A recent survey shows not all Canadians are ready to make the switch to an electric vehicle as they have concerns about charging stations, cold weather and battery life.
Because they are >$60,000 toys! The Lightning pickup weighs 3 FUCKING TONS it has a 5.5" box and seats 5 people!?! That’s just a minivan but worse.
If https://www.alphamotorinc.com/wolfrwd actually comes on the market and doesn’t stay speculative vaporware I will buy one without a second thought. It’s small, has a 6 foot bed, weighs under 2 tons and a 400km range (which is WAY more than you need if you charge every night). Not as efficient as a commuter car but still better than any combustion vehicle AND it can carry all the groceries, beer crates and top soil that I need.
A Ford Lightning is one of those trucks that people living in cities and suburbs but who grew up on the edge of suburbs or in the exurbs while being hyperfixated on masculinity and “rural roots” drive. Theres a whole fleet of these things with ICEs. They’re what the dad drives in SUV families.
It’s 100% not what they were talking about but in the early '90s and early '00s there were sporty versions of the F-150 called Lightnings. There were also only about 40,000 made over 8 years vs. close to 1,000,000/year for the regular F-150s.
Honestly, I have a hybrid, and even a lvl 2 charger at home, but I could never consider going full EV where I live, as I need a vehicle that can travel 700km in a single charge at -30°C before they are viable.
Give me a small SUV that can do that, and keep my payments under $300 bi-weekly, and I would switch in a heartbeat.
On a side note - fuck BC Hydro’s exorbitant charging station rates, they are as bad as just using gas in my escape
I definitely agree that I am an outlier, but due to the size of Canada and how many remote towns there are (especially in western Canada, which Ontario and Quebec pretend don’t exist), there are an unfortunately high number of outliers.
Honestly, more than getting everyone on full electric cars that don’t have the range needed to compete convenience-wise, Canada needs to invest in better long distance transit options, be it better (preferably electrified) bus systems, or expanding on our train systems (and stop price gouging the very few passenger trains we have).
I absolutely understand, I’m in a fringe situation myself. I think when we focus too much on the wild cases like yours, we end up skipping over the minor issues that would solve the problem for most of the people who answered “not considering an EV”. We need to make them more affordable to the people who can least afford it (rebates for used cars?), and we need to make it possible for people who rent to reliably charge overnight and/or at work.
Edit: I forgot your solutions about transportation, those are great as well and might add people to the “not considering any next vehicle” category. There will still be people like us though that public transport can’t work for, especially as you said out west where things are a bit spread out outside the big cities.
BC actually has a tax exemption on used EV sales already, it hasn’t helped.
Honestly though, put in a passenger train through all the small towns that goes 100km/h (or more) that runs 3-4x a day and I would go back to only owning a bike I swear (though not really, winters up here suck).
Regardless, a solid, affordable train service would remove my need for a hybrid over a full EV completely.
I own my home and am as happy as I can be at my current job, why would I decide to move 350km away where I would have a rent/mortgage, need to find new work for my spouse and I, and live in a city that literally reeks of sewage constantly?
As for “planning better”, cold snaps can happen at any time from late October to early April around here, and if one happens when I plan to do some shopping for necessities where its 20%+ cheaper? Oh well, at least the roads will be more likely to be clear.
…you are aware that battery efficiency drops drastically in cold weather right?
That doesn’t magically get fixed by preheating the car, the batteries are not well insulated enough to stay at optimal running temperature at -30°C while going 100km/h, even if they have a dedicated heat pump, as heat pumps also lose efficiency below -20°C or so.
Gas engines needing to be plugged in or they don’t start isn’t relevant to why I can’t trust an EV in the winter, it’s the 25% loss of range at -8°C, and not wanting to get a hotel and stay somewhere overnight so that I may have the privilege of spending up to $0.41per minute to charge my car overnight so that I can make it home in winter, vs my current hybrid, where it takes 5 minutes total to stop at a gas station to top up my fuel.
And actually, the Government of Canada states that most consumer heat pumps tend to need supplemental heat around -15°C to -25°C, with only the most expensive “cold weather” variants managing anything colder.
See screenshot as I can’t hyperlink to the exact line in question stating that.
I will admit, looking io charging times, half an hour isn’t so bad, now that BC hydro has put in/activated their level 3 charging stations.
When I purchased my current vehicle, there was not any non-tesla lvl 3 stations available, and even then there was only 1.
That being said, the available lvl 3 stations aren’t near an amenity I would normally stop at, and would add nearly an hour to my current 12 hour round trip.
And again, my biggest problem with full electric vehicles in my situation is the charge time and charger availability, if the chargers available weren’t for any reason, I would be SOL - and charger availability is a lot lower than gas stations even at the best of times
That being said, the available lvl 3 stations aren’t near an amenity I would normally stop at, and would add nearly an hour to my current 12 hour round trip.
Going to become more common than gas stations eventually which as for “next vehicle” is relevant
I didn’t say anything about requiring a subscription. For many manufacturers, including Kia, it’s optional if you want certain features attached to a cellular device the manufacturer is already paying for and harvesting data from regardless of whether or not you subscribe.
We’ve been trying to go EV for 20 years. The first obstacle was lack of workspace to convert our little Japanese mini-truck (apartment dwellers).
The next obstacle was cost. We moved to where we had workspace, but then we couldn’t afford either the conversion or an equivalently price used Leaf. It’s also still a charging desert, with the nearest charger 150 km away and it’s not even on the way to anywhere we go often enough to matter.
Then time became an obstacle. Our current vehicles will likely see us to an age where we have to stop driving. Does it make sense to live several years of our retirement as paupers to pay for a decent used EV? We’ve decided that it doesn’t. For our current driving patterns, getting 100km of winter range would cover 50-70 percent of our driving. 50km of winter range would cut that to 20-30 percent. I keep my eye out for something under CA$10k, but haven’t seen anything yet.
I really hope car sharing like Communauto picks up because that currently fulfills a large part of the needs of a car, and has the advantage of reserved parkings and can be connected to slower charging stations when it’s not in use.
A lot of that comes down to how much you drive it. I did a post a few weeks back that showed a brand new Kia Niro EV could be had for about $200 more per month than a brand new Kia Forte, something like $1000 vs $1200 total cost once you factored in gas for 20,000km a year in driving. The difference would be way more if you only drive 5000km per year, and the difference goes away completely if you drive 30,000km a year.
Yup, bought my electric car because I used to drive 20-30k kms a year. And for a while, it was dirt cheap to drive. Then the pandemic. Now in 4 years, I’ve put less than 15k/year on it.
The problem is that a lot of people can’t afford either Forte or a Niro, and even more can’t afford the up-front cost of the Niro, but might be able to swing a Forte.
And the Forte is the cheapest thing they make; Kia, like most OEMs, killed their subcompact offering (the Rio, in this case) in hopes of driving buyers to more expensive options, like compact crossovers. EVs are the worst, but not the only, part of price-inflation in the automotive sector.
Should we see a repeat of 2008, a lot of OEMs are going to be caught without cost-effective offerings. Good luck moving $80K crossovers in a credit crunch.
If you can’t afford either, then the discussion isn’t really about you. Cost of living is an entirely different issue than ICE vs EV. ICE vehicles WILL cost you more over their lifetime (at least here in BC)
The point of the article is that electric car adoption is stalling, and the reason is because they’re largely unaffordable, and the unaffordability of them and housing is only going to make it worse.
So I’d say the discussion very much is about making transportation accessible.
Not to mention a lot of people can’t afford (or otherwise can’t justify) the expense of a new car in general. We’re just starting to see some of the very early Leafs drop below $10,000, so there is hope, but the range/dollar needs to improve a bit to make sense for most people.
Of all the used EVs you can get, old leafs are probably the riskiest due to their lack of active battery cooling. Lots of problems due to that decision.
Your best bet will be when the LFP based cars start getting older and hit the used market.
My next car will be whatever used car I think will get me through 4 more years. Maybe the one after that will be electric. But until people can walk onto a lot and drive away in an EV, or, especially, find one on Kijiji, then the number of people whose next car is an EV is going to remain low.
The fact that the number of people considering it right now is anywhere near 50% is a big deal.
TBF, I was watching a YouTube video yesterday where he mentionned that there’s actually a decent used EV market now. We bought a used car ˜10 months ago, and EVs were out of the question with autotrader listings in Ontario starting at ˜$40K for any EV in good driving condition. Now you can find some all the way down to ˜$20K.
There are very few used cars for <$7,500 that aren’t “As-Is” or should be labelled as such. I know the used ICE market has also softened a bit, but not that much.
When we were looking, I was considering a beater since our last car was a '05 Civic I bought with 120K km from a used car dealer for $5K (plus snow tires & rims). Before it was totaled, with an extra 180K km and over a decade of wear, it was worth more than that. EV prices are insane, but ALL car prices are insane.
Oh 100%, I’m just saying people struggle to even afford ICE used cars, let alone EV ones, that prices are just insane. 20k is like 5 months of rent for a family.
I just search autotrader for all of Ontario. You can find even cheaper ones below $10K, but they’re old models and probably have very limited range. However, as a second vehicle for around town trips (with daily at home charging), they’d be a pretty good option.
I stated in my first comment that I’d searched in Ontario, so I was just clarifying that my search was province-wide. I found those prices all over the province, so I don’t think it’s “regionally specific.” (unless you were trying to convey regions of Canada?)
I don’t know where you’re from, and couldn’t guess it from a quick search of your comment history.
EDIT: I’m not trying to say, “Toronto is the centre of the universe,” or anything like that. I’m just trying to give context to my statements.
But until people can walk onto a lot and drive away in an EV,
That’s the main reason my current car isn’t an EV.
When my previous car got written off by insurance, I needed a replacement ASAP, and wasn’t in a position to wait 12-48 weeks to order one that I couldn’t even test drive before putting my money down.
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And yes, transit, bla bla… they won’t let me take my toolboxes and ladder on the bus - even if it went where I need to go.
The underlying plot of this article is rather obnoxious. This Smith guy’s 2016 Hyundai hybrid broke and the dealer gave him a $15k quote to fix it, which was then resolved by Hyundai corporate. The headline statement is one small paragraph, and irrelevant to this random story.
To discuss the headline, though, I think it all stems from misinformation more than anything. I have an EV in the charging desert of north east Saskatchewan. It’s a fantastic car and I wouldn’t hesitate to buy one again. Yes, you do have to plan ahead a bit if you’re going longer distances, but the slight inconvenience is well worth the savings in fuel. Winter range can be reduced by around 50% at -30, but again, you plan around that. ICE vehicles don’t perform well at those temperatures either.
Even then, the trips the vast majority of people make are well within typical EV ranges and there are often several charging option wherever the vehicle is parked.
I think they are trying to denote the trend. According to autotrader (the source of the headline claim), it was 68% two years ago and has been dropping by about 10% a year. Pretty sure the Musk factor sucked the wind out of Tesla’s sales, and then there are the stories from the article where people get saddled with a massive 20K repair bill after 8 years of ownership. I’m sure that’s an outlier, but you just don’t get bills that high with a gas car. And as much as the government wants us all using them by 2035, they have done sweet bugger all to build up the massive charging infrastructure required to get people over their range anxiety. That doesn’t instill much confidence in prospective buyers.
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