Chevrolet Bolt EV Demand Shown With 33 Pre-Orders At One Dealer Pretty impressive numbers considering the Bolt is at the time of this post, about a year away from its official release date. Of course, if you read the article, it also mentions that their sales staff is salaried, so they don't have the same pressure to "sell sell sell" as most other dealerships do. Which is really helpful when explaining to the average customer about the pros and cons of electric vehicles. Now hopefully GM does them a favor by also advertising the Bolt and Volt somewhat. Kind of hard to get people interested in a vehicle they aren't even aware exists.
New volt owners are squeezing 65+ miles from a charge, hypermiler are looking to squeeze 250-300+ miles from a Bolt.
Having gone through the early ordering process with my 2011 Volt, I'm pretty sure that GM has not begun official ordering of the Bolt yet. These 33 customers apparently have an agreement with their dealer to buy a car but the dealer has not placed any actual orders to GM yet and has not been told how many Bolt EVs they will be allowed to order and when. There is a process that GM follows that is public information. First, GM will announce the official pricing and ordering details (option codes and prices). Dealers will be told what their "allocations are" or in other words the schedule plan for when their dealership can order the car and how many. For instance, a dealer might be told they can order 10 cars in their first allocation beginning in July, for example. Dealers cannot order the car on their GM ordering computer system without an available allocation. Finally, GM will announce an official day when customer orders will first begin. Or something close to that.
The take away bit about this is that it is customers interested enough in the car to put in a preorder for the car before GM has even set up the system to do so on their end, and not simply an internet sign up list of people simply interested in the car.
If I was satisfied buying a car from the old dealership model, I'd have one on order too. This is, for me, the perfect car that I have wanted for 10 years. Not too expensive, 200 mile range, no gasoline, and I can offset the electrical use with renewables. The only thing better would have been if it was a Toyota.
ha! i'm perusing the link, and a pop up asks me if i want a quote. i fill the whole thing out, then it tells me it's a spark.
I know you're being sarcastic but again keep in mind that the Canadian market is tiny compared to the U.S.. You guys buy 400,000 Camrys a year on average while Toyota Canada (including Scion) sold a total of 187,024 cars in 2015. (Lexus Canada sold ~22,000 cars). GM sold 263,335 vehicles in 2015 in Canada. The winner is FCA at 293,061. So you can imagine that the EV and PHV market is tiny. 33 is a big deal from one dealer.
This dealer is really into EV and hybrid cause Rawdon is a very small town with only 10000 people they are mostly the only one with so many used Volt for sales in quebec. those guy are pushing hard and it seem to work. When I buy my Prius I look at volt and that dealer was mostly the only one with many choice on volt used and new.
