What might this mean for the Volt sales later this year?

Aside from the fact that it’s a nice perk, is it fair to incetivize consumers this way? (Obviously California and many plug-in car fans think so, but just asking …)

Thanks to Mark Z for the link …

As of March 12, fewer than 3,620 green HOV stickers allowing solo-driver access for plug-in cars were left in California out of an initial 40,000 allotment.

The green stickers – as opposed to white stickers – are a perk for purchase of transitional zero emission vehicles (TZEV) such as the Chevy Volt.

This means if solo access to the High Occupancy Vehicle lane in California was an incentive to buy an eligible plug-in car in the number-one plug-in cars state, this is on the verge of drying up.

The white stickers for all-electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model S, and others are unlimited through Jan. 1, 2019.

A person named “Tom” from the BMW i3 Facebook Group noticed this dwindling green sticker supply on the California Air Resources Board’s Web site, and tipped off InsideEVs.

The site reports in the past four months more than 12,000 people have applied to the state for the green stickers and 8,000 stickers have been applied for since Jan. 1, 2014.

Source: Calif. ARB.

If you were thinking of getting a Volt in California and applying, better act quick.

Whether this will adversely affect Volt sales after the supply is gone does remain to be seen, but it would be reasonable to surmise it could.

Meanwhile EV buyers will still have access to their white stickers, so will we see any tip in the balance between the perennial Volt vs. Leaf mock sales race later this year?

InsideEVs

Doh!

As a trivial pursuit extra bit of news, what do you think of this? …

Funny? Or not funny? That is the question of a tweet a third-party social marketing firm hired by Nissan did on behalf of the Leaf and at Tesla’s expense.

As you no doubt have seen, Tesla was unceremoniously booted from New Jersey after its motor vehicle commission decided to enforce laws already on the books rendering it ineligible for a dealer franchise license.

The tweet, which has subsequently been taken down, was explained away by Nissan as something the Japanese automaker never explicitly was asked about and thus did not directly approve.

“It’s okay #NewJersey, you can still #GoElectric with the #NissanLEAF #EV,” said the tweet as reported by autobloggreen.

Nissan’s Rob Robinson, senior specialist of social communications told ABG in benign terms, “We thought it was a discussion we didn’t need to be weighing in on,” he said, referring to the Tesla versus New Jersey tiff.

Others have said they do think it was funny and it even livened up Nissan’s Twitter account.

Our comment? No comment. But we thought if you’ve not seen this already, you might be interested to see.

autobloggreen