OTTAWA — An internal government document reveals there was awareness among some officials that Ottawa ending its electric vehicle subsidies in January would lead to an “immediate” hit to EV sales and market uncertainty, as it coincided with the United States’ rollback of its own electrification programs.
OTTAWA — Automakers calling on Ottawa to roll back its electric-vehicle mandate say their case has so far failed to sway Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin, who appears “committed” to keeping it in place.
Rising pressure over the EV issue is part of the central tension facing Prime Minister Mark Carney, which is how much to adjust the Liberals’ climate policies to address concerns coming from industry and premiers, amid a time of economic uncertainty.
Cause for celebration: the failure was not as bad as it could have been.
Orwell was on to something when he examined the mentality of certain kinds of people in a scene in his novel, 1984, wherein the character Parsons — who is described as one of those people who will eagerly swallow the most outrageous absurdity — expresses exultant happiness about Big Brother having increased the chocolate ration. In fact — as the novel’s hero Winston Smith understands perfectly well — the chocolate ration had just recently been reduced.
Maybe Parsons is working for ADC, which is a German roadside assistance company. Kind of like AAA. Anyhow, the company says it tested the battery pack in VW’s ID3 device and found that after 100,000 miles of driving, it only lost just shy of 10 percent of its capacity to hold a charge.
We’ve covered enough of these rather spectacular shipboard fires here that I’d imagine most everyone has a pretty good idea what this is in reference to.
Boats packed to the gills with thousands of vehicles, even if only a small percentage of them aboard are electric, become floating, unquenchable volcanic islands when the lithium batteries in one or more of the EVs overheat or explode, and start burning. Almost invariably, they take the entire ship with them.
Big U.S. EV battery makers are stepping back from the market that got them started and betting on a new set of customers in an entirely different business.
Instead of carmakers, these companies have started making batteries for utilities, wind- and solar-power developers, and massive data centers that train artificial intelligence.
Selling large, stationary batteries for “energy storage systems,” or ESS, used to be a niche market that wasn’t worth much attention, said Jaehong Park, an executive at the battery arm of South Korean conglomerate LG.
“ESS was the ugly duckling for a long time within our organization,” Park said.
Note that none of this activity is occurring in Canada. Our government EV Battery play is running out of juice.
U.S. shipping and navigation services company Matson surprised customers in recent days by announcing new policies that halt all electric vehicle shipments due to the fire risk posed by lithium-ion batteries. This comes after the Morning Midas—a RoRo carrier transporting EVs and hybrids—erupted in flames early last month in the Pacific and subsequently sank.
h/t DS
Raquel Celina Rodriguez watches her step as she walks across the Vega de Tilopozo in Chile’s Atacama salt flats.
It’s a wetland, known for its groundwater springs, but the plain is now dry and cracked with holes she explains were once pools.
“Before, the Vega was all green,” she says. “You couldn’t see the animals through the grass. Now everything is dry.” She gestures to some grazing llamas.
For generations, her family raised sheep here. As the climate changed, and rain stopped falling, less grass made that much harder.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is ignoring warnings from taxpayers and the auto industry.
Yet his government is barrelling ahead with its plan to ban the sale of new gas or diesel cars and trucks.
So long as his boys are getting rich why shut the gravy train down?
Multiple Canadian contractors that have helped build a sprawling, taxpayer-supported electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in southwestern Ontario allege they haven’t been paid for millions of dollars worth of work, court records show.
Lawsuits between companies on complex projects like the NextStar Energy plant in Windsor aren’t abnormal, according to a veteran construction lawyer.
… But Sylvan Canada, one of the firms that has now resorted to legal action, says its experience on the $5-billion project was far from business as usual.
In ten years you won’t be allowed to buy a new, gasoline-powered vehicle in our country. Sorry, but that’s the law.
Except you will be able to buy one. Confused? Can’t blame you. But the fog begins to lift when realizing the federal Liberals are involved in this malarkey. It’s because the Grits have successfully turned today’s legislation into nothing more than tomorrow’s electioneering gimmick.
A producer of electric-vehicle chargers in Canada is pointing to trade tensions and shifting political dynamics in America as a major contributor to its decision to close a manufacturing facility in Shawinigan, Quebec. Flo, founded sixteen years ago in Quebec as AddENÉRGIE, is shuttering one of its three plants, throwing approximately 80 employees out of work. Flo has two other production sites, one in the Grand-Mère area of Quebec, plus another in Auburn Hills near Detroit.
Of course … Canada Infrastructure Bank marks its first EV charging investment with a $220 million commitment to FLO®
It appears we have elected a federal government that is not only eager to support a new oil pipeline in British Columbia, but may end up throwing our electric vehicle ambitions into reverse—if not into the ditch.
This could be hasty and unduly negative, but Prime Minister Mark Carney has so far shown far less interest in the clean technologies of the future than in roads, railways, ports and pipelines for his “major infrastructure” projects.
The most optimistic speculation is that his government will extend deadlines for EV adoption by a few years in response to pressure from the Canadian auto sector. Automakers argue, reasonably, that the Justin Trudeau-era decree—that 20 per cent of new cars sold in Canada must be zero-emissions by 2026—is undoable for a variety of reasons, with one of them being the Trump administration’s sharp turn away from electrification and back to gas-powered behemoths.
Another EV evangelist shorted out of reality.
When a government starts telling you what kind of car to buy, it’s overstepping. That’s exactly what Canada’s electric vehicle (EV) sales mandate is doing. Ottawa has declared that by 2035, all
It might sound like progress on paper. In practice, it’s anything but.
OTTAWA — Canada’s electric vehicle mandate is under fire from Washington — and if it falls, one of the biggest losers could be Elon Musk.
That’s because the mandate, a climate change policy from the Justin Trudeau era, requires carmakers to hit 20 percent EV sales by 2026, or else buy credits from companies that have exceeded the goal. In Canada, that means they have to buy credits from Tesla, because it only sells EVs.
The Eco-Fanatics must be so torn.
Two recent events exemplify the fundamental irrationality that is Canada’s electric vehicle (EV) policy.
First, the Carney government re-committed to Justin Trudeau’s EV transition mandate that by 2035 all (that’s 100%) of new car sales in Canada consist of “zero-emission vehicles” including battery EVs, plug-in hybrid EVs and fuel-cell powered vehicles (which are virtually non-existent in today’s market). This policy has been a foolish idea since inception. The mass of car-buyers in Canada showed little desire to buy them in 2022, when the government announced the plan, and they still don’t want them.
