Sales targets meant to ensure automakers ramp up EV production to keep up with demand, says source
Unless the regulations are about forcing automakers to release economy level cars (less than $35K) not just home-theater-on-wheeles models, this isn’t going to change much.
As wages fall farther behind Canada’s insane cost of living no one is going to be able to afford a new EV (or we will end up with 25 year car mortgages). So the financial elite will get their EVs while the rest of us are left to fight for a dwindling supply of used ICEs for which there will be no parts and no manufacture support.
We don’t need EVs we need affordable EVs. Get rid of the fucking home theater in the dash, offer a basic interior with manual windows, locks and seats, make a car that doesn’t cripple you financially.
I’m wondering if that’s what this legislation will do.
It’s focused on ensuring that a target % of all cars a manufacturer sells be electric. And in order to do that, they need to get more people to choose to buy electric.
They can achieve that by raising the prices of their ICE vehicles and selling less overall volume, but the proportion of EVs would be higher. or the seemingly easier option would be to create more cheaper EV options that people are interested in buying.
Plus, making those budget cars would be a little lighter (less motors and electronics), require less precious metals (less electronics), and therefore be more a little more energy effecient as well as cheaper to maintain (less electronics to replace).
Fewer electronics to replace doesn’t matter if we have no right to third party repairs. many EVs are locked down, so they have you over a barrel on replacement part pricing.
There are many models under 35k after incentive, add to that the fuel economy and if you can afford to pay 35k + gas for a car, you can afford 40k after incentive for an electric car, especially if you plan on financing it, saving 2.5k a year in gas for five years, that’s 12.5k saved in total.
Most people can’t afford $35K for a new car.
Fewer and fewer people can afford the lease or finance payments on a new car, period, and fewer people can afford homes where they can charge an EV, while landlords can max out the rent all they like without having to spend on frills like chargers.
Meanwhile, we’re reducing taxes and shovelling grants at the rich to build housing that they won’t build, that’ll require people to buy cars that they can’t afford because we aren’t going to build that new housing in a way that’s suited to public transit–which we aren’t going to build anyway.
The housing/transport/fiscal-policy clusterfuck is fractally shortsighted: it looks shortsighted when you first look at, but it gets more and more shortsighted in new and interesting ways the closer you zoom in.
But people do buy $35k new (and used) cars and after incentives the cheaper EV models are closer to $30k…
Look at the average car price in Canada at the moment, for used cars it’s 35k!
“Most people” aren’t people in their 20s/early 30s that haven’t reached the peak of their career and just started their family.
Hell, if you want an EV I can get you a fully equipped used Leaf for 20k!
People buy those cars they can’t or can barely afford because they have no other choice in the majority of Canadian cities due to car centric design.
They could all buy a Mitsubishi Mirage for under 18k if that was an issue.
I think people underestimate others’ financial means (and what will be their own financial means when they’ll be in their 40s/50s).
In my 20s I could barely afford to keep my car running and was finding it expensive to pay 300$ for my apartment shared with two friends, in my late 30s I can buy a luxury car if I want, my job doesn’t require more than a high-school diploma and I live next to Ottawa.
They could all buy a Mitsubishi Mirage for under 18k if that was an issue.
The Mirage being $18K, and being almost the last subcompact standing, is a symptom of the issue.
Like house prices, car prices went bonkers over the last decade as manufacturers raised the floor chasing margin. At around the start of the last decade, we had the Mirage, Fit, Yaris, Versa, Accent, Rio, Spark, Sonic, Fiesta, City Golf, 500 and Mazda2. Of that group, almost all of them are gone, as are many from the next step up (Focus, Cruze, Caliber, the non-GTI Golf, etc). Interestingly, the platforms aren’t gone, they’ve just been jacked two inches and covered in plastic cladding.
Why? Because cheap credit made it easier to get people into something more expensive.
The average price is indicative of a captive market, rather similar to what we’re seeing in housing, and it’s going to get nastier as OEMs do not want to see 1979 or 2008 again, where they’re forced to make do with lower margins. We’ll see “tax incentives” and lowering of interest rates before then, just like we’re seeing with housing, because we’ve collectively made the decision that people with money must not, ever, lose money–and the more money you have, the more it must be protected–but people without money deserve to be ruthlessly exploited.
But most non luxury manufacturers sell cars under 25k, they mostly sell to young people, as they get older they buy more expensive cars.
You think the regular Golf got discontinued even if it was selling? No. Sales had been going down for a long time now, but look at that, the Jetta is still available, so maybe people just didn’t want the compact hatchback but demand was still high for the compact sedan!
Take the Geo Metro in 95, base model was 10k back then. With 2% yearly inflation that’s… 17 000 today! Will you look at that, same as the available equivalent, which is the Mirage!
I saw used 2013 Honda Fits going for 17k in BC last week. Is that mirage still available??
That’s the MSRP, just go shopping
The fundamental problem is that battery powered EVs, or BEVs, need vast amounts of raw material when manufactured. That basically guarantees that BEVs are never going to be cost effective once you get past small and short-ranged cars. That ensures that BEVs are simply not going to be the main type of cars. They are really ideal for things like e-bikes or golf carts, not larger vehicles like SUVs or commercial vehicles.
In reality, society needs to focus on non-BEV forms of zero emissions transportation. Ideally, that means more mass transit or walkable neighborhoods. But for situations where the car is unavoidable, it is almost certain that we have to find a true replacement for conventional ICE cars. If not e-fuels, then something like hydrogen cars.
The “vast amounts of raw material” used in battery manufacturing are nothing compared to the raw petroleum required to fuel and lubricate an ICE for it’s lifetime. Also the metals used in batteries can be nearly 100% recycled, forever, once an industry gets built up around it. We could do it today but the process as it is, is energy intense (solved by using renewable energy sources). If the rest of the vehicle was designed by non-shitheads it’s possible to have a car that can be economically torn down and recycled in a closed loop like beer cans and bottles.
But no ethically designed car will ever be sold in Canada for the same reason that walkable cities and mass transit will never be prioritized. Crooked, ineffective politicians and a crazy vocal right wing.
That’s actually a dubious claim, given how much fossil fuels are needed in the mining and production of battery related materials. Same is true of battery recycling. It also needs significant amounts of fossil fuels.
But the main point is that the alternatives, such as e-fuels or hydrogen, require nearly zero fossil fuels or problematic raw materials. Even steel can be made from hydrogen-based reduction instead of needing fossil fuels. So it is a massive improvement over BEVs, in a way that BEVs probably can never hope to match.
The ideal solution will always be getting rid of the car entirely. We should always be pushing all alternatives. But we should not be trapped in the “EV now!” mentality for the car itself. It is not really solving any problem except for a minor reduction in oil consumption.
We’ve still got to contend with the horrible environmental effects of tire dust - EV or ICE.
And the urban sprawl from car dependancy, the salting of the roads, stormwater run off from roads, the wasted urban space that is massive surface parking lots, and noise pollution from the tires. EVs solve very few problems related to cars.
That’s really the biggest issue that’s unfortunately not at the forefront. Sure, EVs are much more energy efficient and therefore less polluting in the form of fossil fuel burn, but the way we travel is incredibly inefficient given the available technologies. Our country was literally built on the railroad, yet there is very little reasonable passenger rail alternatives in much of the country.
EVs are much more energy efficient
Isn’t the lifetime difference something like 30% better than ICE? It’s definitely better, but it isn’t significantly better.
Turns out bringing 3000+ pounds of steel with you everywhere you go is ineffecient regardless how it is powered.
I’ve heard cars described as metal overcoats. People slap them on for the slightest reason.
I’ll use my two, similar sized cars as an example (Subaru Outback and Hyundai Ioniq 5). Typical driving gets me around 8 L/100km in the Outback and 20 kWh/100km in the Ioniq. This NRCan site gives a conversion factor of 8.9 kWh/L of gasoline.
So, the Ioniq, at 20 kWh/100km is then about 72% more efficient than the Subaru at its equivalent 71.2 kWh/100km.
Even when considering lifetime emissions, EVs still have roughly 50% less emissions than ICE vehicles.
However, going back to my original point, person vehicles are still incredibly inefficient overall, given the potential alternatives.
Is there any notable development on that front?
Trains? Trains are great - and buses produce a lot less tire dust per passenger.
Building communities that are walkable? I mean, we could try that, but it wouldn’t make rich people richer.
One crisis at a time PLEASE. Affordable EVs first, THEN flying cars.
Trains. Trains are the solution.
The answer has been right in front of us the entire time!
Why… EVs are literally green washing while also being more dangerous because of the added weight. Can’t we wait for a better alternative? I think hydrogen cars are already a better looking option, they fill up quickly and they don’t require a brunch of rare minerals mined by exploited children. Unless they consider hydrogen as EVs which they are…
And even there, replacing ICE cars with EV cars will not change a thing in the long run. we need to ban cars altogether to solve the real environmental problems
Yes a car free society should be the end goal but this will take a lot of time. We literally CANNOT wait for a better alternative, we needed to get rid of gas ten years ago.
Daily reminder that “EVs aren’t a perfect solution yet” argument is what the oil industry is pushing, so they can maximise profits for an other decade at the detriment of all of us.
Or we could just go straight to building functional public transit and walkable neighbourhoods and skip the decades of EV car dependancy.
But that only helps ‘the poors’ how will Ford make any money when they can only sell one bus per 1000 people?
Maybe in the big cities in the East and BC. But out cities are so spread out and undense it would take a lot to change them, and no one has the will to.
The majority of people need to travel within their city for most of their trips. Even small cities/towns should have walkable downtowns and basic public transit.
Saying we “cannot wait” just means we have to move faster with better alternatives. We cannot just settle on a impractical and ultimately doomed idea. The oil industry is the ultimate winner if we are stuck with BEVs. It just means millions of people will have zero options for transportation, eventually leading to a political situation where governments around the world will have allow the continued existence of fossil fuel cars.
There have been advancements in e-fuel, which is basically fuel made from the CO2 in the air. It is almost carbon-neutral (because 100% efficiency does not exist). It is not really close to being a thing because of cost, but even that has gone way down from a few years ago. I am not saying that this should be prioritized, but being able to keep the existing infrastructure would also help keep polution down (not having to rebuild an entire infrastructure from scratch)
BEVs are indeed not a perfect solution because they are simply not one rather they are a workaround. They go bad after 10 years and forces overconsumption and buying a new car when it would still suffice if it had a fuel engine. And they are made with permanent wearable parts so you cannot easily and cheaply replace the battery after its not enough for a small road trip.
fuel made from the CO2 in the air
Like recycling, carbon capture based fuel is an oil industry distraction from the real problem: we are already so far into the red that we can not afford to put ANY more carbon in the air.
Fossil fuels are literally fossil carbon, fuels made from plants that extracted their carbon from the air millions of years ago. Burning them is returning our atmosphere to a state that has not existed since long before any mammals were around, let alone 7 billion that rely on fragile agriculture.
Even if EVs waste 3x the energy of an ICE to manufacture, that doesn’t matter if energy comes from a clean source (nuclear, hydro, wind, solar). Any use of fossil fuels at this point is too much.
That’s the thing, that efuel thing takes the carbon from the air to convert it into usable fuel. It is almost neutral, so no new emissions, this basically stops new emissions from happening. This would put less carbon in the air than forcing car manufacturers to make batteries that use rare minerals and chemicals that pollute as much or more than a regular car, at least for the first few years of life of the EV. But then as the EV gets older, the battery starts to wear out, and soon enough it needs replacing, which means re-polluting that same huge amount for the initial manufacturing.
This graph from Virta shows what I am talking about:
It is true EVs cut émissions after a few years. But the thing is, when you need to replace your battery after 8-10 years, the ecological advantage goes to the bin!
I am not saying EVs are not a bit better than ICE cars. They are, especially in the longer run and with clean electricity (especially if the battery is kept for longer). I am saying they are not the solution. Like at all. We need something truly better not incremental like this
Unless they consider hydrogen as EVs which they are…
They do. It’s EVs, low-emission, and no-emission vehicles.
Can’t we wait for a better alternative?
Given the climate crisis, probably an irresponsible choice.
I don’t think waiting a few years for a better solution that will not involve making children work to mine rare earth materials and that will also not involve having to entirely rebuild the fuel to charging infrastructure.
If you can point me to a single hydrogen-charging station in my area, I would be impressed. As infrequent and underdeveloped as EV chargers are (assuming you aren’t able to get a charger installed in your house), I haven’t heard of a single hydrogen charger anywhere in the GTHA. Hell, I haven’t even heard of a single hydrogen car on market that people are pursuing in any noticeable numbers. Li-battery cars at least have some modicum of infrastructure now where, in certain urban settings, it is entirely possible to drive an EV around, and I know they exist.
And there’s no putting that genie back in the bottle. Reduce the number of cars, sure, I would love to see that happen, but outright banning them? It’ll never happen.
they don’t require a brunch of rare minerals mined by exploited children
ROFL, how many phones PCs, laptops and consumer electronics have you owned and thrown away? “Think of the children” is such a transparently fake argument to dismiss EVs as the ONLY way for consumers to avoid the products of exploitation.
I have never thrown away electronics if they are functional. I either keep them, sell them or give them away if they can have a second life. If they do not work I bring them to those electronic recycling bins
