Chevrolet is investigating the possible sale of its extended-range plug-in hybrid Volt to Japan as early as next year in a bid to compete with such names as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight.
Sumito Ishii, the Managing Director of GM Asia Pacific Japan, said that Volt, which will go on sale in the US later this year, will be sold in Japan as soon as it is feasible to do so.
“One of the things the Japanese market wants is electric vehicles,” Mr Ishii said.
GM understand that selling a foreign car in to Japan will be a difficult task, but believe bringing an advanced, fuel-efficient car such as the Volt to the Japanese market could help counter GM’s poor brand perception.
Last year, GM sold only 2,686 vehicles in Japan, a fall of 14 per cent on 2008 figures.
The company hopes that in addition to Volt to be able to offer four new models in Japan over the next twelve months beginning with the Chevrolet Camaro, Chevrolet Cruze and Chevrolet Aveo. At least one (unnamed) offering from Cadillac is also believed to be on the cards.
I read today on a other site that Gm has decided to delay the November reveal in America to make sure they can have the bet reveal out there. They want to make sure everything is ready to go.
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LOL, bet you didnt know that Hyundai has just withdrawn from Japanese market due to poor sales.
yeah its a strange market
google top 10 brands in Japan and we see no imported brands
Now this would be a mega tough task to sell an American product to the ever loyal Jananese community.
You think they would have learnt Japans trade only works one way, and thats their way
They didnt and still havent and look were that got them, although the tides seem to be turning with the recent problems of the Big.T
This will be Saturn repeating itself in a couple of years.
Initially they’ll have to say yes, import them, then they will take them apart. Redesign it and make it better and sell it back to the US. Is this not how Japanese manufacturing started?
2011 Chevy Volt’s Debut in Japan better have all the bugs and glitches out. Japan will use any faults to fix Toyota’s recall reputation there and in the States.
It’s not just the brand perception. Japan is a very closed country. It’s always about supporting the Japanese product over the import product. And it doesn’t help that they practice protectionist policies (think Tariffs or markup) to benefit their own economy rather than the global economy. It’s the main reason why no import from either the US or Europe has ever been successful in Japan.
For instance take a look at the Chevrolet Camaro, here in the states there’s already about a $10,000 markup on a base model Camaro (sells for around $30,000 for base V6). In Japan the markup is about double, so a base model Camaro goes for nearly the same price as a loaded SS Camaro. And I’d assume the loaded SS Camaro would sell for what we’d expect to pay for the base model Corvette here in the states. With tactics like that, it’s impossible for a non Japanese brand to brake into the Japanese market.
I say don’t worry about Japan, this isn’t the game industry, you don’t need to win in Japan to have true success (one of the main reasons why Xbox is #2 instead of #1 in the game industry).