Toronto, Ontario – Canada is poised to take the EV industry by storm as a world-leader in the development of emissions-free driving systems—it’s simply a matter of taking smart, fiscally-minded steps to get there, according to a new report from Clean Energy Canada.
Recent retail trends have shown that truck and SUV registrations are on a slow, steady rise in Canada over the past several years, with smaller passenger car registrations plummeting by 17 percent in turn, over the same period of time.
Clean Energy Canada sees this trend as a significant step backwards for both Canada’s auto industry at large and for the wallets of the consumers.
“Canada’s carbon pollution from transportation has increased by nearly 30 percent over the past 20 years,” read a portion of the report, entitled ‘Taking the Wheel’.
Not only do larger vehicles like SUVs produce about 25 percent more carbon emissions than their smaller counterparts, but they are also a more costly investment in the long-run as well, especially when compared to EVs which have the potential to save drivers hundreds every year.
“A Canadian EV driver will save $800 to $2,000 a year in ‘fuel’ costs compared to a gas car driver, depending on which provincial grid they plug into.”
Furthermore, “Switching from a gas car to an electric vehicle today would cut the carbon footprint of your car by 34 percent to 98 percent, depending on where in Canada you live, factoring in both the pollution from a gas car’s tailpipe and from the electricity grid that charges an EV.”
Investments into Canada’s EV sector are expected to contribute to the creation of thousands of jobs over the next decade, according to the report.
“According to modelling by Navius Research and Clean Energy Canada, the GDP of Canada’s clean transportation industry is projected to grow by 28 percent annually over the next decade, creating 14 times the number of jobs in 2030 than in 2020.”
In addition, Canada is a world leader in the production of cobalt, graphite, nickel, copper and aluminum, all essential ingredients to the development of EV technology.
Canadian aluminum producers also boast the smallest carbon footprint of any of their international counterparts.
A point of emphasis in the report was the need for Canada to capitalize on the EV developers we already have in-country, as many OEMs, like Honda, use Canadian labour for assembly, but their models are eventually bound for markets outside of Canada.
At the moment, Canada currently has five domestic developers of fully-electric transit and school buses: New Flyer Industries, Nova Bus, Lion Electric, GreenPower Motor Company, Grande West.
