Automotive
The Harsh Realities of Electric Vehicles in Canada

From EnergyNow.ca
By Lorne Gunter
When it comes to electric vehicles (EVs), the Trudeau government and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault are putting the policy cart before the technology horse.
If last weekās extreme cold temperatures over most of the country taught us anything, itās that EVs just arenāt practical (yet) for a country this big and this cold.
The federal Liberals may be willing to risk hundreds of billions of your tax dollars and mine for manufacturing subsidies, purchase subsidies and EV infrastructure to try to force a market for electrics into existence, but Canadians are just not ready to get rid of their internal combustion engines (ICEs). And with good reason.
I heard from a reader in northern Manitoba. He has a Ford Lightning (the fully electric version of the F-150 pickup). When the temperature fell to -40C last week, his truckās range dropped by half after driving it just 18 kms. He was forced to abandon his work-related trip so he could return home before the charge ran out and he found himself stranded quite literally in the middle of nowhere without heat in the cab.
Another reader, this one from Edmonton, found that not only was his range severely reduced by the cold, but charging time was doubled. His wait at a public fast-charger was two hours instead of one because he had to keep the heat on in his Tesla.
Many charging stations across the country have also been reported to stop working in the extreme cold.
Since this is a country that experiences extreme cold (below -25C) most winters, that makes an EV an unacceptable risk, or at the very least a horrible inconvenience.
Also this week, the highly respected testing magazine, Consumer Reports, said that when temperatures are only as cold as +7C, EVs lose about 25% of their range compared to temperatures of +15C and a third when compared to temps of +25C.
Ranges, of course, are much further diminished when outside temperatures fall below -20C.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault says the upcoming Electric Vehicle Availability Standard will encourage automakers to make more battery-powered cars and trucks available in Canada. Automakers will have the next 12 years to phase out combustion engine cars, trucks and SUVs with a requirement to gradually increase the proportion of electric models they offer for sale each year. Dec. 19, 2023
Additionally, Consumer Reports (CR) found that āshort trips in the cold with frequent stops and the need to reheat the cabin after a parking pause saps 50% of the range.ā That means EVs may be impractical in Canada even for urban commuters or suburban families.
Late last year, CR also concluded EVs are 73% less reliable than gasoline vehicles. As well, they were more expensive to maintain and repair. And when the costs of electricity and home chargers are included, EVs are at least as expensive as gasoline vehicles to refuel.
That puts the lie to Guilbeaultās claim (made in December when announcing his mandate that all new vehicles be EVs by 2035) that while EVs are more expensive to buy, once consumers drive them off the lot, they become much more affordable than gasoline or diesel vehicles.
Not only are EVs more expensive to buy and maintain, because of their weight, they chew through tires about 40% faster. They are more expensive to insure because they cost so much more to repair if they are involved in an accident. They depreciate faster than ICEs. And their batteries lose up to half of their life in four or five years, even if they are fully charged.
All of this explains why car-rental giant, Hertz, announced earlier this month that it was selling its EV fleet ā 20,000 cars. They are just too expensive.
Electric vehicles may not be that good for the environment, either.
Many components are, of course, manufactured in China (or by Chinese companies operating elsewhere) using electricity from coal-fired power plants. And this week, Blacklockās Reporter revealed the federal Fisheries department is reviewing Northvolt, the Swedish battery maker building a heavily-subsidized plant in Quebec, for potential harm to fisheries, wetlands and streams.
The Liberalsā EV mandate is a very, very expensive farce that will likely produce few, if any, environmental benefits.
2025 Federal Election
Donāt let the Liberals fool you on electric cars

Ā Dan McTeague
āThe Liberals, hoodwinked by the ideological (and false) narrative that EVs are better for the environment, want to force you to replace the car or truck you love with one you canāt afford which doesnāt do what you need it to do.”
The Liberalsā carbon tax ploy is utterly shameless. For years theyāve been telling us that the Carbon Tax was a hallmark of Canadian patriotism, that it was the best way to save the planet, that it was really a āprice on pollution,ā which would ultimately benefit the little guy, in the form of a rebate in which Canadians would get back all the money they paid in, and more!
Meanwhile big, facelessĀ Captain PlanetĀ villainĀ corporations ā who are out there wrecking the planet for the sheer fun of it! ā will shoulder the whole burden.
But then, as people started to feel the hit to their wallets and polling on the topic fell off a cliff, the Liberalsā newly anointed leader ā theĀ environmentalistĀ fanaticĀ Mark Carney ā threw himself a Trumpian signing ceremony, at which he and the party (at least rhetorically) kicked the carbon tax to the curb and started patting themselves on the back for saving Canada from the foul beast. āDonāt ask where it came from,ā they seem to be saying. āThe point is, itās gone.ā
Of course,Ā itās not. The Consumer Carbon Tax has been zeroed out, at least for the moment, not repealed. Meanwhile, the Industrial Carbon Tax, on business and industry, is not only being left in place, itās being talked up in exactly the same terms as the Consumer Tax was.
No matter that it will continue to go up at the same rate as the Consumer Tax would have, such that it will be indistinguishable from the Consumer Tax by 2030. And no matter that the burden of that tax will ultimately be passed down to working Canadians in the form of higher prices.
Of course, when that happens, Carney & Co will probably blame Donald Trump, rather than their own crooked tax regime.
Yes, it is shameless. But it also puts Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives in a bind. Theyāve been proclaiming their intention to āAxe the Taxā for quite some time now. On the energy file, it was pretty much all you could get them to talk about. So much so thatĀ I was worriedĀ that upon entering government, they might just go after the low hanging fruit, repeal the Carbon Tax, and move on to other things, leaving the rest of the rotten Net-Zero superstructure in place.
But now, since the Liberals beat them to it (or claim they did,) the Conservatives are left grasping for a straightforward, signature policy which they can use to differentiate themselves from their opponents.
Poilievreās recently announcedĀ intentionĀ to kill the Industrial Carbon Tax is welcome, especially at a time when Canadian business is under a tariff threat from both the U.S. and China. But that requires some explanation, and as the old political saying goes, āIf youāre explaining, youāre losing.ā
There is one policy change however, which comes to mind as a potential replacement. Itās bold, it would make the lives of Canadians materially better, and itās so deeply interwoven with the āGreenā grift of the environmentalist movement of which Mark Carney is so much a part that his party couldnāt possibly bring themselves to steal it.
Pierre Poilievre should pledge to repeal the Liberalsā Electric Vehicle mandate.
The EV mandate isĀ bad policy. It forces Canadians to buy an expensive product ā EVs cost more than Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles even when the federal government was subsidizing their purchase with a taxpayer-funded rebate of $5,000 per vehicle, but that program ran out of money in January and wasĀ discontinued. Without that rebate, EVs havenāt a prayer of competing with ICE vehicles.
EVs are particularly ill-suited for Canada. Their batteries areĀ bad at holding a chargeĀ in the cold. Even in mild weather, EVsĀ arenātĀ known for their reliability, a major downside in a country as spread out as ours. Maybe itāll work out if you live in a big city, but what if youāre in the country? Heaven help you if your EV battery dies when youāre an hour away from everywhere.
Moreover, Canada doesnāt have the infrastructure to support a total replacement of gas-and-diesel driven vehicles with EVs. Our already-strained electrical grid just doesnāt have the capacity to support millions of EVs being plugged in every night. Natural Resources CanadaĀ estimatesĀ that we will need somewhere in the neighborhood of 450,000 public charging stations to support an entirely electric fleet. At the moment, we have roughly 30,000. Thatās a pretty big gap to fill in ten years.
And thatās another fact which doesnāt get nearly as much attention as it should. The law mandates that every new vehicle sold in Canada must be electric by 2035. Maybe that sounded incredibly far in the future when it was passed, but now itās only ten years away! Thatās not a lot of time for these technological problems or cost issues to be resolved.
So the pitch from Poilievre here is simple.
āThe Liberals, hoodwinked by the ideological (and false) narrative that EVs are better for the environment, want to force you to replace the car or truck you love with one you canāt afford which doesnāt do what you need it to do. If you vote Conservative, we will fix that, so you will be free to buy the vehicle that meets your needs, whether itās battery or gas powered, because we trust you to make decisions for yourself. Mark Carney, on the other hand, does not. We wonāt just Axe the Tax, we will End the EV Mandate!ā
A decade (and counting) of Liberal misrule has saddled this country with a raft of onerous and expensive Net-Zero legislation Iād like to see the Conservative Party campaign against.
These include so-called āClean Fuelā Regulations, Emissions Caps, their war on pipelines and Natural Gas terminals, not to mentionĀ Bill C-59, which bans businesses from touting the environmental benefits of their work if it doesnāt meet a government-approved standard.
But the EV mandate is bad for Canada, and terrible for Canadians. A pledge to repeal it would be an excellent start.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
Automotive
Trump Must Act to Halt the Tesla Terror Campaign

Christopher F. Rufo
The Leftās splintering violence threatens a veto over democratic power.
Elon Musk finds himself at the fulcrum of American life. His companies are leading the field across the automotive, space, robotics, and AI industries. His ownership of the social platform X gives him significant influence over political discourse. And his DOGE initiative represents the single greatest threat to the permanent administrative state. Musk is arguably the most powerful man in the United States, including President Trump.
The Left has taken notice. Left-wing activists have long practiced a tactic called āpower mapping,ā which entails diagramming the opposing political movement and identifying āchokepoints.ā They have designated Musk as one such chokepoint. This month, activists claimed to have organized 500 protests against Elon Muskās Teslaādubbed the āTesla Takedownāāwith demonstrations outside sales lots and a series of incidents of vandalism, property destruction, and fire bombings. A pattern has also emerged of individualsĀ scratchingĀ or spray-painting parked Teslas, looking to intimidate owners and potential owners or just to express hatred of Musk.
PrecedentsĀ exist for this kind of escalation. In the 1970s, following the frustrations of the civil rights era, left-wing splinter groups launched targeted terror campaigns and symbolic acts of violence. They bombed the U.S. Capitol, assassinated police officers, and even self-immolated in imitation of Buddhist monks. We may be entering a similar phase today, as the collapse of the Black Lives Matter movement gives rise to radicalized left-wing factions willing to embrace violence. If so, Muskās Tesla may be the Number One target.
What, exactly, motivates this campaign? At its core, the Left appears to be shifting from an āantiracistā narrative to an anti-wealth oneāfrom a racial frame to an economic one. The sentiment driving the Tesla Takedown is rooted in economic resentment and a desire for leveling. Musk has become a symbol of everything progressives oppose: oligarchy, capitalism, wealth, and innovation. These, in their view, are marks of the oppressor. They scorn the futuristic Cybertruck, SpaceX rockets, and Optimus robots, believing that such creations should be dismantled and repurposed into chassis for public buses or I-beams for public housing.
A certain element of left-wing Luddism is at work here, but the greater part of these activistsā motives is resentment. Musk represents the triumph of the great man of industry, something the Left believes should not exist.
Unfortunately, the Tesla Takedown may succeed. The Left has likely identified Tesla as a chokepoint because itās easier to dissuade consumers from buying a car they associate with a malevolent political causeāor fear might be vandalizedāthan it is to persuade them to buy one in support of Musk and DOGE. When it comes to purchasing a Tesla, fear among the average American is a more powerful motivator than enthusiasm among the MAGA base.
Some evidence suggests that the campaign has made an economic impact. Tesla stock peaked around the time of President Trumpās inauguration and since then has lost approximately 40 percent of its value. Musk has accumulated more power than any other American, but that means that he has more points of vulnerability. His wealth and power are tied to his companiesāmost importantly, his consumer car company, which depends on individual purchases rather than institutional contracts (like SpaceX).
Trump has signaled that he understands this dilemma. He appeared at the White House in a Tesla and has voiced support for Muskās firms. Justice Department prosecutorsāand theirĀ allies in state governmentāmust translate this support into policy by identifying and punishing those who destroy property as a means of political intimidation.
The administration needs to make clear that radical left-wing factions cannot use violence to wield a veto over democratic governance. If the partnership between Trump and Musk is to produce meaningful results, it must be backed by the full protection of the law.
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