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The Harsh Realities of Electric Vehicles in Canada

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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 week’s extreme cold temperatures over most of the country taught us anything, it’s that EVs just aren’t 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 truck’s 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 “short trips in the cold with frequent stops and the need to reheat the cabin after a parking pause saps 50% of the range.” 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 Guilbeault’s 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 – 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, Blacklock’s 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 Liberals’ EV mandate is a very, very expensive farce that will likely produce few, if any, environmental benefits.

 

Article Originally Published in the Toronto Sun Here

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Automotive

Major Automaker Exec Flatly Says Liberalsā€™ EV ā€˜Mandatesā€™ Are ā€˜Impossibleā€™ To Meet

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Ireland Owens

Toyota’s North American Chief Operating Officer (COO) Jack Hollis criticized U.S. policies promoting electric vehicle adoption (EV) on Friday, according to Bloomberg.

The Toyota COO said that electric vehicle policies are “de facto mandates” that are not in sync with consumer demand, according to Bloomberg. Hollis also said that EV mandates such as those in California are impossible to meet, according to CNBC.

“The whole EV ecosystem is ahead of the consumer,” Hollis told reporters Friday, “It’s not in alignment with consumers. It’s just not.”

The Biden-Harris administration has introduced various EV-related policies as part of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda, including introducing a tailpipe emissions rule in March that would require about 67% of all light-duty vehicles sold after 2032 to be EVs or hybrids. Biden has been leading a push to build half a million public EV chargers nationwide by 2030, that has so far been met with various slowdowns.

Various American automakers have backpedaled on EV goals despite the current administration funneling billions of dollars in subsidies as part of its EV agenda. The California Air Resources Board’s “Advanced Clean Cars II” regulations require that 35% of 2026 model-year vehicles be zero-emission.

“I have not seen a forecast by anyone … government or private, anywhere that has told us that that number is achievable. At this point, it looks impossible,” Hollis said of the zero-emission regulations. “Demand isn’t there. It’s going to limit a customer’s choice of the vehicles they want.”

Many automakers have experienced issues with EV sales, including used EV models experiencing drastic price cuts due to slackening consumer demand. Ford Motor Company announced in October that it lost an additional $1.2 billion on EVs in the third quarter and announced in September that it would offer free EV chargers and home installations to incentivize customers.

Toyota did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Flickr/Ivan Radic)
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Biden-Harris Adminā€™s EV Coercion Campaign Hasnā€™t Really Gone All That Well

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By David Blackmon

The future direction of federal energy policy related to the transportation sector is a key question that will be determined in one way or another by the outcome of the presidential election. What remains unclear is the extent of change that a Trump presidency would bring.

Given that Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk is a major supporter of former President Donald Trump, it seems unlikely a Trump White House would move to try to end the EV subsidies and tax breaks included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Those provisions, of course, constitute the “carrot” end of the Biden-Harris carrot-and-stick suite of policies designed to promote the expansion of EVs in the U.S. market.

The “stick” side of that approach comes in the form of stricter tailpipe emissions rules and higher fleet auto-mileage requirements imposed on domestic carmakers. While a Harris administration would likely seek to impose even more federal pressure through such command-and-control regulatory measures, a Trump administration would likely be more inclined to ease them.

But doing that is difficult and time-consuming and much would depend on the political will of those Trump appoints to lead the relevant agencies and departments.

Those and other coercive EV-related policies imposed during the Biden-Harris years have been designed to move the U.S. auto industry directionally to meet the administration’s stated goal of having EVs make up a third of the U.S. light duty fleet by 2030. The suite of policies does not constitute a hard mandate per se but is designed to produce a similar pre-conceived outcome.

It is the sort of heavy-handed federal effort to control markets that Trump has spoken out against throughout his first term in office and his pursuit of a second term.

A new report released this week by big energy data and analytics firm Enverus seems likely to influence prospective Trump officials to take a more favorable view of the potential for EVs to grow as a part of the domestic transportation fleet. Perhaps the most surprising bit of news in the study, conducted by Enverus subsidiary Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR), is a projection that EVs are poised to be lower-priced than their equivalent gas-powered models as soon as next year, due to falling battery costs.

“Battery costs have fallen rapidly, with 2024 cell costs dipping below $100/kWh. We predict from [2025] forward EVs will be more affordable than their traditional, internal combustible engine counterparts,” Carson Kearl, analyst at EIR, says in the release. Kearl further says that EIR expects the number of EVs on the road in the US to “exceed 40 million (20%) by 2035 and 80 million (40%) by 2040.”

The falling battery costs have been driven by a collapse in lithium prices. Somewhat ironically, that price collapse has in turn been driven by the failure of EV expansion to meet the unrealistic goal-setting mainly by western governments, including the United States. Those same cause-and-effect dynamics would most likely mean that prices for lithium, batteries and EVs would rise again if the rapid market penetration projected by EIR were to come to fruition.

In the U.S. market, the one and only certainty of all of this is that something is going to have to change, and soon. On Monday, Ford Motor Company reported it lost another $1.2 billion in its Ford Model e EV division in the 3rd quarter, bringing its accumulated loss for the first 9 months of 2024 to $3.7 billion.

Energy analyst and writer Robert Bryce points out in his Substack newsletter that that Model e loss is equivalent to the $3.7 billion profit Ford has reported this year in its Ford Blue division, which makes the company’s light duty internal combustion cars and trucks.

While Tesla is doing fine, with recovering profits and a rising stock price amid the successful launch of its CyberTruck and other new products, other pure-play EV makers in the United States are struggling to survive. Ford’s integrated peers GM and Stellantis have also struggled with the transition to more EV model-heavy fleets.

None of this is sustainable, and a recalibration of policy is in order. Next Tuesday’s election will determine which path the redirection of policy takes.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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