Host: Norway calls itself the electric vehicle capital of the world. And it didn't get there by accident. It offers incentives and has installed more than 9000 fast chargers across the country. Should this province be doing more, we find out how easy it is to buy and drive an EV in Ontario, and what will happen when more Chinese cars hit the market. Cara Clairman is president and CEO of the non-profit Plug'n Drive. Lindsay Wiginton is the co-lead of Clean Mobility practice at Dunsky Energy and Climate Advisors. Great to have you both in our studio. How are you guys doing?

Doing great. Thank you. Glad to be here.

Host: All right. To kick off our conversation, I want to pull up a chart showing the sales roller coaster that zero emission vehicles have taken in Canada recently. So you can see that sales in some months of 2024 were almost 20% of new cars, but they fell off late in the year after rebates disappeared and amid a weaker economy. But by the end of 2025, a little hope there. EVs accounted for roughly 12.5% of new vehicle sales across Canada. All right, so if EV sales continue to rebound in Canada, which cars will have the biggest demand? Is it the ones that are being made in China or are they the ones being made in the West? Kara.

Well, I think it will be the ones made in the West. People have more familiarity. There's still some fear around the Chinese EVs, although they will they will sell. And once people become more familiar. So I think in future years we'll see more uptake. But probably in the first year or so a little less so. And when we're talking about cars in the West, what type of brands are we? Are we. Thinking, I mean, all the brands are here. I mean, right now the most popular brands tend to be GM vehicles. Hyundai, Kia, Toyota is coming up there. Yeah. We're seeing we're seeing all the brands. All right. Lindsay, how about you? Now we should mention that the Chinese EVs don't qualify for the federal rebates. That may have something to do with that as well. But in terms of a price point, there are estimates that they come quite lower. So where do we where do we think we're going? Are we going Chinese EVs? Are we going vehicles made in the West? Maybe I'll answer leaning on some of the numbers. So in 2024, when we were at that 15% level of sales across the country, there were about 200,000 EVs sold in that year. And about a quarter of those was the 49,000 EVs from China that we were receiving then before those tariffs were applied. So my guess would be that that proportion would look about the same in the coming years.

Host: All right. I'm curious about conversations that I'm having with some of my friends and family about which direction does one go. EVs are usually more expensive than regular vehicles, but that will start to change as we see. Carol, what kinds of questions do potential buyers ask when trying to figure out not just the initial cost, but the lifeline. Right cost?

Well, that's exactly what I was going to say. When you say they cost more, yes, the sticker price is more, but the total cost of ownership is much, much less. And so a lot of the questions we answer is to try to help show people that they'll actually save money driving these cars with or without a rebate. The rebates definitely help, but to be honest, the the business case is there because over time you're going to save. And especially with the high gas prices right now, I mean, if you're paying $2 a litre, I'm paying about $0.27. And that's a huge difference. Give me an example of a vehicle. When we're looking at an EV, gas and gas is one thing not having to pay for that. But how about maintenance and stuff like that for an electric vehicle? Well, maintenance on average is less because an EV has very few moving parts. A gas car has somewhere in the order of 1800 to 2000 moving parts. An EV has many orders of magnitude less, like 20 to 30 moving parts. And so you can just imagine fewer moving parts means less things to break. And a lot of systems just not there. And so your maintenance tends to be much, much lower. And so the overall total cost of ownership is much lower in EV. And in fact, the difference you're going to pay, which is right now around 5000 bucks, if you take into account the rebate, you'll make that back in about two years of driving. Oh, wow.

And when we're talking about cars in the West, what type of brands are we? Are we. Thinking, I mean, all the brands are here. I mean, right now the most popular brands tend to be GM vehicles. Hyundai, Kia, Toyota is coming up there. Yeah. We're seeing we're seeing all the brands. All right. Lindsay, how about you? Now we should mention that the Chinese EVs don't qualify for the federal rebates. That may have something to do with that as well. But in terms of a price point, there are estimates that they come quite lower. So where do we where do we think we're going? Are we going Chinese EVs? Are we going vehicles made in the West? Maybe I'll answer leaning on some of the numbers. So in 2024, when we were at that 15% level of sales across the country, there were about 200,000 EVs sold in that year. And about a quarter of those was the 49,000 EVs from China that we were receiving then before those tariffs were applied. So my guess would be that that proportion would look about the same in the coming years. All right. I'm curious about conversations that I'm having with some of my friends and family about which direction does one go. EVs are usually more expensive than regular vehicles, but that will start to change as we see. Carol, what kinds of questions do potential buyers ask when trying to figure out not just the initial cost, but the lifeline. Right cost? Well, that's exactly what I was going to say. When you say they cost more, yes, the sticker price is more, but the total cost of ownership is much, much less. And so a lot of the questions we answer is to try to help show people that they'll actually save money driving these cars with or without a rebate. The rebates definitely help, but to be honest, the the business case is there because over time you're going to save. And especially with the high gas prices right now, I mean, if you're paying $2 a litre, I'm paying about $0.27. And that's a huge difference. Give me an example of a vehicle. When we're looking at an EV, gas and gas is one thing not having to pay for that. But how about maintenance and stuff like that for an electric vehicle? Well, maintenance on average is less because an EV has very few moving parts. A gas car has somewhere in the order of 1800 to 2000 moving parts. An EV has many orders of magnitude less, like 20 to 30 moving parts. And so you can just imagine fewer moving parts means less things to break. And a lot of systems just not there. And so your maintenance tends to be much, much lower. And so the overall total cost of ownership is much lower in EV. And in fact, the difference you're going to pay, which is right now around 5000 bucks, if you take into account the rebate, you'll make that back in about two years of driving. Oh, wow. Okay, Lindsay, I'm hoping you can connect the dots between the province, a province, because some don't have it, a zero emission mandate versus how accessible EVs are to potential buyers. Sure. Yeah. So the policy that's called a zero emission vehicle mandate is basically a regulation that either the federal government or provincial government can pass that says automakers need to sell a certain proportion of electric vehicles in each year, and they set a target. And typically that target increases over time. And so up until sort of mid last year, we did have one of those in place federally that was paused and recently replaced with a slightly different kind of regulation. But the provinces of B.C. and Quebec have had those Zev mandates in place for several years now. And so because those automakers are required to sell a certain portion of EVs or else they'll pay a penalty, that's where the supply goes. And so consumers in B.C. and Quebec have had a lot more choice over the last 5 or 6 years. And it's not that you have to buy a gas car in those places, but you have a lot more choice if you're going to look at for sure, fully plug in or plug in hybrid options. Ontario has been kind of middle of the pack in terms of supply. You know, we have the advantage of being a big market with a decent amount of purchasing power. So maybe we haven't seen the shortages that some Atlantic provinces have had, but certainly not having that rebate locally has meant less choice for consumers overall. I imagine waiting longer as well. Definitely. What does that mean? Are we waiting? Is it weeks, months, years? It really fluctuates. We my firm has been involved in doing some surveys where we, you know, we call dealerships and we say, I want to buy this kind of car. How long do I have to wait? And we see those numbers kind of jumping up and down. I mean, I hear stories about people waiting on the order of something more like a year or more. You probably hear those stories. Especially during Covid. I mean, the waiting list was for any car was really long. I find it's really brand variable. And so a lot of times when people want to choose an EV, they have to be a little bit flexible because. And so they tend to look at a few different brands. They're not as brand loyal as people typically are with gas cars. I imagine not just brands as well, but even colours and things. Like you. Have to. Have to accept, accept what you can get.

All right. Let's talk about infrastructure here in Ontario. What does the charging network look like, whether it's on the road or in your homes? All right. So so the important thing to remember is if you live in a single family home or a townhouse, really simple to get a charger at home. And that's the way most people prefer to do it. And of course, early adopters, they tended to have more resources. So they tended to be folks who lived in single family homes. And that was like 80% of EV buyers were homeowners. So they just got a plug at home. And so the public infrastructure was less important. Now that we're moving more into the mainstream, there's more and more people who will be relying on the public charging, who might live somewhere where they can't get a charger, a condo or an apartment. I would say as like a very early adopter that the infrastructure is actually quite good. I know that, you know, the news is that it's not that good for those of us who've been driving a long time, it's so much better than it used to be. Is that because you know where to go now? Yes. And also, there's great apps available to see where they are. And so if you live in urban suburban Canada, the infrastructure is actually quite good. Like more than 40,000 chargers across the country. A lot of those are fast chargers. Where it gets dicey is if you're driving rural, remote, remote. And of course, a lot of us are never doing that. But for the folks that are, that's a challenge. And then of course, the multi unit challenge. All right. Lindsay. Well, maybe I'll jump on that segue with the multi-unit challenge. So I think one of the biggest gaps, like Ontario has a public funding program for public charging in general, it's called charge on. There was a second tranche of funding released recently. So that's helping to build out some of that, you know, on the go charging infrastructure. But in a place like Toronto, more than half of people live in a multi-family building. So we definitely need to think about how those folks will have options for charging at home for existing buildings you can retrofit, and that will often take some form of public support to be able to do that. But for new buildings, it's actually quite straightforward to put in place a regulation that says, just add the wiring in the same way that we add wiring for a stove. And nowadays for dryers and washers, nobody questions that. But we are still in many municipalities in Ontario building new condos that don't have wiring to the parking spots. It can be really cost effective to do like something like $1,500 a parking spot, and that person then will have the option to easily install a charger and save 1600, 2000 a month going forward. When they do switch to an EV. And we call that roughing in, you know, they just need to rough it in. And it's cheapest, of course, to do it when the building is being built. And a retrofit can be very expensive because then you're drilling through cement and floors and walls. It's not the chargers that are expensive. It's the civil work that really gets expensive.

All right, Lindsay, how would you rate Ontario's support for zero emission vehicles compared to other provinces? Touch on a little bit. We can obviously look at Quebec and BC, but where do we stand here? I'd put us squarely in the middle of the pack, and that's where we published a scorecard a few years ago. That's sort of where Ontario landed. So some of the strengths working in our favour are we have some options around electricity rates that are really helpful for both charging operators and EV users and fleets. We do have the investment in public charging that I mentioned, some things we don't have. So we don't have an additional provincial rebate like those other two provinces have. And we yeah, do not yet have across the board rules that would require those ruffians that Kerry's speaking about. And in fact, some municipalities have gone so far as to adopt that into their own bylaws. And there's some questions right now about whether the provincial government is going to let that stand in the ways that they're hoping to sort of manage the development system. So that's a big concern, because if people can't charge, they're not going to purchase an EV. What would you like. To see the requirement to rough in for ten years at least. And so all multi-unit buildings that have been built in the last ten years, they're all EV ready, rough and ready. And I mean, to me, if you're going to build a building that's going to be around hopefully for 50 years or more, it just seems nonsensical not to rough in for what we know is coming.

Okay, Lindsay, you mentioned fleet. So I am curious because we are focusing right now on consumer sales, but what can you tell us about fleet sales of electric vehicles, our municipalities and businesses buying them up? They are. And, you know, we've been speaking about what's called light duty vehicles most of this time. So that's like cars, SUVs and light trucks. So there are fleets that use those kinds of light duty vehicles. And there are also fleets that use heavy duty vehicles like trucks and speciality things like bucket trucks. Across the board. We see a lot of adoption of EVs. So my firm supports a number of municipalities, utility fleets, and also corporate fleets who have made that choice. And, you know, as Cara highlighted, we're talking fuel costs, orders of magnitude smaller and maintenance costs about half of what a gas fleet costs. And so the challenge there is just making sure that there's a model on the market that matches the duty cycle and the use case of those commercial vehicles. And that's something that we help fleets do that matching exercise and anticipate when those other models are going to be available.

Okay. Lindsay. Yeah. I mean, just over the last three years in Canada, there's been about 600,000 new EVs sold. So all of those become used EVs at some point. And now with the return of the federal rebate. So for a new EV, you can get up to $5,000. There's going to be more uptake. And those are going to move into the used market as well. My family actually just earlier this year made a purchase on the used market, and we had a lot of options and we were able to get something that was much more affordable than buying new. I think that's where organisations like Cara's are super important. You know, I had friends I could text who know stuff about EVs to make sure I was making a good decision. But not everyone has that. And there are things that are a little bit scary and that, you know, dealerships are not always equipped to answer. And so that's where the kind of education side comes in. As well. Well, thanks. Yeah. I mean. We're there just to answer your questions to help you with test drives to, to help get you over the hump, you know, if you're concerned and it's free and, you know, we're non-biased in terms of brand, we support all the brands and we're not trying to sell you anything. So it's a great way to learn. Well, we'll be in touch then. That's what I'm going to say. Very exciting time for EVs in this province. Lindsay, I want to thank you so much for all of your insight on this. Great. Thanks for having us.