A challenge to motivate drivers to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles

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lmost everyone can agree that our environment is better served if we can continue to replace older, higher polluting vehicles with more fuel-efficient vehicles with fewer or no emissions, including advanced technology gas, electric, hybrid and hydrogenfueled automobiles.

However, a debate is emerging about how best to motivate drivers to make the change from their older vehicles into these new, fuel-efficient or zero emission vehicles – with carrots or sticks.

Some would suggest that the best approach is to create penalties for automobile manufacturers whose sales of electric vehicles don’t meet a certain arbitrary percentage of their overall car and truck sales. While governments ponder such an initiative, critics suggest that placing a penalty of this kind on auto manufacturers only serves to, among other unintended consequences, drive up the cost of all automotive products.

In a province where affordability is a significant issue, adding costs to vehicles without dealing with real issues such as range anxiety, consumer choice and more importantly electrifying infrastructure, must be carefully considered.

Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandates may have been helpful in encouraging vehicle manufacturers to initially develop EV offerings, but as California found out, this form of mandate does little to incent consumer demand and thus their EV penetration per capita today is relatively on par with B.C.’s.

At the other end of the spec- trum are those who believe that better education of consumers and dealer sales people along with financial and other incentives, like HOV lane access for a lone occupant, is a more effective strategy.

Understandably, the transition to EVs has been a gradual one, and still represents a fraction of overall vehicle sales in Canada. There are a number of factors including adequate charging station locations and vehicle driving range that will help to alleviate what is commonly referred to as range anxiety.

For some consumers, record high fuel prices have been a motivating factor to start to seriously consider a new vehicle purchase. For others, the move to cleaner technology is the result of becoming more environmentally conscious, for others still, it’s the increased availability to charging infrastructure or that coveted HOV lane access.

For many, incentive programs have helped steer them in the direction of newer, greener transportation. British Columbians are responding to incentive programs like the BC SCRAP-IT Program and CEVforBC, which provide thousands of dollars in savings on the purchase of an eligible clean energy vehicle.

Through the BC SCRAP-IT Program, more than 43,000 older, polluting vehicles have been removed from our roads since 1994. When the Program was established, it was intended to replace gas vehicles that are up to 60 times more polluting in favour of a newer, much less polluting gas one – and in doing so, take a big bite out of our provincial GHGs as BC has one of the oldest vehicle fleets in the country.

In 2017, the CEVforBCprogram saw almost 1,800 CEVforBC program applications processed for clean energy vehicles – a 20 per cent increase over 2016. More remarkable is the fact that during a twoday period in June of this year, more than 75 applications were submitted– a number that is unprecedented during the history of the program.

Broadly speaking, the road to reducing vehicle emissions through clean energy vehicles is only one path to achieving environmental targets.

Scrapping older, polluting vehicles, ride sharing, public transit and alternative fuels are also part of the larger solution – but so too are new internal combustion vehicle models that are quickly improving in fuel efficiency and technology advancements with each passing year.

We owe it to current and future generations to drive down vehicle emissions and whether we get there with clean energy vehicles or with more fuelefficient gas-powered vehicles is a matter of consumer choice. What’s certain is that technology is providing exciting, new lower emission options for consumers everyday, whether electric or gas powered.

Let’s hope common sense prevails and we continue to use incentives to help consumers take advantage of new lower emission vehicle options.