What is the future of electric vehicles in Canada?

The road ahead for EVs?

The other day my neighbour informed me EVs were a “scam”.

Well, certainly EVs in Canada seem to have lost their lustre, at least temporarily. First of all, the federal EV rebates were paused in January 2025 because the money allotted to them had run out. The rebates have not been re-instated since.

The B.C. rebate has also been paused while it is reviewed. Partly as a result of the loss of rebates, in 2025 EV sales as a percentage of total vehicle sales have dropped by almost a half in Canada.

On top of that, there is the removal of all incentives for EV production and purchase in the U.S. by the administration of President Donald Trump, stifling demand in the U.S. With all that and the US tariffs on Canadian-built cars and car parts, the Canadian EV sector has been hit hard.

General Motors announced last week it would end production of its EV delivery van in Ingersoll, Ontario, and Stellantis confirmed it will not start EV production in Brampton, Ontario, as originally planned.

In total, of 13 EV supply chain or battery-related projects in Canada that were identified in a June 2024 report by the Parliamentary Budget Office, more than half have been scrapped, scaled back or delayed, while most of the remainder have not yet moved forward. One of the few exceptions is Nextstar Energy Ltd.’s $5-billion battery cell manufacturing plant in Windsor, Ontario. Construction of the plant finished last month and more than 1,000 people now work in the sprawling gigafactory, where hiring continues and battery production is about to ramp up.

But let’s look at the big picture. (Hint: North America is not the big picture.) The Chinese EV market alone is 50% bigger than the North American market. Every year for the last 10, the EV market world-wide has grown and in 2024, EVs (including plug-in hybrids) accounted for 52% of light duty cars and trucks sold in China.

Projections for 2025 are for EV’s to have a 65% share, and it is expected that in a very few years all vehicles sold in China will be EV’s. According to American auto sector analyst, Michael Dunne, who spends half of his time in southeast Asia, in 2015 China aimed to dominate the market in EVs, batteries, AI and micro-processing chips. Part of the reason for its focus was its enormous expenditure on oil imports ($257 billion in 2024).

According to Dunne, China is 10 years ahead of the rest of the world in EVs and related areas. Its EVs are highly sophisticated and are now increasingly being sold everywhere other than North America. That is because both Canada and the US have 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs.

The average price of a Chinese EV is US$19,000, compared to an American EV at US$52 000.

EV sales as a percentage of total vehicle sales reached 93% in Norway in 2023. That same year, Iceland, Sweden and Finland all surpassed 50% EV sales. According to Clean Energy Canada, there are 21 EVs in Europe that sell for less than CA$40,000, but only one in Canada.

In global terms, China now produces 75% of the world’s EV batteries, 80% of all solar panels and 60% of wind turbines. This year, China has added more solar and wind capacity than the rest of the world combined. Yes, China does burn a lot of coal to generate electricity but that is expected to diminish rapidly in the future, as is its need for oil imports.

In fact, in 2024, for the first time, China’s greenhouse gas emissions began to shrink. In 2025, renewables took over from coal as the world’s greatest source of electricity production.

If EVs with today’s batteries had been invented before internal combustion engine vehicles, no one would have ever considered transitioning in the other direction. The EV drive train has between 20 and 40 moving parts, while an ICE vehicle has closer to 2,000, making EVs more reliable, more durable and with lower maintenance costs. The percentage of the energy used which actually moves the vehicle is around 90% for an EV. For an ICE vehicle, it is between 20% and 30% . The rest is mostly lost as heat. EV battery weight continues to decrease, while driving range (up to 1,000 km now) and charging speed continues to increase. There is no going back, except temporarily in the dysfunctional United States and its satellites.

Meanwhile, CO2 concentrations last year jumped faster than ever to 424 parts per million, compared to 280 before industrialization, and global temperatures continue to increase. The oceans continue to heat up and acidify and forests world-wide are absorbing less and less carbon as their capacities are over-whelmed.

We have little more time to make the transition off fossil fuels. Cars have many downsides both socially and environmentally and the personal choice with the biggest reduction in your carbon footprint is whether or not to stop driving a car.

So, if you cannot do so, get an EV.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.