Mitsubishi Motors Canada has set out on a cross-country tour to make sure people ‘get’ electric cars before the brand launches its first mass-market electric, the i-MiEV, next year.

The Clean Across Canada Tour started this week and will continue across the country for 28 days, stopping in cities big and small in a bid to drum up PR and get the public out to see the futuristic car. Toronto-based Bullfrog Power is a sponsor of the tour, during which the plug-in-and-go i-MiEV will stop at Bullfrog Powered homes to charge up in Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.

The tour is being supported with a print buy in Metro editions in seven of the tour’s major markets, timed to coincide with tour stops. OMD handled the media buying while BBDO in Toronto handled the creative. The media centrepiece of the promotion, though, is the Cleanacrosscanada.ca microsite, which features a daily updated map of the tour’s status, photos and videos of the stops, a tour blog and live Twitter feed.

Visitors to the site are also invited to take photos when they spot the i-MiEV and upload them to the Mitsubishi Facebook page. As of press time, 50 people had ‘liked’ the first blog post from St. John’s, Newfoundland, and it had sparked a lively debate amongst the fans of Mitsubishi’s performance cars, who didn’t seem quite as keen on the idea of a combustion-engine-free future.

Examples such as that are precisely the reason the brand decided to pre-promote the i-MiEV’s launch with a PR tour, Peter Renz, director, national marketing, Mitsubishi Motors Canada, tells MiC.

‘We want [people] to follow the tour, ask questions and learn about what it is to own an electric car and get educated about what may be a changing world in the future,’ he explains.