The soaring value of copper has sparked a series of thefts that threaten the future of EVs
Shortly before midnight on a Friday two weeks ago, a man in a black hoodie and shorts emerged from the trees near a roadside pub in Chelmsford, Essex, brandishing a pair of garden shears.
One by one, he cut the cables attached to four electric car charging stations before disappearing back into the darkness.
Ottawa’s billion-dollar push to build electric vehicle chargers has sputtered, with only a fraction of promised stations built and no proof the project will actually cut emissions, according to a new federal audit.
Blacklock’s Reporter says the Department of Natural Resources admitted its Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program, launched in 2019, is far behind schedule and may not deliver meaningful results even if completed.
Yours truly predicted the EV Charger scam would be the next Green-Scam scandal.
At least the government incentives that distort the market.
The $7,500 federal “incentive” dangled as an inducement to move the EV needle has expired. This means EV sales — if you want to use that word to describe a transaction involving the buyer, the seller, and you, the party who is taxed to “help” facilitate it — are likely to slide even farther below the waterline than they already were. This tends to happen when people are obliged to pay full price for a thing that is only tempting to them when it is heavily discounted — like those half-off dented cans of soup you sometimes see on sale at the supermarket.
Chace Barber remembers when his biggest worry was U.S. tariffs.
The president of Edison Motors, an electric trucking business, set up the company’s first manufacturing and product testing site in January on a sprawling 300-acre property in Golden B.C., once the divisional headquarters for Canadian Pacific Railway. The location was perfect. The timing was not.
A pause.
That’s Prime Minister Mark Carney’s present plan in dealing with his predecessor’s electric vehicle mandate, which would have otherwise kicked in starting in January of next year.
To anyone who thought that the Liberals’ decision to postpone enforcement of their Electric Vehicle (EV) mandate by one year was part of a well-thought-out plan to get that disastrous program back on track, well, every day brings with it news that you were wrong. In fact, the whole project seems to be coming apart at the seams.
(Incognito)
Federal and provincial taxpayers are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the future of electric vehicle production in Canada.
At stake is the future of up to $52.5 billion the federal, Ontario and Quebec governments have earmarked since 2020 to create an EV vehicle and battery supply chain in Canada from scratch — $31.4 billion or 60% coming from the feds, $21.1 billion or 40% from the provinces.
OTTAWA — Canadian automakers are warning they could be on the hook for billions of dollars in credit purchases if Canada’s electric vehicle mandate is enforced as written, and sales don’t ramp up.
Automakers already have deals lined up with companies like Tesla to buy credits to close expected gaps between sales and the targets set by the EV mandate. That could end up costing the industry more than $3 billion by 2030, Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association president Brian Kingston told the House of Commons international trade committee on Thursday.
When your puppy makes a mess on the carpet, you don’t sit around for 60 days consulting. It’s a rapid reaction situation.
Remove the “deposit.” Apply soapy water. Move on and play fetch.
There are parallels between politics and puppies.
Former prime minister Justin Trudeau left a huge mess for Prime Minister Mark Carney to clean up.
Ram has abandoned plans to launch an electric pickup truck, according to a Sept. 12 statement from Stellantis.
“As demand for full-size battery-electric trucks slows in North America, Stellantis is reassessing its product strategy and will discontinue development of a full-size [battery-electric] pickup,” the company said.
In December 2024, the company said it planned on launching its Ram 1500 battery-electric pickup in the first half of 2025.
The man credited with remaking the smartphone industry with Blackberry in the early 2000s says Ottawa’s decision to give tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to foreign companies like Volkswagen to build battery cell manufacturing plants in Canada was a “catastrophically disastrous move.”
Jim Balsillie, the former chair of Research in Motion and more recently the co-founder of the Council of Canadian Innovators, told National Post’s John Ivison that he thinks Canada’s approach to trade and competitiveness is outdated and ignores the fact that in the knowledge economy, prosperity flows from ownership of intellectual property.
Canadian construction and union leaders say they’re frustrated over the continued use of foreign workers for non-specialized tasks at the massive NextStar electric vehicle battery plant project in Windsor, Ont., that’s receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer support.
They also say they’ve been disappointed in the response they’ve received from all levels of government when they’ve raised concerns.
“I personally have sat with many ministers federally, provincially, right to the top. And it’s not a secret,” says Jason Roe, the business manager for Local 700 of the Ironworkers union. “People know that it’s been going on.”
Schools across Quebec have been forced to cancel bus service after the government pulled all of the roughly 1,200 Lion electric buses in the province off the roads.
The provincial government said it took the precautionary measure after a Lion electric school bus caught fire in Montreal earlier this week. Several children and a driver were inside the bus when it caught fire but no one was injured.
As the federal government reviews Canada’s 100 per cent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, industry insiders warn that ditching it entirely would be “an existential threat” to the Canadian automotive industry.
The tariff, which came into place almost a year ago, faces an automatic review, with results due by Oct. 1. Getting rid of it would prompt harsh retaliation from the U.S., and be the death knell for automotive production here, said the head of the association representing Detroit’s Big Three automakers in Canada.
If Canadians were in the driver’s seat, tariffs imposed by Ottawa on Chinese electric vehicles (EV) would have an easier road to the Canadian market.
At least that’s according to a Nanos Research survey with CTV News, which found 62 per cent of respondents either support or somewhat support removing a 100 per cent tax on all Chinese-made EVs, in the hopes that China may remove tariffs against Canadian crops like Canola.
Just what we need.
