Matthew Lau: Electric vehicle mandates mean misery all round
News of slowing demand for electric vehicles highlights the hazards of the federal government’s Soviet-style mandate that 100 per cent of new light-duty vehicles sold must be electric or plug-in hybrid by 2035 (with interim targets of 20 per cent by 2026 and 60 per cent by 2030 and steep penalties for dealers missing these targets).
The targets were wild to begin with. As Manhattan Institute senior fellow Mark P. Mills observed, Canadian-style bans on conventional vehicles and mandated switches to electric mean “consumers will need to adopt EVs at a scale and velocity 10 times greater and faster than the introduction of any new model of car in history.”
When the Trudeau government announced its mandate last December, conventional vehicles still accounted for 87 per cent of the market. Today the mandated switch to electric looks even more at odds with actual consumer preferences. According to reports, Tesla will cut its global workforce by more than 10 per cent (more than 14,000 employees) due to slowing electric vehicle demand.
In Canada, a Financial Post headline reads, “‘Tall order to ask the average Canadian’: EVs are twice as hard to sell today.” Not only have Tesla’s quarterly sales declined, but Ford Motor Co. announced in April it will delay electric vehicle production at its Oakville plant by two years, from 2025 to 2027.
According to research from global data and analytics firm J.D. Power, it now takes 55 days to sell an electric vehicle in Canada, up from 22 days in the first quarter of 2023 and longer than the 51 days it takes a gasoline-powered car to sell. This is the result, some analysts suggest, of a lack of desirable models and high consumer prices — and despite federal subsidies to buyers of up to
Read more on financialpost.com
