Crazy subway fire. Instead of governments changing names of parks/colleges or cancelling past leaders, maybe in 2024 instead of woke feel-good projects, they can address e-bikes and scooter safety around batteries and how these wheels can terrorize the roads, paths and sidewalks pic.twitter.com/yDNRJmdgov
— Joe Warmington (@joe_warmington) January 1, 2024
… If Justin Trudeau and his Liberals somehow, God forbid, manage to get themselves re-elected in the next federal election, a number of Chinese brands — BYD and Nio almost assuredly, but also others are surely girding up for the fight — will announce plans to start building a dealer network here in Canada, in advance of a full-scale invasion in 2026. As I stated in “The consequences of Canada’s EV mandate,” the main reason we haven’t yet been flooded with cheap Chinese electrics is because the United States has a 25-per-cent tariff on Chinese cars.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A large cargo ship with a fire in its hold is being kept 2 miles (3.22 kilometers) offshore of an Alaska port as a precaution while efforts are undertaken to extinguish the flames, the U.S. Coast Guard said Saturday.
There were no injuries to the 19 crew members aboard the Genius Star XI, which was carrying a load of lithium-ion batteries across the Pacific Ocean, from Vietnam to San Diego, the guard’s Alaska district said in a release.
h/t Mauser
… “In the case of Ontario, the answer was actually that we we have no intention of doing anything about this.”
When asked for its response, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks did not return a request for comment from CBC News.
Winfield said the fact there is no public policy on the disposal of EV batteries is concerning because a number of the chemicals and components used to make EV batteries, such as cadmium, arsenic and nickel are listed as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) and simply can’t be thrown into a landfill.
A study is revealing some of the challenges that electric vehicles will pose to northern power grids — and it’ll likely be revised now that Canada has a plan for phasing out the sale of gas-powered cars and trucks.
“At no point in our studies did we consider 100 per cent electric vehicle adoption,” said Michael Ross, a researcher at Yukon University who is leading the study.
Ross, an industrial chair in northern energy innovation, said his research is looking at slow to high adoption rates of electric vehicles in Dawson City and parts of Whitehorse and Yellowknife. So far, it’s showing some of the ways residential power grids will be strained if people in those neighbourhoods add Level 2 electric vehicle charging stations to their homes, he said.
“Five years ago we were all optimists and hoping and figuring that where cars could go, airplanes would follow,” Mr. Spragg said in an interview.
But he now believes many of the battery-powered flight efforts to date amount to “green theatre.”
“We can make it work, but it’s going to be limited.”
A Vancouver electric-car owner was shocked to learn earlier this fall that seemingly minor damage to his car’s battery required replacement of the unit and was quoted a $60,000 repair bill — more than the list price for a new car.
The failure of consumers to buy enough electric vehicles (EVs) to hit central planners’ targets is one reason that increasing efforts are being made to “encourage” them to switch over from traditional cars.
There are many reasons that EVs are, once relatively wealthy early adopters have bought theirs (typically making sure that they hang on to a spare traditional car — or two), struggling to find the hoped-for demand, but one of them is that they do not appear to hold their value.
With electric vehicle sales in Canada breaking records every year, the demand is clear, say advocates of EVs.
“There is currently very high interest, and that interest is growing,” said Louise Lévesque, director of policy at Electric Mobility Canada, a national industry association that works to advance electric transportation.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault last week unveiled the federal government’s electric vehicle sales mandate regulations, which include a national target of 100 per cent zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035. In making his announcement, Guilbeault also noted how the Canadian marketplace is already experiencing “a rapid shift toward zero-emission vehicles.”
A government report suggests federal incentives for used electric vehicles could be in the works as Ottawa pushes to phase out gas-powered cars.
Canada’s latest emissions reduction progress report says the federal government will “explore the potential to expand the Incentives for Zero Emission Vehicles (iZEV) program to include used vehicles.” But the three lines in the report don’t offer much detail.
Neither Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez’s office nor the office of Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault would say whether discussions are underway to expand the incentive program.
Right now, roughly one-in-10 new cars driving off the lot are electric or plug-in hybrid. By 2035, the government has declared that number needs to be … all of them.
As far as goals go, you can’t fault the ambition, but is it even feasible?
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And, if there are enough cars to go around, will Canadians be able to charge this massive new convoy of electric vehicles?
It depends on who you ask, but skeptics abound in both the automotive and energy sectors.
While reading this column, I ask you to keep one thought in the back of your minds: The federal Liberals think they should be in charge of content on the Internet because only they can protect Canadian democracy from “disinformation.”
The Canadian government announced earlier this week that capitalism was no longer of any interest to it. Steven Guilbeault, the enlightened Minister of Environment has decreed that by 2035 internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles must be phased out in favour of electric vehicles (EVs). This dirigiste move flies straight in the face of the principles of a market economy that enable the technology required for the energy transition and will no doubt be rife with unforeseen consequences.
The two provinces of Quebec and British Columbia, which have the highest electric vehicle rebates, accounted for 74 percent of sales last year, Department of Transport figures show.
The two provinces accounted for 45,037 of 60,626 electric sales last year, a Transport Department submission to the Senate National Finance Committee shows, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter. Quebec offers rebates of up to $7,000, while B.C. offers $4,000 rebates, both of which are in addition to the $5,000 rebate Ottawa introduced back in 2019.
The federal government has announced that all new vehicles sold in Canada must be electric by 2035, but new data shows that interest in EVs actually declined in 2023.
AutoTrader, Canada’s largest automotive marketplace, released a search data report that shows only 56 per cent of car shoppers who do not own an EV are open to purchasing one for their next vehicle, down from 68 per cent in 2022.
