Unless policies or technologies change, the ownership cost of electric vehicles (EVs) needs to decrease by 31 per cent if Canada to wants to reach its sales target of 60 per cent EVs by 2030, according to a new report released Thursday by Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux.
Last December, the federal government unveiled its Electric Vehicle Availability Standard that outlined zero-emission vehicle sales targets for automakers. The standard requires all new light-duty sales in Canada to be electric or plug-in hybrid by 2035. There are also interim targets of at least 20 per cent of all sales being EVs by 2026 and 60 per cent by 2030.
Those federal government targets come as growth forecasts for auto companies have plateaued and concerns about charging infrastructure persist. The price of EVs has also pushed the cars out of reach for many consumers. According to the Canadian Black Book, the average cost of an EV was $73,000 in 2023.
If by that you mean “headquartered in Canada and manufacturing in Canada for the Canadian market” then the answer is no, I’m pretty sure the last ones vanished no later than the middle of the 20th century. Some US and other foreign companies do have manufacturing and assembly plants here, but I wouldn’t call them Canadian. (Ford Canada used to be semi-independent and produced some own-model vehicles early on, but they’re nothing more than a subsidiary of the US company now.)