Conceivably, if your daily circuit is under 50 km and you equip your home with a Stage 2 charger for consistently full charges overnight, you’d be filling up at the pumps far less frequently, possibly as little as once or twice a month instead of every week. While pricing has not yet been announced, BC provides a $5,000 rebate for vehicles equipped with batteries over 15-kWh, while $8,000 is on the table in Quebec and in Ontario up to $13,000 depending on how official pricing shakes down, possibly undercutting the price of equivalent gasoline trims in those markets with Canada’s largest urban centres. We’ll have a full report on the Pacifica Hybrid closer to its launch later this year.

But for now, the good ol’ V6 will lead the charge, split into Touring-L, Touring-L Plus and Limited Trim, with a handful of standalone options and packages. The standard features list is immense, so we’ll skip to the highlights, a five-inch version of Chrysler’s excellent Uconnect touchscreen infotainment system for audio, with a one-year subscription to satellite radio included, Bluetooth connectivity (and later in the year Apple CarPlay Android Auto), power driver’s seat, heated front seats, power sliding doors and windows, window shades, Keyless Enter ’n Go with proximity entry and push-button start, remote start, back-up camera and, of course, Stow n’ Go.

Chrysler really wants us to start seeing Chrysler as more of an upscale brand so they are positioning the Pacifica as a premium vehicle in Canada (it has a couple more lower trims in the States), starting at a very high level of feature content, while Dodge will continue to sell the current Grand Caravan as a value-conscious offering for families and the practically minded. Essentially, the Grand Caravan will serve those shopping in the $20-40K price range, while the Pacifica will duke it out with the Siennas and Odysseys in the 40s and 50s. A tall order? Perhaps it is for people to accept those price tags with that brand, long the whipping boy of car snobs and reliability-ratings fiends and trailing Europeans and Japanese and recently Korean brands for quality, but the Pacifica builds on the progress we’ve seen in recent redesigns of the 300 and 200.

The Pacifica is a very nice car, inside and out, with fine materials that eclipse anything in the class, which we have sampled very recently in a closely fought comparison test. The Pacifica is simply nicer. Materials are a generation ahead (as they should be, with a best-in-class user interface in the cabin, excellent seat comfort, and a few choice features that are practically minded rather than flash and hype. Exhibit A: Stow ‘n Go. Every minivan has third-row fold-in-floor seats, but the Pacifica offers second-row fold-in-floor seats with in-floor storage. It even has Stow ’n Go Assist driver’s seat, in which the driver’s seat slides and tilts forward to make way for the second row seats to tumble into their storage wells. The third row easily drops into the deep cargo well with a simple tug on the strap, and it takes little more effort to raise each side back up.

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