Where does Canada sit on the global EV spectrum?

In Europe, they have no appetite for internal combustion engines. In fact, they don’t even want hybrids. So they’re electrifying and electrifying quickly, said an industry observer.

On the other hand, you have the United States which is very slow in comparison on the electrification adoption front. Though that may speed up as a recent proposal wants to see zero-emission vehicles — hybrids, plug-in hybrids and battery electrics — make up 67 per cent of new vehicle sales by 2032.

Guido Vildozo, senior manager of Americas light vehicles sales forecasting at S&P Global Mobility, called Canada a mix of both these routes.

“When it comes to Canada, we’re a hybrid of these two: Heavily regulated; we have a mandate,” he said during the AIA Canada National Conference. “And if you ask us, ‘Is the regulator joking about the 100 per cent ZEV rate by 2035?’ No, they’re not.”

Additionally, Canada has a goal of 60 per cent EV sales by 20230.

The feedback Vildozo has been getting is that regulators would rather have lower new vehicle sales volume than move on the deadline to have all new vehicles sold in Canada to not have a combustion engine by 2035.

“So they’re not joking,” he emphasized during the session Canadian Outlook and Driving to an Electric Vehicle Future.

However, Canadians are not united on the front. There’s a lot of fragmentation between the provinces. In Alberta, for example, where oil production is the backbone of the economy, electric vehicles don’t provide any benefit to the province as these vehicles don’t take fuel and won’t contribute to a fuel tax. So they’re putting a surcharge on annual registrations for those vehicles, Vildozo reported.

Last year, Saskatchewan introduced an annual $150 fee for electric vehicles to make up for lost gas tax revenues.

“So that’s where it starts to become a little bit like the U.S. where you may have multiple pieces of regulation within the country, and particularly as you start to think about Quebec, as well as British Columbia,” Vildozo said.

British Columbia wants to get to 90 per cent electrification by 2030, while Quebec wants to get to at least 80 per cent, he added.