Automotive News - October 17, 2016 - Supplement - S29

OCTOBER 17, 2016 ❙ 29 B O U R G E O I S C H E V R O L E T, R AW D O N , Q U E B E C Volts fuel Chevy dealership's success Quebec store specializes in sales of the plug-in hybrids Owners of Bourgeois Chevrolet in Rawdon, Quebec, from left, Mario Bourgeois, Hugo Jeanson and Samuel Jeanson focus on selling electrified vehicles. Says Samuel Jeanson: "Even customers who come in for conventional product and ask for gas, we sell them an EV." Printed in Automotive News Jan. 11, 2016 Bradford Wernle bwernle@crain.com ealer Samuel Jeanson says it can take four times longer to sell a Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid than to sell a gasoline-powered car. Still, Jeanson's Bourgeois Chevrolet in Rawdon, Quebec, stocks and sells every Volt it can get, new and used. Ⅲ Focus on electrified Why bother? Bourgeois vehicles Chevrolet caters to buyers of electrified vehicles, and Bourgeois figures his store's profit per vehicle is the same for electrifieds as it is for conventional cars and trucks. Bourgeois Chevrolet sold a record 287 electrified vehicles in 2015, including 192 new and 95 used. The total doesn't include 43 presold 2017 Volts and 33 Chevrolet Bolts, cars that are not yet on sale. Bourgeois hit those numbers with gasoline prices dropping in Canada, though they're still about double U.S. prices. In October alone, Bourgeois Chevrolet sold 57 electrified vehicles, according to Jeanson, the store's co-owner with his brother, Hugo, and uncle, Mario Bourgeois. Buyers for the dealership scour auctions in Canada and the U.S. for used Volts and Bourgeois Chevrolet takes unwanted new Volts from other stores. Bourgeois Chevrolet sold 704 vehicles in 2015, so that means more than 40 percent of sales were plug-in hybrids and EVs, all this in a town of 10,000 people about 50 miles from the nearest big city - Montreal. "It is an amazing market," says Jeanson, who has sold Volts to customers from as far away as British Columbia. "Even customers who come in for conventional product and ask for gas, we sell them an EV." D Counterintuitive strategy Jeanson knows why many stores avoid stocking and selling electrified vehicles. "The business case for EVs is not good for dealerships," he says. "They're more costly to maintain on the lot. It's a $40,000 vehicle compared to $20,000 for a Cruze. The owner of the dealership is not interested in paying interest on a higher-priced vehicle so there's no inventory." But Bourgeois Chevrolet does things differently. It starts with the sales process. Because customers have more questions about electrified vehicles than conventional vehicles, any sales presentation for an electrified will take longer. So Bourgeois Chevrolet pays its sales staff salary instead of commission. "The dealership has been in the family 50 years, and we didn't have any commission for 50 years," says Jeanson, who trains competitive jumping horses in his spare time. "People want to know how it works. It takes three to four times longer to sell an EV than a regular car. "If a salesman is selling an EV on commission, he's not interested in selling an EV. They have the same price and less profit." So Bourgeois Chevrolet sales staffers go through the math with customers, explaining how much a kilowatt-hour of electricity costs vs. a gallon of gasoline and how much money they'll save and how a $40,000 Volt can be cheaper to own than a $20,000 Cruze. They start with monthly payments and move on to energy costs, insurance and maintenance. The Quebec government pays an $8,000 rebate to Volt buyers. "Very often, the conventional car is more expensive than the Volt," Jeanson says. "The person who saves most with an electric car is the person who empties the battery every day." A staff of experts The math works out for the dealership, too, in terms of profit per vehicle. Jeanson estimates that Bourgeois Chevro- let averaged $1,878 per electrified vehicle sold in 2015 including new and used. He says the profit per vehicle is roughly the same for vehicles with conventional powertrains. Of 30 Bourgeois Chevrolet staffers, 17 own Volts. All employees, even those who don't own an electrified vehicle, are trained to be electrified vehicle experts. But persuading someone to buy a Volt usually takes more than an explanation from an expert. And that's where the extended test drive comes in. Bourgeois Chevrolet lets customers have Volts for three or four days to test drive for free. Customers want to take a Volt to work, to the grocery and on other daily errands to see if they can live with it, says Jeanson. "It's the best marketing we could do," he says. "There are a lot of misconceptions but they realize they can do everything they want. At the end of the week, they just want one." Bourgeois Chevrolet makes sure customers have plenty of Volts and other electrified vehicles from which to choose. "We bought a bunch of Spark EVs from California," he says. "We buy them from everywhere in North America. I always have 30 to 40 used Volts on my lot." Jeanson is optimistic about the future of electrified vehicles, particularly the Bolt EV, due in late 2016. "We have a waiting list already," he says. His electrified offerings are drawing customers to General Motors. "At least 50 percent of the customers say, 'I never thought I would enter a GM showroom,'" he says. "These are people coming from Toyota, Mazda, Volvo." c

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