GM $1.99 A Gallon Gas Offer
The promotion information can be found at FuelProtection.com. You need to enter in a valid California or Florida zip code (you can use 95014 for CA or 32801 for FL if you just want to take a look)
When you purchase or lease your eligible new GM vehicle, we will provide you with a special pre-paid card. Your card will be credited about once a month for the total monthly cost of gas that’s over $1.99 per gallon based on the miles you drive and AAA published Californian (or Florida) state average gas prices. There’s no cap on how many miles you drive or how much you can be reimbursed on your pre-paid card.
Your eligible new GM vehicle will come equipped with a one year subscription to OnStar. Its newest feature, OnStar Vehicle Diagnostics, plays an important part in the GM Fuel Price Protection program. Available at no extra cost, this advanced system will measure your miles you drive.
When you purchase or lease your new vehicle, you will sign up for the program. Then, simply press the blue OnStar button in the vehicle or go online to www.onstar.com to enroll in OnStar Vehicle Diagnostics. You will need a valid and secure email address.
GM will be monitoring average gas prices statewide and credit your special pre-paid card by calculating the number of gallons that you’ve likely purchased and how much, on average, you’ve spent over $1.99 a gallon. Six to eight weeks after you take delivery of the vehicle, you’ll receive your special pre-paid card in the mail preloaded with a $100 advance. It’s all done automatically.
The way that GM will calculate the rate seemed fishy using the “average statewide price” and not your actual costs, but digging a little deeper, they have actually set it up where you can get back more and thus pay less than $1.99 per gallon if you’re creative. here are the details on how they calculate the credits:
Here’s how it works. GM will use the number of miles you actually drive to determine the amount of the credit you will receive. Once a month, the miles you have driven will be reported to you and to GM through the technology of OnStar Vehicle Diagnostics. The miles you have driven will then be divided by your vehicle’s EPA estimated city miles per gallon (except for H2 which will use 11 mpg) to calculate an estimate of the number of gallons of gas you have used. Then, GM will multiply this number by the California (or Florida) state average gas price per gallon for premium gasoline, as reported by AAA on www.fuelgaugereport.com on the 15th of the same month in which you received your OVD report, to develop an estimate of the amount of money you may have paid for gas. Finally, GM will subtract the amount of money you would have paid if the price of gas had been $1.99 per gallon, and will issue you a credit on the Fuel Price Protection Card for the difference. This process will continue until one year after the date on which the customer took delivery of the vehicle. If you wish to check your balance of available credits at any time, go to www.gmfppcard.com.
GM has designed this approach to favor the customer, but if you determine that your credits during the course of the program (including the starting balance of $100) did not put you in a position where you paid no more than $1.99 a gallon during the year after you took delivery of the vehicle, you may submit gas purchase receipts for the year consistent with the miles you drove. If you believe your records demonstrate that an additional credit is warranted please contact Program Headquarters at 800-580-9204.
The formula can be represented mathematically as follows:
Monthly Miles Driven / EPA City MPG x (State Average Price for Premium Gasoline -$1.99) = Monthly Credit
That means if you can arrange to purchase your gas at less than the state average, you could come out ahead in this program. Also, if you use gas saving techniques so that you achieve better gas mileage or you do extensive highway driving, you’ll likely save even more since the system uses the vehicle’s estimated city miles per gallon.
The main problem? Most of the vehicle’s in the program are not what would be considered fuel efficient (and you need to judge for yourself the quality of GM cars compared to others that are available), but if you were in the market for a particular vehicle on the list, there would be an opportunity to save a large amount in gas cost, especially if you know you will be driving a lot.
It’s certainly a novel promotion and one that you could manipulate to your favor if your driving habits entail a large number of miles in the next year. It should be interesting to see if other car companies come out with similar deals…
its a gimmick to sell cars
the trick is the calculations show the more you drive the more you save.
GM will save money with the gas card instead of giving customers thousands and thousands in rebates and cheap financing.