Electric vehicles facing uphill climb

Ford shifts from EVs to gasoline trucks in Oakville due to declining demand and financial losses, challenging government EV targets.

In October 2020, the federal and Ontario governments announced with fanfare that they would each pour $295 million into helping Ford upgrade its assembly plant in Oakville to start making electric vehicles.

“The upgrade of the Ford plant will make Oakville into the company’s No 1. electric vehicle factory in North America,” we were told.

And Prime Minister Trudeau declared: “This is a win-win. . . . helping accelerate our transition to a low-carbon, clean-growth economy, which will help protect our environment, drive innovation, and create many good middle-class jobs.”

In April 2023, Ford announced it will spend $1.8 billion to retool its Oakville Assembly Complex, beginning in mid-2024, to build next-generation passenger electric vehicles in 2025.

Then the target date of 2025 becomes 2027.

And now, in July 2024, reality strikes: Ford confirmed that the Oakville plant would no longer produce electric three-row SUVs but would instead turn out larger, gasoline-powered versions of its flagship F-Series pickup truck.

The reason: a global slowdown in electric vehicle demand, with hesitant customers delaying plans to buy EVs, and many opting instead for hybrid-electric vehicles.

Ford, for one, said it will step up hybrid offerings and that by 2030 it expects to offer hybrid powertrains across its lineup of gas-powered vehicles. Ford has also delayed production of electric pickup trucks in Tennessee.

Ford now says its electric vehicle unit lost $1.3 billion USD in the first quarter alone. It sold 10,000 vehicles in that period, and thus lost about $132,000 US for every EV it sold.

General Motors also announced it would cut production of EVs, citing slowing demand.

As far as we know, Honda Canada is proceeding with a $15 billion plan to create Canada’s first comprehensive electric-vehicle supply chain, comprising four plants in Ontario. It includes Honda’s first EV assembly plant in Alliston, ON, which Honda said will produce up to 240,000 vehicles per year.

Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association, said the Ford decision is “not good news,” and he fears there will be similar announcements from other car companies.

And automotive industry analyst Robert Karwel says: “I would definitely not be surprised to see announcements from other companies.”

“People are getting payment fatigue right now generally, and EVs are more expensive,” said Karwel, a senior manager of J.D. Power’s Power Information Network. “The average car payment hit $900 a month in January.”

In the first quarter of this year, 46,744 light and medium-duty EVs were registered across Canada, 11.2% of the market share.

B.C. has long led Canada in the uptake of electric vehicles, and in May they made up 10.7% of light-duty vehicle sales.

But another factor weighing on consumers is B.C.’s recent reduction in rebates for electric vehicles.

B.C. reduced rebates to $3,000 for battery, fuel-cell and longer-range plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and $1,500 for shorter-range plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. The previous incentives ranged from $2,500 to $6,000, depending on the kind of car.

And now, only vehicles sold for under $55,000 qualify for the rebates. Previously, the maximum price was $77,000 to qualify. The federal rebate of $5,000 for qualifying vehicles, introduced on May 1, is still available.

If the slowdown in demand continues, it will only help power producers such as B.C. Hydro, which face staggering demand for power, for EVs and for industrial and clean-energy use.

The federal government requires at least 20% of new vehicles sold in Canada to be zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) by 2026, at least 60% by 2030, and 100% by 2035. (ZEVs include battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.)

Prime Minister Trudeau: “As a great Canadian once said, that is where the puck is going and that is where we’re going to be.”

B.C. is even more ambitious: It has set targets requiring 90% of all light-duty new vehicle sales to be zero-emission by 2030 and 100% by 2035.

That means B.C. needs substantially more power to cope with EVs — and will require even more than that to handle expected population growth and the province’s plans to electrify BC’s economy and push clean energy.

Now the Energy Futures Institute (EFI) calls in a new report for “a dramatic increase in domestic electricity production” in B.C., and cancellation of current plans to wind down some existing power-generation facilities.

EFI chair Barry Penner: “After years without new generation coming online, the long-awaited Site C dam is expected to start producing power by next year. Even if Site C was available last year or this year, it wouldn’t be enough to avoid having to import electricity from the United States and Alberta to keep our lights on.”

As for the federal target, the Public Policy Forum says Canada must build more electricity generation in the next 25 years than it has over the last century in order to support a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.

All in all, Canada’s electric vehicle transition could cost more than $300 billion by 2040 as the installation of charging infrastructure expands, upgrades to the electrical grid are made, and other changes take place, according to a report released by Natural Resources Canada.

Among other things, it says Canada needs to add 40,000 public charging ports per year on average between now and 2040. There now are around 32,000 public ports across the country, and roughly 11,000 were installed in 2023.

The Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association says lack of charging infrastructure is already deterring some would-be EV buyers. A lack of charging station availability was cited as a top concern by 72% of consumers, according to an Autotrader Canada survey conducted in March.

Cornelius van Kooten, an economics professor and Canada Research Chair in Environmental Studies and Climate Change at the University of Victoria, said the federal timeline for electric vehicles “isn’t realistic or feasible.”

In a study for the free-enterprise Fraser Institute, he said that to meet the goal, Canada would need the equivalent of 10 big new hydro dams (or 13 large natural-gas power plants).

Quebec, for one, has already had to start limiting industrial expansion because it can’t fill all the power needs.

So you can but sigh when you hear of Quebec’s latest plan for electric vehicles: it is moving ahead with regulations that not only mandate EV sales but actually prohibit sales of any internal combustion engines — including plug-in hybrids, from January 1, 2035.

Related Topics:#CanadaElectricVehicles #ResourceWorks CanadaEnergyGrid CanadaEVs

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Trudeau must repeal the EV mandate

Published on January 25, 2025

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By Dan McTeague

Last Monday, Transport Canada released a bombshell statement, announcing that the Trudeau government’s program granting a $5,000 rebate to Canadians purchasing an Electric Vehicle (EV) had run out of money and would be discontinued, “effective immediately.” This followed a prior announcement from the government of Quebec that they would be suspending their own subsidy, which had amounted to $7,000 per EV purchased.

This is, of course, a game changer for an industry which the Trudeau government (as well as the Ford government in Ontario) has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in. That’s because, no matter the country, the EV industry is utterly dependent upon a system of carrots and sticks from the government, in the form of subsidies and mandates.

EVs have remained notably more expensive than traditional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles, even with those government incentive programs. Without them the purchase of EVs becomes impossible for all but the wealthiest Canadians.

Which is fine. Let the rich people have their toys, if they want them. Though if they justify the expense by saying that they’re saving the planet by it, I may be tempted to deflate them a bit by pointing out that EVs are in no way appreciably better for the environment than ICE vehicles, how all the lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, aluminum, copper, etc, contained in just one single EV battery requires displacing about 500,000 lbs of earth. Mining these materials often takes place in poorer countries with substandard environmental regulations.

Moreover, the weight of those batteries means that EVs burn through tires more quickly than gas-and-diesel driven vehicles, and wear down roads faster as well, which among other issues leads to an increase in particulate matter in the air, what in the old days we referred to as “pollution.”

That is a potential issue, but one that is mitigated by the fact that EVs make up a small minority of cars on the road. Regular people have proved unwilling to drive them, and that will be even more true now that the consumer subsidies have disappeared.

Of course, it will be an issue if the Trudeau Liberals get their way. You see, Electric Vehicles are one of the main arenas in their ongoing battle with reality. And so even with the end of their consumer subsidies, they remain committed to their mandates requiring every new vehicle purchased in Canada to be electric by 2035, now just a decade away!

They’ve done away with the carrots, and they’re hoping to keep this plan moving with sticks alone.

This is, in a word, madness.

As I’ve said before, the Electric Vehicle mandate is a terrible policy, and one which should be repealed immediately. Canada is about the worst place to attempt this particular experiment with social engineering. It is famously cold, and EVs are famously bad in the cold, charging much slower in frigid temperatures and struggling to hold a charge. Which itself is a major issue, because our country is also enormous and spread out, meaning that most Canadians have to do a great deal of driving to get from “Point A” to “Point B.”

Canada is sorely lacking in the infrastructure which would be required to keep EVs on the road. We currently have less than 30,000 public charging stations nationwide, which is more than 400,000 short of Natural Resources Canada’s projection of what we will need to support the mandated total EV transition.

Our electrical grid is already stressed, without the addition of tens of millions of battery powered vehicles being plugged in every night over a very short time. And of course, irony of ironies, this transition is supposed to take place while our activist government is pushing us on to less reliable energy sources, like wind and solar!

Plus, as I’ve pointed out before, the economic case for EVs, such as it was, has been completely upended by the recent U.S. election. Donald Trump’s victory means that our neighbors to the south are in no immediate danger of being forced to ditch gas-and-diesel driven cars. Consequently, the pitch by the Trudeau and Ford governments that Canada was putting itself at the center of an evolving auto market has fallen flat. In reality, they’ve shackled us to a corpse.

So on behalf of my fellow Canadians I say, “Thank you,” to the government for no longer burning our tax dollars on this particular subsidy. But that isn’t even half the battle. It must be followed through with an even bigger next step.

They must repeal the EV mandate.

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.

Automotive

Liberals Have Cut Canada’s Electric Vehicle Subsidies, Now It’s Time to Kill the 2035 Mandate

Published on January 18, 2025

Dan McTeague

By Dan McTeague

Former Liberal MP Dan McTeague calls on Mark Carney and all other leadership candidates to kill Trudeau’s electric car mandate.

President of Canadians for Affordable Energy (CAE) and former Liberal MP Dan McTeague says, “It’s good that the Trudeau government are ending their taxpayer funded electric vehicle subsidy, but it’s time to take the most important step of all and kill the government’s mandate that all vehicles bought in Canada be battery powered by 2035.”

As of January 10^th, Transport Canada announced that it “paused” its financial incentive to purchase electric vehicles which had provided up to $5,000 of taxpayers money to anyone who purchases an electric vehicle. Quebec ended its $7,000 subsidy last February. However, the government policy requiring that every car sold in Canada after 2035 be electric remains in force.

“Even with these giveaways in place, it was a stretch for hard working Canadians to afford an EV,” said McTeague. “We at CAE are happy for Canadian taxpayers that the program is coming to an end. But this move must be followed up by abolishing the mandates on unaffordable electric vehicles once and for all.”

“My hope is that each and every Liberal Leadership candidate stands up and acknowledges that mandating that all new cars in Canada be electric by 2035 is wrong and that that policy needs to be scrapped,” added McTeague.

Dan McTeague served in Parliament as a Liberal MP for 18 years, and is now Executive Director of Canadians for Affordable Energy. CAE counts on it’s 60,000 supporters nationwide, you can find more information here: https://www.affordableenergy.ca/

For more information contact:

Dan McTeague
647-220-0114
[email protected]