Canada’s electric vehicle transition is a matter of much debate, but the gears of industry and policy are already in motion to roll the vehicles out en masse.
Even if a new government were to reverse the federal mandate of all zero-emission sales for light-duty vehicles by 2035, many provinces have their own mandates in place.
In British Columbia and Quebec, the policies are even more stringent than Ottawa’s. Quebec, for example, recently announced it would
ban the sale of used gas engines by 2035 as well. International policy also has some impact on Canada, as EU countries and U.S. states bring their own mandates, impacting vehicle supply.
“The direction is clear. We’re moving to electrify transportation,” David Adams, president and CEO of the Global Automakers of Canada, told The Epoch Times. “The die is cast,” he said, but it’s going to be a “bumpy road” ahead.
Although 2035 is more than a decade away, industry has had to work toward the incremental goals set by Ottawa: 20 percent of all new light-duty vehicle sales should be zero-emissions by 2026, and 60 percent by 2030. Most personal vehicles, like cars, SUVs, and light pickup trucks, fall into the
light-duty vehicle category.
The availability of charging infrastructure and affordability are two main concerns auto industry leaders are hearing from consumers, Mr. Adams said.
Here’s a look at the current state of each, along with the readiness of Canada’s electrical grid and other considerations on the road ahead.
Other concerns around EVs include battery waste, child labour in the supply chain, and Chinese oversupply in the market.
Charging Infrastructure Availability, Cost
“To win consumers in the mass market, you have to make it extremely convenient for them,“ said Brian Kingston, head of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, at a June 25 press conference on Parliament Hill. He and other industry leaders gave an update on the ”countdown to 2035.”The number of charging stations across Canada has increased about 45 percent annually over the past decade, and 72 percent last year, said Natural Resources Canada in an email to The Epoch Times.
Canada currently has about 29,000 EV charging ports located at about 11,600 stations, with most of them in Ontario and Quebec. Canada may need about 40,000 additional ports built each year, up to a total of 447,000 by 2035, according to a report commissioned by Natural Resources Canada and published in February. By 2027, Ottawa plans to have 85,000 publicly funded chargers available, Environment Canada told The Epoch Times in an email.
Private investment is also pumping into charging infrastructure. Tim Reuss, head of the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association, said at the press conference that his members are investing more than $1.5 billion combined to build charging ports, as well as train staff and retool their shops for EVs.
Most of the ports currently available in Canada are level 2 chargers, which provide a range of about 35 kilometres per hour of charging. It’s not like making a quick stop at the gas station—level 2 charging is often called “destination” charging, as you may top up your charge while parked for an outing.
For example, Haute Goat farm and restaurant near Port Hope, Ont., hosts level 2 ports. It’s the kind of place you might spend a couple of hours while your car is plugged in. This can be a boon to businesses such as this one, which lies outside the main clusters of charging stations in southern Ontario.
The business paid for the chargers using a federal tourism recovery grant, said owner Debbie Nightingale in an email. She charges about 15 to 20 cars per week at the farm.
Ivy, a charging network company that runs many of the sites in northern Ontario, says a level 2 charger costs up to $2.50 per hour to use, amounting to about $2.50 for 35 kilometres worth of charging. A gas-powered vehicle with average fuel efficiency would cost about $5 for the same distance, at a price of $1.60 per litre. Of course, it’s not just fuel price that consumers look at, but also the cost of the vehicle and its maintenance. A University of British Columbia study published in February looked at fuel cost savings, cost of vehicles, and government incentives for buying EVs. The study found that, all those factors considered, the average EV driver does not break even. It’s easiest to break even in Quebec, where subsidies are relatively high and electricity is relatively cheap, the study found. A level 3, or “DC fast” charger, costs about $15–$20 per hour, but can charge from empty to about 80 percent in roughly 30 minutes. Canada-wide there are just under 5,300 of these ports publicly available. The country will need some 40,000 more of them by 2035, according to the federally commissioned February report.How Convenient Is Current Charging Infrastructure?
On a Natural Resources Canada map showing the locations of all current chargers, each represented by a green dot, the southern regions of Canada look fairly well covered in green. And even into the north, chargers are available at regular intervals. But how convenient they are depends on a driver’s needs. A look at a couple of scenarios will help illustrate the current convenience level of charging infrastructure.
The first scenario is a city driver in the Greater Toronto Area. In much of the GTA, you can find a DC fast charger within a 30 kilometre radius.
An electric vehicle has a range of 300–500 kilometres, so assuming you can get a full charge at home, there’s not too much concern about running out of battery in the city. However, many can’t get a full charge at home. People living in downtown Toronto are worried about how they'll get chargers into their condos, Mr. Reuss said.
“Consumers shouldn’t have to worry about that,” he said.
Some developers are putting big money behind charging infrastructure in new builds. For example, Amexon Development Corporation is spending $10 million on 1,500 charging ports at its new Residences at Central Park condominium complex in Toronto, a spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.
Not all downtown residences, however, will have such access to charging. And the concerns about charging infrastructure grow when you get outside Canada’s big cities, Mr. Reuss said.
Cold weather also impacts range. EVs lose about 30 percent of their range in freezing temperatures, according to a study published in January by Recurrent, a Seattle-based tech company focused on EV research. “We have winters with minus 40. We have average driving distances in a lot of provinces that are above 500, 600 kilometres. We need to also solve for those issues,” Mr. Reuss said.
The issue of long distances brings us to our second scenario.
Let’s say you’re taking a road trip along the Trans-Canada Highway through northern Ontario to head out West. You might stop at one of five DC fast stations in Sudbury. The next chance to recharge would be in Espanola, about 70 kilometres away. Espanola has a
Tesla Supercharger; these chargers are faster than other DC fast ports, recharging up to 270 kilometres in 15 minutes, according to the Tesla website.
The next fast charging station is 100 kilometres away, in Blind River. One of the two stations there is also a Supercharger. Another 140 kilometres takes you to Sault Ste. Marie, which has a few fast chargers, a Supercharger among them.
You‘ll have to wait until you hit Wawa, about 220 kilometres away, before finding another charger. There are no level 2 chargers along that stretch either, and not many along the rest of the route except in the same cities you’ll find fast chargers.
From Wawa to Thunder Bay, you'll find a fast charger about every 100 kilometres. So the Trans-Canada is fairly well covered, as long as your model of EV will last that long stretch between the Sault and Wawa.
The
ideal, however, is to have one fast-charger for every 65 kilometres on all highways, says the February report commissioned by Natural Resources Canada.
If you’re taking another route through Northern Ontario, such as the King’s Highway 11, you may have to make destination stops for longer charging times at level 2 chargers. For example, if you stop at the DC fast station in Temiskaming Shores, the next fast charger you'll hit is about 330 kilometres away in Kapuskasing. In between are two level 2 chargers, one at a motel in Cochrane—if you’re ready to spend the night charging.
While private and public money continues to build out the infrastructure, EV sales continue to grow as well, though the pace of that growth is a matter of some concern in the industry.
Ford’s recent reversal is evidence of those concerns, says the Global Automakers of Canada’s Mr. Adams.
Ford shut down its Oakville, Ont., plant this spring to retool for EV production. But it recently announced it would instead
retool to produce gas-powered F-Series Super Duty pickup trucks, which are in high demand.
Nonetheless, it’s keeping its options open. The revamped plant will be ready for “future multi-energy technology,” the company said in a July 18
news release.
The industry is in the tough position of balancing what’s going to sell now, and what is mandated for the future, Mr. Adams said. “If the consumer demand isn’t there or if consumers don’t have the confidence at this point to make the switch, that’s a challenge.”
Canada’s EV Market
About 11 percent of new vehicles registrations in the first quarter of 2024 were zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs),
according to Statistics Canada. In the first quarter of 2023, that number was about 8 percent.
Transport Canada considers battery-electric, plug-in hybrid electric, and fuel cell electric vehicles to be ZEVs, referring to vehicles that have the potential to produce no tailpipe emissions.
The industry leaders speaking at the June 25 press conference on Parliament Hill remained uncertain about how to get a mass of consumers on board, not just the early adopters who are keen on EVs.
Government incentives are one way to promote sales, they said. They noted that even as some provinces increase the stringency of their mandates, they have lowered their incentives for buying the vehicles.
Quebec recently lowered its rebate from about $7,000 to $4,000. This is because people are buying the vehicles at a fast enough pace that the higher incentive is no longer needed, a spokesperson for the province’s environment ministry says.
“Quebec indeed has the most ambitious ZEV standard in the world,” Frédéric Fournier told The Epoch Times via email. He said 43 percent of all EVs in Canada are registered in Quebec.
He said it’s impossible to keep up the high level of subsidization as the industry grows.
“More than 400,000 new vehicles are sold in Quebec each year. You will understand that the cost would be prohibitive if we paid $7,000 for 30% or 40% of these cars,” he said.
A federal rebate of $5,000 still applies nationwide. The provincial rebates vary widely. Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan do not offer any. Manitoba didn’t either until recently; its rebate program, offering $4,000, took effect July 2.
Another major cost associated with EVs is upgrading the electrical grid. Mr. Kingston of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association discussed cost projections.
Adapting the Power Grid
Mr. Kingston cited a 2019
study by the Boston Consulting Group which estimated that utilities will have to spend between US$1,700 and $5,800 per EV for grid upgrades through 2030.
“In Ontario alone, decarbonizing the electricity system will cost between $375 billion and $425 billion,” he said. That is the estimate given by the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) in its December 2022 “Pathways to Decarbonization” report. The IESO says in its 2024 Annual Planning Outlook, that increased electricity demand from EVs, as well as the electrification of home heating and growing energy demand in the agricultural sector, will cause winter demand peaks to reach the same level as summer peaks by 2030. Demand will start outstripping supply by about 2029, IESO said.
The IESO has expressed both hope for addressing this shortfall and concerns that it won’t be possible.
It says an increase in renewable energy, as well as greater energy efficiency measures, could close the gap between supply and demand. But in a March 15 letter to Environment and Climate Change Canada regarding clean electricity regulations, it said it’s hard to plan ahead with the uncertainties of the renewable industry in Ontario.
“The resource shortfall could not be resolved through the addition of incremental non-emitting resources as there was insufficient time to plan, acquire and build the new generation and transmission infrastructure necessary to replace the natural gas generation,” the IESO letter said.
Natural Resources Canada told The Epoch Times that reports it has commissioned indicate it is possible for the grid to keep up. It cited the most
recent of these reports, published in February.
The report says the goal is for most vehicles to be charged overnight, when other energy demands on the grid are lower. It said technological advancements could play a key role in managing the grid load, and that many utilities across Canada have said the mandates are feasible to meet.
The section on “grid impacts assessment” notes many uncertainties, and “attempts to identify a range of possible outcomes” as individual utilities continue planning. Grid upgrades needed to supporting more and more EVs in Canada between 2025 and 2040 are expected to cost about $94 billion. The most expensive scenario reaches almost $300 billion, the report said.
The fragility of Canada’s power grids has been a matter of concern amid extreme weather events. The number of grid alerts in Alberta, for example, has increased in recent years. The Alberta Electric System Operator issued just four provincial alerts between 2017 and 2020. Between 2021 and January 2024, it issued 17.
Additional Concerns
Other concerns around electric vehicles have included methods by which EV battery waste will be handled, child labour in the production chain, and China’s role in the industry.“Chinese producers are quite intentionally generating a global oversupply that undermines EV producers around the world, including here in Canada,” Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said during a June 24 press conference in Vaughan, Ont.
Ottawa is considering imposing tariffs on Chinese EVs.
UNICEF has reported regularly on child labour used for mining EV battery materials, such as cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Federal plans to expand the domestic EV industry, from mining to battery and vehicle manufacturing, have often cited the need to be wary of reliance on foreign producers.
Billions in subsidies from federal and provincial governments, plus private investments, have set such large-scale projects in motion already, and this is part of the reason it’s too late to turn back now, Mr. Adams said.
Regarding what’s ahead, he said, it could be a great opportunity for Canada, but “it’s not going to be easy.”
“A lot of different things have to happen at the same time.”
The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
