,” Easton said, “There’s about 28 different safety regulations that are just slightly different, but in general they are the same spec of vehicle.”
As for consumer incentives, Easton said Ontario rules were changed a bit since Lyle reported last July on subsidies that upset Toyota.
Unfortunately, Canadian incentive plans are still spotty with some buyers eligible, and others not.
“There are no federal government subsidies in Canada. Traditionally it has been the provinces that have taken leadership in this area,” Easton said, “We saw that with hybrid credits so currently there are only two jurisdictions in Canada that have incentives for plug-in electric vehicles.”
Ontario will have a subsidy and Quebec will as well, Easton said. Both will offer a sliding scale based on battery sizes ranging from 4 kWh to 17 kWh.
This means the Volt’s 16 kWh battery is close, but not at the top.
Despite changes, Ontario was the first province to put incentives in place. It scaled them down however from an initially reported $10,000 cap.
Don’t you believe it. This photo was from last year, and was a premature celebration in Ontario by GM that had Toyota angry for perceived favoritism. Subsidies are a little less than the sign reads now, and Quebec also has similar subsidies.
“When they finalized that incentive they actually reduced the range so it came in finalized as an incentive between $5,000 and $8,500,” Easton said of Ontario.
The Volt is eligible for $8,230 in Ontario and a few hundred dollars less in Quebec, Easton said.
“The other jurisdiction with incentives is Quebec. And Quebec, which would come through the markets of Montreal, Quebec City, as well as Gatineau,” Easton said. “The Ottawa-Gatineau area is our national capital region but it straddles two provinces. So Ottawa falls on the Ontario side, and Gatineau falls on the Quebec side.
“But in Quebec they recently announced a scaled incentive. The maximum on their incentive is $8,000, but again they put a maximum battery capacity on theirs at 17 kWh, so the Volt will actually qualify for $7769,” Easton said, “Additionally Quebec also implemented a credit for home charging installations for 240-volt home charging installations where they would provide a rebates for 50 percent of the cost up to a maximum o $1,000.”
We asked if there were any loopholes or ways consumers from outside the eligible areas might try to game the system to get an incentive on a Volt.
Easton said GM’s analysis has led it to believe the process is fairly robust.
Ontario will probably have a mail-in process in place to apply for the subsidy, Easton said, and Quebec is supposed to be at point of purchase.
A nice clear map of our neighbors’ country to the north.
“But we actually won’t have a good sense of that until we see people actually starting to buy these vehicles,” he said, “Both jurisdictions actually announced an intention to be point of sale but Ontario at this point has not yet demonstrated the ability to do a point of sale, so at this point we believe it’s going to be a mail in.”
Easton further clarified when in the “third quarter” the first Volts will be made available.
“It’s going to be later in the third quarter, so that would push us out into September. I can’t be any more specific than that but I know you guys have done a great job in covering Volt,” Easton said of GM-Volt.com, “So I can tell you it will most likely be September.”
Canada only has a population of around 32 million, so the allocation will be slimmed proportionally to about one-tenth what the U.S initially received, or maybe 1,000 units, although Easton would not specify the number.
On the somewhat positive side, the initial launch will be a to significantly higher proportion of the entire country’s population compared to the seven states in the U.S. in which GM launched the Volt. Easton estimated a good one-third of the country or more will have access to the limited supply on the initial roll out.
As it is, GM expects strong demand, and a waiting list is likely.
To better enable potential customers to sample the Volt in advance, the company has a Web site with the test drive schedule listed. Over the summer months, GM will make three times the number of Volt demonstrators available.
Source: GM-Volt.com
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