This article was written by Marco Chown Oved and was published in the Toronto Star on December 19, 2023.

While carmakers say hitting Canada’s new zero emission vehicle sales mandates is unrealistic, their track record elsewhere shows that electric vehicle sales have surged past legislated targets once they’re brought in.

The federal government is set to reveal regulations that will require automakers to sell a growing proportion of EVs starting at 20 per cent in 2026 and growing to 100 per cent in 2035, the Star reported on the weekend.

Similar regulations have been in place in Quebec, B.C. and California for the past five years. In those cases, auto manufacturers had no trouble meeting the EV sales targets.

In fact, B.C. met its 2025 target five years early.

“Each time automakers say a target is unachievable, they achieve it — ahead of schedule,” said Joanna Kyriazis, director of public affairs at Clean Energy Canada, a B.C.-based think tank.

Each system is designed differently, but they all operate on a similar premise of issuing credits for sales of zero-emission and hybrid vehicles. Credits can be bought and sold to ensure automakers are in compliance with the law as the proportion of EVs ratchets up.

“Quebec and B.C. ZEV (zero emission vehicle) mandate compliance reports show that all automakers have been able to comply with requirements to date and most are often in overcompliance (i.e. they have more credits than they need),” Kyriazis said.

In fact, the federal government’s original EV sales target was 10 per cent in 2025, a level that will likely be surpassed this year, two years ahead of schedule.

EV sales have been growing rapidly around the world, especially in China, the U.S. and the EU. The International Energy Agency (IEA) found global EV sales grew 25 per cent in 2022 and are set to grow 35 per cent this year.

In Canada, nationwide EV sales reached 12 per cent of all new car sales in the third quarter of this year, helped along by jurisdictions that already had sales mandates.

One in five new cars are electric in Quebec. In B.C., EVs make up nearly a quarter of all new car sales, according to Statistics Canada data.

These numbers indicate that actual EV sales will blow past the government sales targets, said Adam Thorn, director of transportation at the Pembina Institute.

“Canada is following the herd here. We know these targets can be achieved. They are being achieved,” Thorn said.

Brian Kingston, president and CEO of Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, pushed back against the imposition of sales mandates, telling the Star the approach of the U.S. federal government is better. There, instead of requiring a proportion of new car sales to be zero emissions, the government sets vehicle emissions standards and ratchets them downward overtime.

Automakers south of the border, however, have been lobbying to weaken those emission regulations, something Daniel Breton, president and CEO of Electric Mobility Canada, said Canadians should know about when listening to the auto industry.

“Some car manufacturers speak from both sides of the mouth, from both sides of the border,” he said.

The emissions standards are layered with other EV policies in the U.S. In addition to California, sixteen states have introduced sales mandates like the ones being introduced in Canada.

Earlier this year, U.S. President Joe Biden announced another suite of incentives to encourage EV uptake, including purchase subsidies, funding for public charging and incentives for heavy-duty vehicles. Canada has similar programs in place, though they are much smaller in scale.

Climate activists point to the EV revolution as an example of a consumer-led climate solution, one that will play a big role in reducing carbon emissions regardless of government intervention.

Extracting, transporting and burning oil to fuel road transportation accounts for almost half of the world’s oil consumption, according to Bloomberg. As the auto fleet electrifies, its share of the overall oil market will drop to about a third of the market in 2040 and a quarter in 2050.

Based on current trends, the rollout of EVs is set to avoid the need for 5 million barrels of oil a day by 2030, according to the IEA. That’s about 5 per cent of world oil production.

The sticker price for EVs, once a deterrent, has been dropping rapidly. The cost of a new EV dropped 22 per cent in the last year, led by aggressive price cuts at Tesla.

Meanwhile, the average price of gas-powered vehicles has shot up by nearly the same amount, hitting $67,800, as Canadians continue to buy larger SUVs, which not only cost more, but have far worse emissions than sedans.

There are now dozens of EV models available for less than the average price of a new car.

“When a person is considering buying a new vehicle, they are clearly looking at the dollars and cents. And there’s some really good research out there that shows in the long term EVs will be cheaper for the consumer,” said Thorn. “There’s less maintenance and obviously the fuel costs are greatly reduced. So the total cost of ownership, if not that initial purchase price, will certainly lead to a more affordable vehicle over time.”

In partnership with Corporate Knights, the Star analyzed how much an average household would save by switching to low-carbon technologies and found an EV would be $2,170 cheaper per year than a gas-powered car.

As a keen observer of the EV industry, Breton said he’s confident that EV sales will far exceed the mandated sales targets.

“It’s a good start,” he said. “But I hope that as we see EV sales go even higher, that the government can crank it up a bit.”