Honda cancels EV plant just as demand atarts to pick up

It's ironic that Honda is officially putting its $15 billion electric vehicle (EV) and battery plant in Alliston, Ontario on indefinite hold now, just as demand for EVs in Canada (and around the world) is starting to pick up again.

Honda "paused" development last May, at a time when EV demand was indeed reeling. Since then, though, the US war in Iran and the ensuing oil price shock, along with Canada's reinstatement of a $5,000 rebate, has made EVs much more palatable and demand for zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) is recovering, big-time. March 2026's sales of ZEVs in Canada has increased by 75% over the previous year. Whereas EVs made up just 6.6% of new vehicles a year ago, in March 2026 they made up 12.2%, almost double. And gas prices have continued going up and up since March as the US war in Iran continues, so the expectation is that EV demand will continue to rise.

And this is the time that Honda drops its bombshell about cancelling its new investment in the Alliston plant?

A big part of the problem is that the market for EVs in the USA is still soft, and most of the cars that would be made in Ontario would be destined for the US, not Canada. But, even in America, EV demand is picking up, as the Iran war and the blockage in the Strait of Hormuz, drags on with no end in sight.

So, is Honda being short-sighted here? Well, longer-term trends are almost impossible to predict in this rapidly changing world, and Honda is notoriously conservative. It's hard to commit $15 billion without a pretty firm guarantee of future sales demand, I get that. But taking risks and getting ahead of the competition is what corporate capitalism is all about, no?

Should we be concerned about a helium shortage?

We are told that the US/Israel-Iran war, and Iran's closing of the Strait of Hormuz in particular, is causing a worrying global shortage of helium. So, there might not be enough lighter-than-air gas to fill party balloons? We won't be able to make our voices sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks? What's the big deal?

While those might the most common every day uses for helium the man in the street might think of, they are far from the most important. Helium gas is indispensible to the manufacture of computer chips. And computers are what make the world go round these days. 

Helium is the coldest liquid on earth, and it's used as a protective inert atmosphere as tiny semiconductor circuits are etched onto silicon wafers, as well as to flush out the toxic residue after chemical washes. Helium is also used to cool the super-powerful magnets in MRI machines, to prevent air bubbles forming in the production of fibre optic cables, to detect leaks in high pressure vacuum systems in heat exchangers and air conditioners, as a shield gas in arc welding, to prevent nitrogen narcosis in deep-sea diving oxygen supplies, for cleaning out rocket fuel tanks, and any number of other industrial applications.

Industrial helium is a by-product of natural gas processing, but not many countries are geared up to produce it in usable quantities. Qatar produces about a third of the global supply, only the US produces more. Other than those two big guns, the only other producing countries of any note are Russia and Algeria (don't ask!) And it is the Qatar production that is at risk here, using as it does the Strait of Hormuz to get to market.

Why is the helium market dominated by so few countries? Not clear. I read that it is expensive to extract and expensive to store (sure, but that would apply to all countries). It also appears that not all gas fields have a high enough helium levels to make extraction economical, and different gas fields have different concentrations even within a country. Recently, some quite concentrated helium sources have been found in areas WITHOUT gas reservoirs, such as in Tanzania, which is leading to a hunt for other such hydrocarbon-free helium reservoirs.

Besides, you say, isn't helium all around us in the air? Well, technically yes, but the concentraction of helium in the earth's atmosphere is of the order of 5 parts per million (0.0005%), so it's definitely not practical to extract it from the air. Universe-wide, it is much more common - in fact, it's the second most abundant element after hydrogen, comprising around 23% of the mass of the universe - but it is almost all found within stars. Not easy to mine.

Back here on earth, the price of helium has soared since the war began. The helium shortage will increasingly force semiconductor production cuts and will have supplements effects from electronics (computers, phones) to automotive production (particularly electric vehicles). It might sound like a relatively unimportant victim of Trump's war in Iran and the least of our worries, but helium actually packs a big punch in global industry. Helium is indeed a big deal.

Carney explains why he still considers himself a climate change leader

Apparently, Mark Carney still sees himself and Canada as a leader on climate change.

In an interview just a couple of days ago, one reporter put it to him starkly: "Along with cutting the EV mandate, you've cut the consumer carbon tax, weakened a commitment to the oil and gas emissions cap, you're exempting Alberta from clean-up energy regulations, and abandoned a promise to plant two billion trees. Do you still consider yourself a leader on climate change?" 

Yow, pretty damning stuff! How did Carney respond? "Absolutely, I consider Canada a leader on climate change, and I'm focussing on climate change results and solutions". Wow. I can feel the cognitive dissonance creeping over me as I write.

To his credit, Carney went on to enumerate what he sees as his justification for his claims, namely: tax relief and support for the entire EV production chain, incentives for consumers to adopt EVs, tightening (two-fold, he says) Canada's greenhouse gas emissions while giving the auto industry flexibility as to how they achieve that, and a plan (to be announced) to double the capacity of Canada's clean electricity system. He also said that the liquid natural gas (LNG) coming out of British Columbia, which he has been encouraging and facilitating, is among the cleanest LNG in the world (for what that's worth), and it is also being twinned with carbon capture and storage technology (albeit largely unproven and unbuilt).

So, credit where credit is due, the guy talks a good game. But let's not be fooled, what he is proposing and talking up is really not as effective or direct a solution to climate change as the various policies he has just abandoned (and even those were not sufficient). I have a lot of respect for Mr. Carney, and I believe he is doing a reasonably good job in most respects under very trying circumstances. But on the environment and climate change, he is absolutely guilty of pulling the wool over our eyes. (If you want to see what you actually need to do to make EVs a mainstream option, look no further than Norway.)

UPDATE

This also comes as the Canadian Climate Institute warns that the country is not in track to meet any of its climate change and carbon emission goals - not the 2026 interim target, not the 2030 Paris Agreement commitment, not even the long-term 2050 zero-emission goal. The reason? "A slackening of policy effort over the last year, marked by the removal or weakening of climate policies across the country". A year, let's be clear, when Mark Carney was in control.

Hard data seems surprisingly hard to find. As of 2023 (the latest data available, for some reason, and long before Carney was involved), Canada had only achieved a 9% reduction in emissions from 2005 levels, while moat other G7 nations had achieved reductions of around 30%. Even the USA managed 17%, although that was before Trump took the reins, to be fair.

Dropping Canada's EV mandate illustrates the failings of our auto sector

The way I see it, Canada's decision to drop its electric vehicle (EV) mandate, widely expected to be announced in the next day or two, in favour of a new, less-aggressive system of fuel efficiency standards and credits, represents a failure on the part of the Canadian auto industry - at the production, wholesale and retail levels - as well as, to some extent, the Canadian public.

It's not that the Trudeau-era climate change policies were inherently bad ones, as Pierre Poilievre and the CEOs of multiple automotive companies would have us think. Mark Carney would have supported them wholeheartedly at one time - he was a very vocal apologist of carbon taxes at one time. But Carney is pragmatic to a fault, and not fond of grand gestures and statements of principle (in the way that Trudeau was very fond of them, to a fault).

But our automotive industry just did not put much effort into actively pursuing the EV policy. It just sat back and hoped it would happen of its own accord. And, while some members of the public (like me!) did the right thing - i.e. go electric - for its own sake, most others also sat back and waited for everybody else to do the right thing, which is never going to work. Then, when the Trudeau government started sending mixed messages on its environmental commitments, and when EV rebates were withdrawn, the driving public just threw up its hands and said, "well, what can we do?"

Carney, once a staunch environmentalist, has gradually dismantled (or at least scaled back) most of the progressive environmental initiatives of the previous administration. Scrapping the EV mandate is just another such, although one welcomed by the lazy domestic auto sector. Relying on tailpipe standards would be a return to the pre-EV mandate, pre-carbon tax status quo, which, you might remember, was not particularly effective in reducing our carbon emissions. There is talk of bringing back some EV rebates, but we must wait to see what that entails, just as we need to wait to see how stringent the tailpipe emission regulations will be. (We don't have a progressive US model to follow this time.)

Frankly, I'm not holding my breath.

UPDATE

The new Liberal EV policy, as expected, has scrapped a firm EV sales mandate, although it did restate non-enforceable (and still rather improbable) "goals" of 75% EVs by 2035 and 90% by 2040. This is still much more modest than the Trudeau-era goal of 100% by 2035.

To that end, the announcement details a return of incentive rebates of $5,000 for full battery EVs and $2,500 for plug-in hybrid EVs, although even that modest rebate is set to reduce each year until it reaches $2,000 for full EVs and $1,000 for PHEVs by 2030. The rebates also only apply to EVs with a sales value below $50,000, unless it is a model that is made in Canada (which I guess is fair enough), and then only for imports from a country with which Canada has a free-trade agreement, which disqualifies those 49,000 Chinese EVs a year that Canada recently agreed to. So, pretty carefully-worded.

The package also includes $1.5 billion towards improving the country's EV fast-charging network, given that range anxiety is still perceived as a major barrier to consumers looking to switch to an electric vehicle.

It also installs new supports for Canadian auto workers as the EV transition ramps up, including a "work-sharing grant" and a "workforce alliance", as well as committing $3 billion from the existing Strategic Response Fund and $100 million from the Regional Tariff Response Initiative to help accelerate investment in Canada's auto sector.

Interestingly, the main thrust of the new rules was supposed to be the implementation of more stringent tailpipe carbon emissions standards for Canadian vehicles, but we didn't get to find out about those - they will supposedly be outlined later this year, and will apply to model years 2027 to 2032. So, in a way, the bad news (for many people, and certainly for vehicle manufacturers) has been postponed, presumably lest it rain on Mr. Carney's EV parade. We are told it is supposed to "ultimately lead to emission reductions equivalent to 75% of all 2035 automobile sales falling into the EV category". Except, I'm not really sure what on earth that means (I'm not even sure the grammar is right!)

The auto sector has been generally welcoming of the new policy, although - shock horror! - the opposition Conservatives appear to disagree with pretty much everything in it.

Canada's EV deal with China is either the rock or the hard place

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, as is his wont, is portraying the deal negotiated by Prime Minister Mark Carney with China as disastrous for Ontario, Canada, and the universe as a whole.

Along with various union leaders in the automotive industry, Ford has been broadcasting histrionic warnings about Mr Carney's deal to anyone who will listen. The agreement allows the first 49,000 cheap Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) each year into Canada at a much reduced 6.1% tarriff (down from 100%), in return for much reduced Chinese tariffs on our exports of canola (15%, down from 84%), and the removal of other tariffs on Chinese imports of our canola meal, lobsters, crabs and peas.

Many analysts see this as a good deal for Canada - as good a deal as we are ever likely to get with an economic behemoth like China - and politicians in the Prairies (where the canola comes from) and in BC and the Maritimes (where the seafood comes from) see it as very good. Many Canadian car dealers too welcome the move, as do many consumer groups who see a chance for Canadians to get high quality electric vehicles at an affordable price. 

But Ford is fixated on the automotive implications, and specifically the Ontario automotive implications, of the deal, which he sees as all bad. He didn't mince words or hold back in his criticism of the Prime Minister and other premiers, even if his political and economic analysis was predictably naïve. Captain Canada is not big on nuance. He also accuses Mr. Carney of fomenting division between the provinces, something that he himself is guilty of on this and many other occasions.

But does he have a point? Is this "a self-inflicted wound", as one union leader put it? Does it give China "a foot in the door" of our automotive sector, and is that necessarily such a bad thing? Or is this just bull-in-a-china-shop Ford going off half-cocked as per usual?

49,000 EVs is not that many compared to the 264,000 EV (including plug-in hybrid electrics) already being sold in Canada. Compared to the 2 million or so total vehicle sales, it is peanuts (about 2½%). So, it's not really going to have an appreciable overall effect on Canada's car production in the short term, and nothing like the impact of American tariffs on cars in the medium to long term. Certainly, out of China's annual EV production, this hardly registers at all. And it hardly consitutes "flooding" the Canadian market, as Ford claims. 

Most of the motor vehicles sold in Canada are imported anyway. Most of them come from the USA (although much fewer than a year or two ago), the rest from Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and yes, China. (We were importing over 9,000 cars a year from China before we applied the 100% tariff at America's behest in late 2024). Only a small percentage - 9-13% - of cars sold in Canada are actually made in Canada. The rest of the cars built in Canada are exported, mainly to the US. Which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

There's also the expectation, baked into the deal, of future Chinese investment in Canadian-built EVs in the future, something Ford himself has been calling for. And it might just rejuvenate flagging EV sales in Canada since the government grant sweeteners were withdrawn, not in itself a bad thing.

But are they safe? Ford suggests not (although without evidence). In fact, several Chinese EVs were among the safest last year, according to the European New Car Assessment Program.

Mr. Ford's other contention is that Chinese EVs would be "spy cars". As he puts it, in his usual man-on-the-street demotic: "I don't trust what the Chinese put in these cars". Pierre Poilievre, the master of the empty sound-bite, calls them "roving surveillance operations". I'm not sure exactly what Ford and Poilievre think they will be able to do, but any Chinese cars imported will have to be authorized and certified by Transport Canada first. Until that happens, imported Chinese-built EVs will probably be limited to brands like Tesla and Polestar, which we already have. Chinese brands like BYD, Geely, Xiaomi, NIO and XPeng will follow later when authorized. (More recently, Ottawa has specifically announced that it will not allow the Chinese EVs to "spy" on Canadians, by ensuring they do not have the capability to transit information back to China.)

While the deal sets a price goal of $35,000 by 2035, it's unlikely that China's ultra-cheap EVs (like BYD's Seagull) will ever come to Canada, because it would be hard to make them fit Canada's safety and reliability requirements. Plus, selling ultra-cheap cars needs large volume to make it work, which the current deal does not allow for.

He also says he is convinced that any Chinese-made cars would not be allowed over the Canada-US border, although it's not clear on what basis he believes that. (Although no Chinese brands are sold in the US, over 100,000 Chinese-built cars from brands like Volvo, Buick, Lincoln and Tesla are imported from China to the US each year.)

Of course, how the Trump administration will react to the Canada-China deal, given that they expect everyone to follow their lead on Chinese tariffs (as we did over a year ago), is anyone's guess. Thus far, Trump himself has been suspiciously positive, saying, "That's what he should be doing ... If you can get a deal with China, you should do that, right?", and referring to the deal as a "good thing", even if his Trade Representative Jamieson Greer called it "problematic for Canada", and Transport Secretary Sean Duffy warned onimously "I think they'll look back at this decision and surely regret it", the kind of veiled threat that the US routinely deals in these days.

The Canadian movento strike a deal with China was apparently shared in advance with the Americans, including Greer, so no-one was taken by surprise.

This being the year we have to review/renegotiate the Canada United States Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), the stakes are particularly high. But given that we can no longer rely on the USA as being a sensible and reliable trade partner, what choice did Canada have but to look elsewhere? I don't relish dealing with China any more than the next guy, but what's a country to do? Least-worst option? Rock and a hard place?

BC wants to be the next Norway

British Columbia says it wants to be like Norway. What it means by that is that it wants to be at the forefront of clean tech, while still pumping out fossil fuels, a fine balancing act indeed.

It's a balancing act that is close to the balancing act that characterizes Mark Carney's vision for Canada as a whole, but it's one that has BC's strong environmental movement in something like panic mode.

BC is pressing ahead with at least ten large new solar and wind projects, almost all of them joint ventures with Indigenous companies, and is building new transmission lines to share this clean energy with the province's resource-rich northlands.

But, at the same time, it is further developing its lucrative liquid natural gas (LNG) resources, with its first export terminal coming online and others in the planning or building phase, as well as a new gas transmission pipeline up to Prince George.

All of these large-scale projects easily fall into the definition of the large "nation-building" and "energy superpower" projects that Prime Minister Carney is trying to encourage with federal money. But the tension between fossil fuel development and sustainability is palpable. The sustainability part seems to be mainly for the domestic market, while the fossil fuels are mainly for export to the likes of Japan and South Korea, which see BC fossil fuels as slightly more sustainable than some of the available alternatives.

It's a fraught and frankly unconvincing argument - the old "transition fuels" justification that the oil and gas industry had been peddling for decades now - reliant on the increasing electrification of gas production (a bizarre juxtaposition in itself) and some stricter regulation around methane leaks.

This ability to hold two conflicting views simultaneously - a textbook definition of cognitive dissonance, with all of the psychological discomfort that involves - is not dissimilar to that of Norway, the undisputed world leader in electric vehicle take-up, with one of the cleanest power grids in the world, but at the same time a major oil and gas exporter. 

Norway, like BC, is unlikely to be able to achieve its ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets due to its continued fossil fuel production (its carbon emissions ARE coming down, although nothing like fast enough to meet its goals). But it manages to be able to keep both ideas in its mind without its metaphorical head bursting. Should we laud its efforts? Uncertain.

A huge supply of critical minerals is right under our feet

A study recently published in the journal Science has quantified for the first time the extent to which current mining operations in America are wasting other valuable minerals. And the amounts are astonishing.

The USA has extensive mining operations for iron, copper, gold, silver, and of course coal. The rock that contains these resources, though, is typically just ignored, wasted, abandoned as mountains of mine tailings. These tailings actually contain significant quantities of other minerals, some of which are almost as valuable as the main product, if not more so. Byproduct recovery could provide a reliable and cheap domestic source of many minerals, including so-called critical and rare earth minerals, that are currently imported from abroad.

For example, the study found that, across 54 active mines, there is enormous recovery potential of 70 critical minerals. In the case of lithium alone, one year of US mine waste could yield enough lithium to power 10 million electric vehicles. Now, EVs are not a major priority of the current administration, but Trump has flagged domestic critical mineral production as a general priority, and has even issued a controversial executive order that would allow critical mineral mining on currently protected federal lands.

At the moment, the US imports most of its lithium from Australia, Chile and China. The study shows that recovering just 4% of the available lithium from existing mining operations would more than offset current imports. It's a similar story with many other critical minerals like cobalt (mainly imported from the Democratic Republic of the Congo), nickel, manganese, germanium, etc.

In its usual chaotic way, the Trump administration has repealed and gutted large parts of Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, which would have prioritized critical mineral production and many of the clean tech industries that rely on them, while at the same time lamenting America's lack of extraction facilities for those same minerals. A solution is staring them right on the face. 

A similar situation almost certainly exists right here in Canada, which also has an extensive mining industry, and which also complains about having to import critical minerals from the likes of China and DRC. Byproduct recovery is the solution.

Why Canada's EV initiative faltered

It makes depressing reading, but we have to face up to the extent to which Canada's electric vehicle (EV) initiative is failing.

While EV sales are booming in much of the world, Canada (and the USA) is lagging badly. EVs now make up about 25% of new passenger vehicle sales worldwide, up from 3% just six years ago. That stat hides figures for some countries that are well in excess of that: Norway 86%, China 53%, UK 36%, EU 28%.

There are many other countries where EV sales make up more than 50%, some of which may be surprising: for example, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands and Iceland (not so surprising), and Nepal and Ethiopia (more surprising).

And Canada? 8% (the tiny little green bar on the right), actually down from 12% a year ago. Provincially, Quebec and BC are still batting above the national average, but even they are down significantly (Quebec down to 15% from 26% a year ago). Even the USA has slightly better figures than Canada, at 9%.

The reason is deliberate (and short-sighted) policy changes over the last year, at both the federal and principal levels. The federal government ended its $5,000 EV rebate program, Quebec ended its $7,000 rebates, benighted Ontario ended its rebate program years ago. Quebec has since brought its rebate back, at a much lower $4,000 level. The feds are talking about maybe bringing back an EV rebate, but don't hold your breath.

Then, the federal carbon tax was ended (telegraphed well in advance) by the "new" Liberal government, and BC also ended its long-standing carbon tax, all of which made gas vehicles more attractive, at the expense of EV sales.

And, arguably the big one, although it's a tricky moral decision to get your head (and heart) around, the decision to slap a 100% tariff on the import of inexpensive (and apparently excellent) Chinese EVs, making them unaffordable for most Canadians. How do you think countries like Ethiopia and Nepal were able to increase their EV share so dramatically? Cheap Chinese imports, of course.

Given all these stacked factors, what did they think was going to happen? EVs down, ICE vehicles up, big time. This was, then, a deliberate decision to throw the environment under the bus - almost literally - mainly, as far as I can tell, to remain in lockstep with a rampant maverick USA with which we have almost nothing in common anyway these days.

And that (rather aspirational) Canadian "EV mandate" of 20% for EVs by 2026? Well, as the next chart shows, we were on track for that until all these set-backs and road-blocks were placed in the way. But now there is no way the goal can be achieved, and the subsequent much higher goals now look laughable.

What a sad state of affairs. And if you thought a new Liberal government was going to suddenly turn things around, well, it's clearly not going to happen any time soon.

Companies pull back from environmental aspirations

Another day, and another outcry that environmental and other regulations must be sacrificed in order to achieve the current categorical imperative: building up the Canadian economy and showing those damned Americans that we don't need them. It's all about 'nation-building" and "fast-tracking" right now.

This one comes from GM Canada, never actually a model of environmental and moral probity, it has to be said. GM Canada President Kristian Aquilina gripes that Canada's electric vehicle (EV) mandate is totally unattainable and therefore should be scrapped. He says that none of his traditional automaker competitors are even close to achieving the targets either, so why should GM try? 

They say that consumers, not government, should be deciding car production policy. Oh, wait, wasn't the government elected by those consumers to make important decisions on their behalf?

The EV targets, brought in back in the heady idealistic days of 2022, call for 20% of new car sales to be battery powered in 2026, rising to 60% by 2030, and 100% by 2035. This, in the interests of, you know, the environment. Where we actually are is that, in 2024, 13.8% of new Canadian vehicle sales were EVs. So, not THAT far off, but still a steep hill to climb.

Sure, these are ambitious targets, but just because something is hard doesn't mean you don't do it, or don't even try to do it. Aquilina blames a lack of infrastructure investments and consumer incentives for the lack of uptake, but that's just him blaming someone - anyone - else. How much effort has he put into achieving the targets?

Demand for EVs, while still increasing in Canada, is increasing slower in recent months, not least because of Trump's anti-EV crusade south of the border, which affects us too for some reason. (On the other hand, EV growth is slowing gravely in the US.)

So, to some extent Aquilina is correct - as things stand, the targets will not be met. But rather than redouble efforts, efforts that have arguably been lacklustre anyway, he chooses to whine, and argue that the targets be withdrawn completely. Aquilina seems to forget that he has some agency too, and that he doesn't have to just sit back and hope that the demand magically appears. 

My feeling is that he (and GM) never really had any intentions of trying to achieve the targets, and was just waiting for a backlash like Trump has engineered to save him from the trouble of even going through the motions. Change is hard, and hard is to be avoided if at all possible.

This is just another environmental initiative that is suffering a perilous set-back in recent months, as the Trump effect takes hold here too. From "postponed" battery plant investments to increased interest and activity in fossil fuel pipelines, LNG plants, etc, there has been a marked pull-back from all things environmental. It pains me to imagine how things might have been right now had Trump lost that election.

On the bright side, Industry Minister Melanie Joly has recently announced that the federal government will bring back the EV incentive program (a $5,000 rebate for EVs and $2,500 for hybrids), but it's hard to see how much effect that will have in a climate [sic] where industry, individuals and governments seem to be looking for any excuses not to make the needed changes.

Don't like Musk? Disguise your Tesla

This is hilarious. You may have been reading about stickers on Tesla cars saying "I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy" and variations thereof. But now there are whole sections of the internet devoted to advice on the best way to remove the Tesla badge and logo from your car.

Even better, there is now a fully-fledged movement to replace the Tesla badges with the badges of other - less controversial and usually non-US-owned - car companies, like Toyota, Honda, BMW.

That's one unpopular guy!

Trump's EV edict makes no sense (and will cost a lot of money)

If you needed yet another example of how illogical and ideology-driven Donald Trump's new presidential term is, you need look no further than his roll-back of electric cars and chargers for federal government workers.

Last week, Trump ordered that 654 EV charging stations at government facilities be immediately removed and decommissioned, and about 25,000 government EVs be summarily sold. This will flood the EV market, so that the EVs will end up being sold at about 25% of their original value, resulting in a $225 million loss (the original $300 million paid for the chargers and electric vehicles is a sunk cost). Decommissioning the chargers could cost a further $50 to 100 million, and an estimated $700 million will need to be invested in new replacement cars. 

That's over a billion dollars of public money wasted on a whim. You could add to that a further 6 billion in savings that the EV fleet would have realized over their working lives compared to a conventional combustion fleet, as estimated by investment consulting firm ICF. How many of the EVs to be sold are Teslas is not clear, but best buddy Elon Musk is probably going to be pissed.

And why? Why would a move like this be worth a billion dollars to Trump? It seems that economics doesn't come into the equation at all, and it is all because Donald Trump - for whatever reason - doesn't like EVs, and is scared of progress of any kind (and particularly environmental progress).

Norway breaks more EV records

I know I keep writing about little Norway, but it is a pretty special place. The latest from Troll Land is that almost 96% of the cars sold in Norway during the month of January 2025 were electric. 8,954 of the 9,343 cars sold were all-electric and, of the 50 most-sold models, only two were non-electric (the first of which came in 33rd place).

So, as places like Canada and the US.(and even Europe to a lesser extent) are seeing a serious retrenchment and backlash against electric vehicles, mainly as a result of Donald Trump's efforts, Norway forges ahead on its own path, doing the right thing and not giving in to commercial pressures and populist rhetoric. They expect to reach 100% electric cars later this year, ten years ahead of the EU, for example, which has a goal of 2035.

And they are doing this not by  banning the sale of internal combustion engines by a certain date like the EU and others, but by continuing to offer generous tax tax breaks on EVs, which make them more than competitive with heavily-taxed gas models.

American EV sales increase while gas car sales decrease

By now, we're well used to the narrative that electric vehicle (EV) sales in the USA have sputtered to an ignominious halt in recent months and years (here's just one example, from a reasonably reputable outfit). Many, if not most, American car manufacturers are cutting back on their EV investments and production schedules, which will probably compound the problem. It's all part of the Republican-led backlash against electric vehicles, green energy and anything vaguely progressive in nature.

Except that it may not actually be true. The latest of Clean Technica's regular reports on the US automobile market show that EV sales continue to increase while ICE (internal combustion engine, i.e. gasoline-powered) cars show a slight downturn.

Quarter 3 (Q3) of 2024 compared to Q3 of 2023 shows that EVs enjoyed a healthy 8% increase in the last year, while ICE vehicles suffered a slight decline (about 1%) over the same period. Compared to Q3 of pre-pandemic 2019, EV sales have increased by a whopping 474%, while ICE cars have actually seen a 15% decline.

Not quite what we are led to believe by the propaganda. Clean Technica is not the only one to point out this discrepancy in media reporting. Yes, EVs are starting from a much smaller base (especially when considering pre-pandemic 2019, when the technology was really still in it's infancy), and yes, the rate of increase is slowing. But let's at least tell it like it is.

The carbon emissions of passenger vehicles

Leafing through a Guide to Responsible Investing magazine, I came across an article by Kelly Hirsch of VanCity Investment Management which made me think. The article is mainly about how green hydrogen can help in decarbonizing transportation, but what really struck me was her brief analysis of the carbon emissions of the transportation sector.

The transportation sector accounts for about 25% of Canada's emissions (cf. 29% in USA, and just 12.9% globally). Of that, road transportation accounts for about 74% (the rest being from marine transport and aviation). And, of that, passenger vehicles (cars, motorcycles, buses) account for 60%, with the rest being from road freight, i.e. trucking.

So, doing the math, passenger vehicle transportation therefore accounts for 25% x 74% x 60% = 11% of total carbon emissions in Canada (and a little bit more in the USA). Now, you could see that as a significant amount, but it is actually much less than I was expecting. With all the fuss we make about electric cars and hybrids and gas-guzzlers, that whole sector only accounts for about a tenth of our emissions?

I don't know where Ms. Hirsch obtained her figures, but I have no reason to suspect them. And I love my electric car, but I will probably read news articles about reducing carbon emissions from cars slightly differently henceforth.

The fraught issue of regulation of e-bikes

I've often wondered what are the actual rules around e-bikes. They are ubiquitous in Toronto these days and, given that many of them use roads, bike lanes and sidewalks almost interchangeably, it's hard to know what they are supposed to be doing. Suffice to say, I'm pretty sure they are not following what rules do exist.

A pretty comprehensive article in the Globe tries to tackle the subject and, yes, it's complicated. While provinces and municipalities are keen to encourage e-bikes as a way of addressing traffic problems and climate change, it's hard to do that while also ensuring the safety of pedestrians, regular cyclists, e-bikers and even car-drivers.

There are so many different types of e-bikes available these days that the line between bike, e-bike and motorbike is pretty blurry. And the rules governing them are a patchwork of provincial and municipal laws. And, to make things worse, there is next to no enforcement of the rules anyway.

One distinction is between e-bikes on which the motor plays merely a supporting role and most of the power is provided by pedalling (sometimes referred to as "pedelecs"), and ones where pedalling is optional or entirely unnecessary. Some e-bikes may have pedals that are completely inoperable and just for show, designed to ensure they are classed as bikes and not motorbikes (which have much more onerous regulations and licensing requirements, as well as insurance implications). Some e-bikes may have speed limiters, where the motor cuts out when a certain speed is reached, but most don't.

The laws and bylaws governing e-bikes try to take all this heterogeneity into account, but that ends up making things very complicated. For example, in Toronto, e-bikes that are limited to 32 km/h capability are allowed in paint-only bike lanes (i.e. those that are not physically separated from the road by a curbstones or other barrier) but prohibited in separated ones, the (perfectly reasonable) theory being that passing other cyclists is easier and safer on the paint-only lanes. But do you think anyone is even aware of these arcane bylaws?

Also, e-bikes that require some muscular power (i.e pedalling) are allowed on all bikeways in Toronto, providing they weigh less than 40 kg. Again, you can see the logic here - especially given that some actually weigh in at over 100 kg - but it is completely unenforceable. 

And all e-bikes are technically banned from riding on sidewalks, but is anyone really going to ticket a food courier riding on the sidewalk of a fast, dangerous arterial road which has no bike lane, when that they are merely prioritizing their own safety? Presupposing that anyone is even trying to police them.

British Columbia's rules are even more complex. Its Motor Vehicle Act defines e-bikes according to their power rating, 200 or 250 watts depending on the rider's age, and a speed capacity of less than 32 km/h. If an e-bike exceeds these parameters, then they are technically subject to motor vehicle licensing and other rules like a full-blown motor cycle. How is that going to be enforced?

Electric kick scooters (like a kid's scooter but with a motor, sometimes referred to as "micromobility") are a whole other issue, and a whole other risk factor for pedestrians, drivers and cyclists. These require no physical exertion (apart from balance), but they are nimble, portable .... and fast. Some are rated at 40 km/h or more - I was talking to a guy recently who maintained his scooter did 80km/h! -  although Ontario's laws limit them to 24 km/h on roads. Well, that's not going to happen!

You can't fault provinces and municipalities for trying to regulate e-bikes and micromobility. They are increasingly popular, and are an increasing hazard, and accidents and complaints about them are proliferating. And, of course, they are a good match with jurisdictions' climate change goals and traffic management issues. But to call it the Wild West is putting it mildly.

The author of the article suggests a way forward that tries to balance safety and safety conduct with the encouragement of further growth in e-bikes. First, food delivery couriers need to be specifically regulated (with the onus on the app/company): riders need to be properly trained, bikes should be monitored to ensure they are in good working order and meet all applicable rules, safe charging stations and secure overnight parking facilities should be mandated, etc.

Second, provinces should provide funded cycling education in schools (as already happens in BC) as well as for any adults who want it. Motorists should also have their driver education extended to include dealing with bikes and e-bikes.

Third, governments should standardize their e-bike definitions, and implement a system that allows for easy identification of e-bikes and whether or not they should be covered by licensing laws.

And cities should re-double their efforts to build cycling infrastructure. Toronto, for example, has bike lanes on only 4% of its roads, lagging well behind leaders like Vancouver and Montreal.

All sensible suggestions. But since when did sensible suggestions becomes the basis for government policy?

Does Elon Musk deserve a $56 billion pay package?

Should Elon Musk get a $56 billion pay package? Should we even care? Many people have weighed in on this, from Tesla shareholders to a Delaware judge to regular guys on the street like me.

Tesla shareholders, which comprise thousands of Tesla/Musk fanboys as well as serious institutional investors, originally voted for this unprecedented and record-breaking ten-year pay package for the company's eccentric and divisive CEO back in 2018. This was partly because the company actually did hit enough of the various benchmarks and targets set back in 2018 (Tesla is not performing as well as hoped, particularly of late, but it has been doing some things right). But it was also partly in an attempt to keep the famously mercurial individual's attention on Tesla, and not on his various other pet projects, like social media, space exploration, AI, etc, and even to prevent him from possibly leaving the company.

The pay package went before a Delaware judge (also unprecedented), which ruled in January that Musk had unfairly controlled the company's compensation process, and that Tesla's disclosure of the pay package was inadequate. The judge took the extraordinary step of striking the down the package, calling it "unfathomable" and "deeply flawed".

Now, though, Tesla's shareholders have doubled down and reinstated the pay package, regardless of the legal ruling, although the award is now only worth about $45 billion sincere value of Tesla stocks have fallen substantially in recent months. The proposal is also now officially approved as a board resolution.  Moreover, the meeting voted to move Tesla's incorporation from Delaware to Texas on order to avoid more "woke" legal grief. 

It's not clear where things will go from here. Legal experts are unclear as to whether the shareholders approval will be enough to overturn the Delaware court's decision. As always, chaos and controversy follows Musk around everywhere he goes.

Why Hertz is selling off its electric vehicle fleet

Car rental giant Hertz made a big splash a couple of years ago when it announced it was investing heavily in electric vehicles (EVs), manly Teslas and Polestars. When I travel to the UK (about once a year), I always rent a Polestar these days, and I have had nothing but good experiences. Plus, Hertz still seems to have a special offer going on its EVs, making them among the cheapest rental cars.

Then, earlier this year, Hertz announced out of the blue that it was selling off most of its fleet of EVs, at least in the US, quoting high repair costs and poor resudual values as the main reasons. So much for the moral high-ground it tried to take in its publicity. It seems it's really about the money.

But wait, high repair costs? What gives? Regular maintenance costs for EVS are a fraction of those for ICE cars, but what they are talking about here are repairs to damage caused by renters. A big proportion of their EV customers, apparently, are rideshare drivers (e.g. Uber, Lyft, etc) who have a tendency to drive their cars into the ground and not take very good care of them. Who knew rideshare drivers rented their vehicles? Sounds like an expensive option, no? And, yes, the research shows that repairs of collision damage to Teslas in particular can be a bit more expensive, partly because of all the connected technology, cameras, etc.

But, hold on? Does Hertz not insure its cars? And do they not rake in money from their customers for the various insurance coverages they try to insist drivers pay for? If a customer, even a rideshare driver, bangs up a rented Tesla, do they not have to pay for those repairs (or at least a hefty insurance premium up-front to cover it)? So, why then is Hertz out of pocket?

And low resale costs? Sure, I can see that. Tesla, in particular, has been slashing its prices over the last year to try and address the soft demand for its cars, especially in the USA, so resale values have also taken a hit. But is the best solution to that to sell everything off as soon as possible, especially given the current poor resale prices? Maybe it would have been better to wait and see how things pan out? A large part of that problem seems to be Tesla-specific, rather than EVs in general.

It just seems a very strange policy to me to go all in on something, and then all out after such a short time. Their much-vaunted commitment to the environment has taken a battering over this. I will take advantage of their EV fleet whenever I can (especially given the good prices), but I will know that they are not doing it out of concern for the fate of the earth.

Why consumers are inclined (or not) to buy an EV

An illuminating survey, done by Electric Mobility Canada, and published in September 2023, shows that, if people are only given proper factual information on the potential cost savings, driving range, charging infrastructure, etc, of electric vehicles, they are much more likely to buy one.

Maybe that's obvious, but the difference a bit of education makes is startling. The percentage of people inclined to buy a zero emissions vehicle jumped from 43% to 63% after being presented with a few facts. I don't mean a full-blown marketing campaign; I literally mean the presentation of a few facts about lifetime costs, range, etc, from a reputable source. That's huge.

Other findings in the survey: 88% of current EV owners expect to choose an EV for their next purchase; motivating factors are cost savings (41%), environmental benefits (39%), and the cool advanced technology (32%); 91% were unaware that 40 EV models are now priced below the average new vehicle cost (including available rebates); only 10% believe that an EV's battery will last the lifetime of the car, with most expecting to have to replace it within 7-10 years; and only a small percentage of people can correctly guess the number of public chargers available in Canada, the range of most modern EVs, or the costs of recharging.

All of this is important information for governments and car manufacturers alike, as we reach what marketers call the "early majority stage" (after the "innovators" and "early adopters), and as EV sales start to slow. Both governments and car manufacturers should be working hard to rectify some of the misinformation consumers have been inundated with.

Tesla takes a dive, and Musk is at least partly to blame

The shine is off Tesla these days. Once the golden boy of the fight against climate change and the poster man-child of sustainable capitalism, Elon Musk has gone well and truly off the rails in recent months, and he has dragged Tesla with him. 

Tesla sales and deliveries have faltered recently, and it has started to offer deep discounts as inventory continues to pile up (we are mainly talking about America here). The company's stock price has also headed down the drain in recent months.

Tesla, of course, was the electric car that started it all. It revolutionized the auto industry, and forced other car manufacturers to develop their own electric models. You can't take that away from Tesla and Musk. But as the market for EVs in general starts to sputter somewhat, Tesla is starting to feel the heat from China's BYD and Korea's KIA and Hyundai. It doesn't help that the rollout of the long-awaited Tesla Cybertruck has been, well, spotty and underwhelming, but there is much more going on here.

Part of the problem is Tesla's insistence on completely redesigning the family saloon, with its minimalist interiors and its lack of familiar buttons and switches. The early adopters and techies, who actually like doing everything from a glorified tablet screen, now all have their Teslas, and the hoi polloi are much less gung ho about driving an iPad. (I'm one such - I deliberately gravitated towards a more traditional style interior, and ended up with a Hyundai Kona Electric, not a Tesla, some two years ago.)

The other problem, though, is Musk himself. Once an impish maverick and iconoclast, he has since turned hard right and become something of a running joke. He appears completely disengaged from Tesla's commercial woes, and fresh out of new ideas (once his stock-in-trade). He seems bogged down in his failing social media outlet X (a sorry, disembowelled Twitter), content to make disparaging lame jokes about anything he considers "woke", all while condoning hate speech in the interests of extreme free speech. (Musk was also a consideration when I was looking for an EV two years ago - I really did not want to line the pockets of such an unpleasant, hypocritical, sociopathic billionaire.)

Be that as it may, it remains a fact that Tesla's latest quarterly car deliveries fell for the first time in nearly four years, and the company's share price has taken a substantial hit recently. It's also a fact that some people are definitely blaming Musk personally (and his toxic behaviour in recent months) for Tesla's problems. Predictably, Musk reacts to such criticisms in a suitably toxic and childish manner.

The gloomy environmentalist

When it comes to new technologies, there are two kinds of people: early-adopters and followers. I am not the earliest of adopters, but I am probably somewhere in the first wave. Solar hot water, solar PV panels, induction hob, electric car, heat pump (in that order) - I have the full set now.

Actually, there are probably three kinds of people: early-adopters, followers, and non-adopters. In the field of carbon footprint reduction, I worry that the early-adopters have already done their thing, and that the followers are becoming increasingly skeptical, and many may even be going over to the dark, non-adopter side.

Certainly in Canada, but also worldwide, we seem to be seeing a palpable reaction as people become more cynical about the practicality, and even the wisdom, of living a more sustainable, environmental life. Whether this is due to inept rollouts of new schemes by politicians, the worldwide resurgence of the self-serving, mendacious, populist right-wing, or just the unfortunate timing of a pandemic, a recession, and a general belt-tightening during times of high inflation and a housing crunch, is perhaps a moot point. 

Early-adopters tend to be relatively wealthy individuals, and that low-hanging fruit has been all but gobbled up. Even if the technology gradually becomes cheaper, as tends to happen with any new tech, governments and activists are now faced with the much harder task of persuading the much-less-enthusiastic hoi polloi to take up a new way of doing things. 

Even if greening their lifestyle is actually in people's long-term financial interests (as well as being the "right thing" to do), it still usually requires a larger initial outlay, and that's usually as far as most people look. We are talking about asking individuals with typically less financial acumen and fewer financial reserves to trust us, and put those scarce resources into new projects without a proven track record (at least in mass population terms), and which will not pay them back for many years, even decades.

Add to that the fact that government coffers are not endless, and many financial incentives brought in to encourage the new, more environmentally-sustainable technologies are already being phased out - arguably just at the time when they are most needed - and the outlook for more general take-up of electric cars and electric heat pumps, for example, begins to look increasingly shaky.

And this, mark you, is in the relatively rich, developed, Western countries. The chances of persuading even poorer people in the global South of the wisdom of this path seem slim to none. 

I am convinced that this path is indeed the wise, even necessary, one. But I confess I have no idea how to persuade the rest of the world of this wisdom and necessity. This is how I think in my more gloomy moments. Arguably, this is not my problem, not my job; that is what we have politicians and environmental activists for, isn't it. But that makes me even more gloomy.

Meanwhile, I just keep my head down, do the "right thing" as much as I can, mention the odd thing to people from time to time without proselytising too much, and generally try to lead by example. Sometimes, I feel that's all I can do.