GVI continues EV success

This story first appeared in the november issue of evtalk CLICK HERE to download the magazine FREE

Genuine Vehicle Group’s Hayden Johnston has been prominent in his work around electric vehicles, and as managing director of the Group, he is leading one of the more significant and influential import retail operations.

Genuine Vehicle Imports (GVI) has three locations, the Penrose branch for sales, an Ellerslie workshop, and Tauranga sales.

There was another site, in Wellington, but the loss of a manager and lack of available space means that project is currently in hiatus.

“We opened our doors and just started selling cars, we sold 30 cars in our first month and did that fairly regularly, and we did well until space became a factor.

We had room for 15 cars, but we needed a bit of diversity.

It was electric-only, and we started struggling when everyone else jumped into the market.”

Selling electric vehicles is rapidly becoming something that GVI is shifting towards, Johnston is driving the change with dad Peter “PJ” Johnston’s support. PJ was a little wary as it was uncharted territories at the time.

“He was excited by the technology,” Johnston says. “He was keen, so I had his support.”

Selling EVs allowed Johnston to put his own spin on the company, and GVI Electric is its own standalone brand.

Johnston says they can still offer that old-fashioned value and knowledge selling EVs.

“The vehicles were priced higher, there were less available, required a huge amount of knowledge to be able to sell them and that’s what we could offer people, so that’s when we established ourselves as the specialists.

We’re confident in saying we were the first to offer the charging cable included in the price.

We packaged up the value, along with our expertise.

“Now, it is a race to the bottom like a lot of these guys.

They’ve seen the Leaf as another vehicle to put profit on and offer cheaply.

We are competing with that.

“Our sales are still strong.Our market shares are still strong.There are still people that want to buy from specialists.”

With EVs rapidly becoming a significant player in the market, Johnston says other dealers should not try to follow the “high volume cheapest possible model buying and selling tactic with EVs”.

“It’s not like Mazda Demios and Honda Fits where you can buy 200 of them, and you might get two of them that aren’t good.
You buy 200 cheap Leafs, and you’re going to be in pain.”

Johnston says it’s dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Also dangerous, he suggests, is the government’s Clean Car plans.

“It’ll destroy the value of vehicles already in the market that haven’t received a subsidy.It will impact on auction prices in Japan.Ultimately this is going to feedback to the seller in Japan benefiting.Everybody else is going to get shafted all day long.”