'Tall order to ask the average Canadian': EVs are twice as hard to sell today

financialpost.com:

As automakers continue to delay their electric-vehicle plans and report lower-than-expected sales, Canada’s goal of ensuring that at least 20 per cent of new vehicles sold by 2026 are electric seems to be in jeopardy.

Ford Motor Co. last week said it was going to delay EV production at its assembly plant in Oakville, Ont., by two years to 2027 from 2025. The additional time will allow the company to take advantage of an emerging battery technology and let the number of consumers grow.

“This decision will help us build a profitably growing business for the long term,” Ford’s chief executive Jim Farley said in a statement on April 4.

Earlier this month, Tesla Inc. reported a decline in quarterly deliveries for the first time in nearly four years. The Elon Musk-led company attributed the fall to logistical issues, but analysts say that slowing demand for EVs also played a role.

General Motors Co.’s chief executive Mary Barra referred to this slowdown as well on an earnings call in January, when she said the slowing pace of EV growth had created some uncertainty. She still expects EV sales in 2024 to improve, but said “if demand conditions change, we’ll take advantage of our manufacturing flexibility … to build more internal combustion engine models and fewer EVs.”

The number of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) has been increasing, according to new vehicle registrations in Canada. In 2023, ZEVs accounted for about 10.8 per cent of all such registrations, according to Statistics Canada, nearly a 50 per cent increase from 2022 and a 114.6 per cent increase compared to 2021.

However, the pace of sales has been cut in half, according to J.D. Power, a global data and analytics firm. In the first quarter of 2023, it took an average