EV prices need to drop by one third if Canada wants to hit sales targets, says gov't report
EV prices need to drop by one third if Canada wants to hit sales targets, says gov't report
Unless policies or technologies change, the cost of electric vehicles (EVs) needs to decrease by 31 per cent if Canada to wants to reach its sales target of 60 per cent EVs by 2030, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
Unless policies or technologies change, the ownership cost of electric vehicles (EVs) needs to decrease by 31 per cent if Canada to wants to reach its sales target of 60 per cent EVs by 2030, according to a new report released Thursday by Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux.
Last December, the federal government unveiled its Electric Vehicle Availability Standard that outlined zero-emission vehicle sales targets for automakers. The standard requires all new light-duty sales in Canada to be electric or plug-in hybrid by 2035. There are also interim targets of at least 20 per cent of all sales being EVs by 2026 and 60 per cent by 2030.
Those federal government targets come as growth forecasts for auto companies have plateaued and concerns about charging infrastructure persist. The price of EVs has also pushed the cars out of reach for many consumers. According to the Canadian Black Book, the average cost of an EV was $73,000 in 2023.
Maybe don't put a 100% tarrif on affordable Chinese EVs then?
62Hard disagree, we should be reducing our reliance on China, not increasing it.
17Increasing trade interdependency is a good way to avoid hot conflicts. It's the principle behind the EU, it's the principle behind the detente strategy during the Cold War, and it's the narrative of globalization that has been pushed from the WTO down, ever since we started protesting neoliberal globalization in the 1990ies.
2
It's really telling that Chinese EVs (like imported Teslas) were basically considered fine until the prospect of them being affordable to the middle class arose. That's when we started hearing about labour abuses and fires that only happen with * cheap Chinese* batteries.
It's not like Tesla has a stellar reputation for quality and reliability. They started powerwall as a way to offload bad/ prematurely failing batteries. Don't get me wrong, powerwall is a good idea. But pretending like BYD is going to have terrible batteries and that's why we need tariffs is bad.
China has labour and human rights abuses (eg genocide of Uyghers in Xinjiang [cultural genocide is still genocide]). Imo Canada is doing a better job of reconciling with its history/present of cultural genocide than China is. Canada's TFW program probably results in lots of horrible abuses that we don't hear about, but i think this program may be on its way out too. These issues don't only apply to EVs though.
The only things that're EV specific are lithium batteries and automotive manufacturing.
EV tariffs are protectionism: We want to protect domestic automotive (and para-automotive) manufacturing capabilities, and our investments in EVs/green tech.
I don't think 100% tariffs can be justified on EVs alone.
7Because they don't care about their workers ? Do we really want cars made by Chinese slaves ? Like we do with our t-shirts ? Fuck no.
-2Most of them are super automated.. Do you mean the robots that Nio uses?
1
👏 stop 👏 subsidizing 👏 oil
$18B last year in government support for petrocorps.
44i would love for my next car to be an EV
It doesn't need to have 1000km range, or edge to edge touch screens, or anything fancy
Give me something like a subaru impreza, with 300-400km range, and a sunroof.
18Give me a Honda fit but electric and make my landlord give me the ability to charge it. Some fancy tech would be nice, but I drive a used economy vehicle for a reason
7I'm still tempted to do a diy conversion to get specifically what I want and nothing else. I have to get my money's worth out of my bike too though.
5i saw someone who moded an olschool subaru brat into an EV. Said he put a... Leaf battery and motor in it. Was really cool to see!
(stock photo)
3
Sounds like Canada should put a 50% tax on gasoline powered vehicles.
17So, I drive an EV already but here's the rub with just taxing gas powered vehicles.
I still believe some people need (or should use) gas vehicles currently.
The first case is for people who have no access to a charger at their home (primarily condo dwellers, since home owners can easily install them) This should be regulated by the government, every condo should be required to upgrade their parking to include a certain percentage of chargers. We don't need more chargers at random places around the city like we have with gas stations, vehicles should always be charged wherever they happen to sit overnight.
I've had an EV for 3 years now, and I've never once needed a fast charger, I've never driven more than 400km in a single day so overnight level 2 charging is perfectly fine for me, I even used only the standard wall-socket level 1 charger for 4 months when I first got the car. It was do-able but a bit annoying.
The second case is for long distance drivers and/or towing, if you drive more than 2x your battery range in a day as a normal action then EVs just aren't yet sufficient for you. This is common if you need to tow heavy things, because the towing range on EVs is absolute shit so 2x that battery range isn't very far. A ford f150 lightning is fine for hauling your trailer around the suburbs for your yard maintenance business, but if you tow farm equipment a few hundred kilometers a day to different farms, it's not going to work with the current options.
Third, People who already have vehicles. When you replace it, go EV, don't bother until then. If you are a low distance driver, when you go to replace your vehicle, buy a used gas vehicle not a new one. EVs make more sense both financially and environmentally the more use they get.
These issues are all getting sorted out (slowly) but we aren't done with gas vehicles just yet so I'd rather see the taxes on the Gas than on the Vehicle itself.
15As a condo owner with an EV, getting a charger installed was only marginally more difficult than if I was freehold. There are already laws in place that require condo boards to respond to charger installation requests and enter an agreement with the owner. I think getting more street parking chargers like they have all over Europe would be a good idea and installing charging bays in all new condo towers should be a requirement for the developer.
A big barrier to EV adoption is also education. I have been asked so many questions about my EV from my neighbours, friends, and families. The dealership wasn’t able to answer like 80% of my questions. I had to do a ton of learning online to understand the features of my car, how it works, how to charge it, when it operates well or poorly etc.
10I was going to agree with you, but I think after reading your points I actually feel the complete opposite. I think if there's a role for heavy taxation to play it should be on new ICE vehicles, as opposed to on the gas itself. We're talking about new vehicles here, there are millions of perfectly good used vehicles out there that would fill all the roles you're talking about. Increasing gas taxes ends up punishing the people who can least afford it. Like the farmers who have to have to haul their equipment hundreds of kilometers between farms, the condo dwellers who aren't allowed to charge at home, and the renters who can't afford to install an EV charger, let alone buy a new car. The tax should also go towards making EVs more affordable at the low end (it would be nice to subsidize used EVs but I can see many ways to abuse something like that).
We need to get the percentage of new EVs up today so that tomorrow's used market is where we want it to be. We can only do that by encouraging those who can afford a new car to pick an EV, not by punishing those who can't afford a choice.
1The second case is for long distance drivers and/or towing, if you drive more than 2x your battery range in a day as a normal action then EVs just aren’t yet sufficient for you.
These people should not exist. These jobs should not exist. They didn't before cars, and we got by just fine back then. After cars were invented, some people decided to just go wild with a dangerous technology and use it too much. Companies started hiring truckers to spend all day in an automobile. Cities started building housing far far away from the workplaces those people are supposed to use. Well, it turns out internal combustion engines are not a safe technology, and our society never had the capability to support those jobs and lifestyles. We need to tax these transport companies until it just doesn't make economic sense to deliver all these goods by automobile. And we need to tax these long distance commuters until it just doesn't make economic sense to live that far away from their workplaces.
Our society never had the ability to support people doing these crazy, irrational, dangerous things. We subsidized those lifestyles at the cost of everyone else. We cannot afford to support people doing all this reckless driving. And we can't keep passing that cost on to future generations. It's time to make the companies and people doing these unsustainable things eat the cost of their own decisions until they stop.
1The first case is for people who have no access to a charger at their home (primarily condo dwellers, since home owners can easily install them) This should be regulated by the government, every condo should be required to upgrade their parking to include a certain percentage of chargers. We don’t need more chargers at random places around the city like we have with gas stations, vehicles should always be charged wherever they happen to sit overnight.
Do ICE vehicles owners have a gas station at their house? Why are EV's an issue for this but not ICE vehicles? As long as you're near some form of fast charger, you don't need a Level 2 charger at home, though it would be nice.
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I am waiting for the exponential increase in gas prices to start.
We have to pay for the carbon we're releasing, it is a market externality, it's going to cost us trillions of dollars. This is what government is for in a capitalist society.
11
Have we as a country ever met a climate target? In fairness to our politicians (not really), the O&G industry regulates them and not the other way around. Until that power relation changes, our targets are just greenwashing
14AFAIK the only environmental goal that we met was the Montreal protocol and the elimination of chemicals harming the ozone layer.
As a result of the international agreement, the ozone hole in Antarctica is slowly recovering. Climate projections indicate that the ozone layer will return to 1980 levels between 2040 (across much of the world) and 2066 (over Antarctica). Due to its widespread adoption and implementation, it has been hailed as an example of successful international co-operation. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated that "perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date has been the Montreal Protocol".
I think we also did something about acid rain for a few decades now but I can't find any specific agreement. All I know is that I'm in my 40ies and thus old enough to remember it was an issue when I was a kid, and that the US and Canada agreed to do something about it.
Some governments, including those in Europe and North America, have made efforts since the 1970s to reduce the release of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere through air pollution regulations. These efforts have had positive results due to the widespread research on acid rain starting in the 1960s and the publicized information on its harmful effects.
I don't know what changed but apparently, we don't really care about the rest now.
2
Tesla asked Canada to reduce tariffs on its EVs made in China, Reuters source says - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/tesla-canada-china-tariffs-1.7307635
4It doesn't look like the governments want EVs to replace ICE vehicles as they are today. The density in cities is already limited by parking and road space, and the infrastructure needed to charge all these new EVs isn't really being built.
Keeping EVs in the $60k+ range and the short life-cycle of these vehicles will ensure most people transition to public and active transport, leaving the roads to luxury consumers.
4Pair this news with the 100% tariff on EV imports.
Closet fossil fuel subsidy in disguise.
3American here. Does Canada have any domestic auto manufacturers?
3Ford, Stellantis, GM, Honda, Toyota: source (click "Made in Canada"). Both countries assemble many cars where parts are made in the US/Canada/Mexico (see: NAFTA/CUSMA aka USMCA)
edit: also for context, auto manufacturing is a big political football here in Ontario, with politicians always announcing funding and looking for photo ops around it because they're big employers in manufacturing
9Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, Fiat Chrysler have factories in Canada. I don’t know of any that truly Canadian companies though.
6For now, they can barely keep them running in the GTA.
2
If by that you mean "headquartered in Canada and manufacturing in Canada for the Canadian market" then the answer is no, I'm pretty sure the last ones vanished no later than the middle of the 20th century. Some US and other foreign companies do have manufacturing and assembly plants here, but I wouldn't call them Canadian. (Ford Canada used to be semi-independent and produced some own-model vehicles early on, but they're nothing more than a subsidiary of the US company now.)
6
Why not subsidize electric bike Jesus Christ. Why the fuck are we subsidizing the auto industry, they got us by the fucking balls already.
1