https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2019/01/10/electric-vehicles-survey-canada_a_23639409/
[It's a little embarrassing to still have a federal government which is
feebly groping to find a credible climate strange strategy but seems
blind to electric vehicles, while pretty much all the provinces in
Canada, except Saskatchewan, have good stories to tell on decarbonizing
their electricity generation. Yes, even Alberta. It has been left to
visionaries like Sun Country Highway to create a national charging
infrastructure (some years old now and based primarily on L2 stations).
Imagine if Canadian taxpayers had spent $5 billion on EV support
infrastructure and committed another $20 billion, instead of buying an
old oil pipeline for a product with a short remaining shelf life.]
BUSINESS
01/10/2019 11:18 EST
Canada ‘Among Worst-Equipped Countries For Electric Cars’: GoCompare Study
Consumers have to be truly adventurous to buy an EV in Canada.
By Daniel Tencer
Canada is well behind a majority of its developed-world peers when it
comes to adopting electric car technology, a new analysis has found.
It's not that Canadian consumers don't want electric vehicles. Rather,
experts say, government policy and the local auto industry are simply
not keeping pace, and buying an electric car in Canada can be difficult.
In a survey of 30 member countries of the International Energy Agency,
financial services comparison site GoCompare found Canada had 23,620
electric cars on the roads at the end of 2017. That's a lower number
than in many smaller countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands,
Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
GoCompare's tally includes only fully electric vehicles such as Teslas
and the Nissan Leaf, and doesn't include plug-in hybrids like the Toyota
Prius and Chevy Volt.
In terms of infrastructure, Canada was also a laggard. It had the
seventh-lowest ratio of charging stations, with 0.56 stations per 100
kilometres of road. That compares to 23.25 charging stations per 100 km
of road in the Netherlands, the world leader. That prompted GoCompare to
rank Canada "among the worst-equipped countries for electric cars."
But Canada may already be catching up. Since GoCompare's snapshot was
taken at the end of 2017, the country has seen something of a boom in
electric car sales.
In the first nine months of 2018, electric vehicle sales — including
hybrids — were up by 158 per cent from the same period a year earlier,
according to numbers from clean-tech data company Fleetcarma. A good
part of the increase came from the arrival of Tesla's new and relatively
affordable Model 3 sedan, which accounted for a third of sales of fully
electric cars.
One stumbling block was the Ontario government's decision to cancel the
province's electric vehicle rebate, a move that evidence suggests took
some steam of out of electric car sales in the second half of the year.
In fact, dealerships in Ontario have been moving electric car inventory
to Quebec, which — like British Columbia — still has EV rebates, said
Dan Woynillowicz, policy director at B.C.-based Clean Energy Canada.
Woynillowicz said government policy initiatives are still crucial to
early adoption of electric vehicles, and that's what makes the
difference for those countries that are leading in the race to adopt the
technology.
"Neither governments writ large nor North American automakers have put a
priority on making electric vehicles available in the marketplace and to
educate consumers," he told HuffPost Canada by phone. "And we're still
in an era where electric vehicles are more expensive (than gas vehicles)."
And buying an electric car in Canada can require a certain amount of
consumer adventurism. Clean Energy Canada surveyed British Columbia auto
dealerships last year and found only 40 per cent had an electric vehicle
on the premises. At those dealerships, waiting times for an EV ran as
high as 18 months.
Woynillowicz says one effective way to change this is to create a legal
requirement for dealers to sell electric cars. Rather than relying on
provincial governments to set their own policies (or not), he suggested
the federal government set a zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) target, as
Quebec and British Columbia have done.
Quebec's ZEV policy, in force since early last year, reportedly aims to
see electric vehicles make up 15.5 per cent of car sales in the coming
years. It requires dealers to sell a certain percentage of electric
cars, or face a financial penalty, starting in 2020.
British Columbia's ZEV target, announced last year, will mean all cars
sold in the province will have to be electric by 2040.
In other countries, concerns about air pollution prompted many
jurisdictions to push for electric cars. In Canada, Woyillowicz said,
that hasn't been as much of a concern.
Here, "change is being driven by consumers. There is more interest as
more models become available, and as people learn of the benefits, such
as fuel cost savings."
Electric cars are bound to become more appealing to consumers in the
coming years as the technology improves rapidly and more types of
vehicles become available in electric models, Woynillowicz said. You can
now buy electric SUVs and pick-up trucks will be coming soon.
Putting some real effort into consumer education could help too, he
suggested.
"A lot of people are not aware of the growing number of models
available, how far they can go, how they perform in winter. There are a
lot of myths out there."