Canada lagging behind other nations in EV adoption: report

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While sales of electric vehicles in Canada have grown by roughly a third in the first half of this year, it seems we may be falling behind other nations on a global scale, suggests new data. According to a report from BloombergNEF tabled at this week’s U.N. climate talks in Egypt, electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids currently comprised roughly one in eight sales of new cars worldwide in the first six months of this year.

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Canada? We’re good for one in 14, apparently. Cumulatively, sales of those two types of vehicles during that timeframe are said to have hit 4.7 million, which is very nearly a three-quarters increase over the same time period last year.

Stats nerds — raises hand — will appreciate knowing Canada accounts for approximately 1.5 per cent of new-vehicle sales worldwide, but was home to less than 1 per cent of EV and PHEV sales through the first six months of this calendar year. Still, our uptake this annum has improved, up from one in 20 in the front half of 2021.

Reasons for this lagging performance? Your author will put on his flame-suit and point the finger squarely at Ontario, our most populous province and one whose administration hollowed out what was once a very robust EV incentive program. Be real — most humans need to initially be coaxed into changing their habits, so allotting a few dollar bills in the provincial budget for early EV adopters will motivate some on-the-fence buyers to take the leap.

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The old Ontario EV incentive program wasn’t perfect – far from it, in fact – but Queen’s Park could take a lesson from Quebec or (gasp!) the Atlantic provinces, which funnel useful amounts of money into EV incentive programs without blowing their budgets to smithereens.

Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids comprised roughly one in eight sales of new cars worldwide in the first six months of this year—Canada? We’re good for one in 14

These programs, of course, layers on top of what Ottawa is bringing to the table. If the Trillium province, which accounts for a lion’s share of vehicle sales in Canada, hadn’t razed its EV incentive program in favour of free license plate stickers and buck-a-beer campaigns, that one-in-14 number might look a lot closer to the global average of one-in-8.

Still, there’s plenty of other blame to go around. Canada’s public charging infrastructure isn’t the greatest, though it should be noted this writer is literally typing these words whilst charging a Hyundai Ioniq5 at a Nova Scotia Power station (see leading photo, above) which is conveniently placed and in perfect working order. Other areas of our nation, such as Quebec, also have a robust and reliable charging network. Again, if southern Ontario was at these levels, it is very likely Canada would have ranked much higher in global accounting firm EY’s annual electric vehicle readiness index, which this year listed our country as 13 out of 14 nations measured.