The switch to electric vehicles seems to be more difficult in Canada than in other developed countries, even though more and more people are choosing to go electric than ever before. EV sales in the country went up by 30 percent in the first half of 2022, but according to one report, that is not enough for Canada to keep pace with other areas of the world where the shift is happening quicker.
According to findings published by BloombergNEF, quoted by Automotive News Canda, one in eight new vehicles bought globally between January and June was either a full electric vehicle or a plug-in hybrid, which is up on the same period last year when one out of every eleven vehicles could be plugged in.
For Canada, the proportion is roughly one EV for every fourteen new vehicles bought in the first half of 2022, which is an improvement over a year prior when it was one EV for 20 vehicles. In fact, EV sales have reached a six-month record, with 55,600 EVs sold in the first half of the year, marking a 35 percent increase over the same period in 2021.
The Canadian Automobile Association says there are 80 battery-electric vehicles currently on sale in the country and that their average price is $82,000 CAD. EV buyers do benefit from a $5,000 state rebate, although in order to qualify, a vehicle needs to have a base price no higher than $55,000.
There are also state rebates in Quebec and British Columbia and it shows in better-than-average EV sales here. In fact, in British Columbia one in six new vehicles bought in H1 2022 was electric, noticeably higher than the national average - that’s 13 percent of new cars that are fully-electric. Quebec follows with 11.4 percent, with Ontario coming in a distant third position with 5.5 percent (the state had an EV incentive program, but it was stopped in 2018).
Canada wants 60 percent of all passenger vehicles sold in the country in 2030 to be fully-electric, or around 480,000 units, before only allowing the sale of EVs after 2035. For reference, in the first half of 2022, just under 56,000 of all new vehicles sold in Canada were electric, which marked a 35 percent year-over-year increase.
