UPDATE May 13: On Thursday, Senator Tomassoni clarified what he said. Apparently, he learned that the cars he saw weren't being offered to consumers shopping at the lot in Hibbing, but were instead a fleet purchase for a Twin Cities' concern. And that there were 100 of them.
We don't believe his new information means what he thought it meant. Are Minnesota consumers able to obtain EVs? We'll insert the YouTube of the explanation when the archive is available [End Update]
We're catching up from Monday afternoon's conference committee on SF959 (Hansen/Ingebrigtsen) Omnibus environment, natural
resources, and tourism policy and finance bill. We'll publish that shortly.
But there's an side story afoot about one moment in the hearing, when the President Pro Tem of the Minnesota Senate made during the meeting. It's found at the 8:38-8:50 moment in the video except below.
We suspect that Senator David Tomassoni, I-Chisholm, was exaggerating a bit in Monday's hearing when he claimed that he saw 60 EVs when he drove through an auto dealership in Hibbing "the other day," we looked at a couple of auto dealers' online inventories.
We're tracking down a lead about which particular dealership Tomassoni visited. In the meantime, we visited Hibbing dealers websites to check on their inventory.
The claim does seem far-fetched. When we visited the website of North Country Chevrolet Buick GMC this morning, for example, we found that 55 new vehicles are available. There's one 2021 Chevrolet Bolt EV Premier that's pretty spiffy.
Assuming 55 vehicles are the typical inventory numbers, all but one of the 60 EV on hand during the state senator's visit have sold. If this was the dealership where Tomassoni saw EV things, the cars are certainly not sitting on the lot, unwanted by consumers, as the Minnesota Automobile Dealers Association worries.
At another Hibbing dealership, Ford of Hibbing, we learned there are 49 new vehicles in inventory. No EVs. If this were the dealership Tomassoni visited "the other day," those 60 EVs flew off the lot.
Similarly, the Hibbing Chrysler Center now has 46 new vehicles in inventory, none of which appears to be an EV. Did the sales people completely turn over the stock of 61 EVs since "the other day."
Indeed, it's absurd to image that any dealership in Hibbing, population 16,361 at the 2010 Census, would have 60 EVs in inventory, given their numbers now.
The source of the senator's words
The Minnesota Senate Media released this YouTube. As we said above, the comment about the drive through a dealership's
Screengrab: The one EV we found in our review of Hibbing auto dealership inventories.
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