Just one week after its sale to Steele Auto Group, electric vehicle seller ALL EV Canada has announced a major expansion.
The Halifax-based EV dealer and repair shop announced on August 3 it’s opening four new locations across Atlantic Canada.
The company says it has plans for new operations in Corner Brook and St. John’s in Newfoundland, as well as Fredericton N.B. It will also open a new location in Halifax to replace its current home in Burnside.
Including an operation already set up in P.E.I., the new expansions will bring ALL EV up to a total of five locations in Atlantic Canada.
ALL EV Canada is still a young company. It was founded around the beginning of 2020 when NSCC trainer David Giles and EV expert Jérémie Bernardin teamed up with former Ambassatours CEO Jeff Farwell.
Giles told Huddle he saw the trend towards EVs developing in the market and wanted to get in on the ground floor.
That strategy worked, and the business quickly developed a reputation for its expertise in the EV field and its efforts to promote EV adoption in Atlantic Canada.
Peter Porteus, a vice president with Steele Auto Group, says Steele invested in All EV Canada because of that expertise—but also because the company sees the same potential in the EV market as Giles.
“The change that our industry is going through towards electrification probably hasn’t been seen since the invention of the Model T,” Porteus told Huddle on August 3.
Governments in the region are investing heavily in charging infrastructure, while major vehicle manufacturers are setting timelines for transforming their entire production to electric vehicles.
Those changes, Portues says, will “revolutionize the automotive industry.”
In Atlantic Canada, EV adoption has been relatively slow. But Portues says the new cash rebates provincial governments are offering to people who buy EVs will be a game-changer.
He points to a rebate program recently introduced in P.E.I. that pays for $5,000 of all EV purchases, new or used.
“The moment that incentive program was introduced in Prince Edward Island, retail happened,” Porteus says. “People who had been thinking about it for a year or two years, the day it was announced, were coming in and buying vehicles.”
The other Atlantic provinces have all recently introduced similar rebates and Porteus says those rebates are “directly responsible” for Steele’s decision to invest in All EV Canada and its expansion.
“We’ve seen in Atlantic Canada, our four governments here have really stepped up to the plate with terrific rebate programs. So we fully anticipate that Atlantic Canada is going to be in kind of warp speed growth,” he says.
He said Steele’s purchase of ALL EV shows the company is “really leaning in early” and wants to be ” a very active part of what’s a big change for our industry.”
All four of ALL EV’s new expansions are set to open in September of this year.
