Price of EVs will eventually match gas models

AUTOS

• A Canadian energy think tank says the world is less than a decade away from the tipping point at which electric cars will cost the same as conventional gas-powered vehicles.

But in a report released Thursday, Clean Energy Canada says this country is lagging on the government polices that elsewhere are helping spur consumers to adopt the new technology despite reservations about everything from price to reliability to the distance they can travel on a single charge.

“The only way we will get to a point where an electric car is an equivalent or cheaper price than a gas car is if we can achieve a certain scale of production and to achieve that production we need to do more to make it easier for consumers to choose electric vehicles,” s aid Dan Woynillowicz, policy director at the think tank.

Canada also doesn’t produce any mass- market electric vehicles, fewer than half of Canadian dealerships of car makers that have electric vehicle models even sell them and supply is so limited here it can take months for a Canadian who wants an electric vehicle to actually drive it off the lot.

The waiting list to get a Chevy Bolt, the most popul ar electric vehicle sold in Canada, is about eight months. While there are 97 electric vehicle models available worldwide, only 27 of them are sold in Canada, and most dealers don’t even have a single model on site so people can test drive it, said Woynillowicz.

Cutting emissions from cars is a big part of Canada’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to meet its international commitments. Road transportation is currently responsible for about one- fifth of all of Canada’s emissions.

Transport Minister Marc Garneau plans to release a national zero- emission vehicle strategy in 2018 to help increase the number of sales. Canada is currently one of only two G7 nations without such a strategy.

In Canada, Quebec, On- tario and British Columbia offer cash rebates for buying electric vehicles; 97 per cent of electric car sales in Canada are in those provinces, compared to about 90 per cent of all new car sales.

Quebec is to l aunch a policy i n 2018 requiring dealers to sell a certain percentage of electric cars.

According to FleetCarma, an Ontario- based tech company helping to enable the adoption of electric vehicles, September was a record-setting month for electric car sales in Canada.

That month’s total EV sales? Just 2,240 cars, out of a total of 186,800 cars sold.

Clean Energy Canada says electric vehicles represent a number of economic opportunities for Canada, i ncluding f or auto parts manufacturers and the mining sector, spurred on by demand for the minerals and metals needed to make the lithium-ion batteries.

If Canada doesn’t jump on board more quickly, the rest of the world is going to snap up those opportunities and we’ll lose out, says the report.

WE NEED TO DO MORE TO MAKE IT EASIER FOR CONSUMERS.