The data found about 68 per cent of car shoppers in 2022 who did not own an EV showed an intent to purchase one, but that dropped to 56 per cent this year.
Because they cost an arm and a dick. I can’t afford a $40k car even if it’s cheaper per km to operate.
Fuck me, I can’t even afford 10k. Regardless of cost per km
Make some dashboards that aren’t a touchscreen cluster fuck
Fucken’ this! Why does every new car have to have a media tablet on it, EV or not? Give me a cheap screen as the backup camera and don’t make me put my fingers on it while driving, and give me potentiometer controls for everything else!
Give me an EV car that makes me feel just a little better than being out in the cold for cheap and I’m sold.
If they made a little EV pickup with a 2 seater cab, 6ft bed, basic backup camera and a 200 mile range for 20k, I’d buy one tomorrow.
This, an electric Ranger is 10x more useful than a crew cab Ram with a 4 foot box, super nova headlights and a 12L V8 un-tuned diesel.
There used to be an Electric Ranger, but the snag was that the range was so low that it was only sold for institutional / commercial campus use – I think it had a 60 mile range, and took overnight to charge.
Oh man, that’s what I want! My commute is 30 miles round trip and it’s shift work so there is at least 10hrs of charging time between commutes.
Pick up a 10 year old Tesla – they’re cheap and they have lots of battery life for short commutes.
There are inexpensive EVs…BYD makes some decent low cost EVs. They’re already in use as taxis in Montreal and IKEA delivery in Vancouver. The consumer versions are apparently coming in Canada… Just not yet. They are avail in Australia already and in Europe too.
FYI, the full-electric IKEA delivery trucks are in Montreal as well.
Ah cool. I haven’t spent much time in Montreal… I stay west coast. I was just aware of the BYD taxis. Poked about online. Seems the BYD trucks are in Ottawa too.
It’s because it’s the easiest way for car manufacturers to harvest and sell your data to third parties.
Fucken’ this! Why does every new car have to have a media tablet on it, EV or not?
Because it’s cheaper. They only have to run one wire, one time, to one device, instead of having a myriad of wires and control boards.
I will never own a gas car again because gas cars are simply inferior technology. I’ve put 170,000km on my EV over the last 5 years, and they’ve been more convenient and less expensive kms than even the cheapest gas cars I’ve owned. The only maintenance has been rotating the tires and the cabinet air filter.
When I wake up in the morning, the car has more mileage charged in it than I’ll use in the day, which includes my 100km+ round trip commute. When I drive it, the instant torque blows by most other vehicles on the road. I live in a rural area, it snows, it freezes, it doesn’t get plowed right away, the car doesnt care. It always starts. I make half a dozen 1000km round trips a year in it, doesn’t matter the weather, sunny or cold. I take 2 kids, my wife and all our gear in it. Did I mention they do sports, we have equipment and bikes and all that stuff.
The darn thing does everything the skeptics say it won’t do and it’s a shame all the misinformation I see, almost daily, about EVs.
What vehicle and can I afford it?
Totally. The inconvenience ( and inconvenient timing ) of having to fuel up is intolerable after being exposed to electric.
My wife drives an EV and I drive a gas guzzler. So jealous. It is going to change the second I can afford it.
I am with you! I first dipped my toe into the EV pool in 2020 when gas was at a modern era low, so EVs weren’t exactly flying off dealer lots. I only drove my ICE to keep the gas from going bad. Ended up selling the ICE and buying a second EV with a bigger battery and longer range. I’ve taken it on four road trips since March, and people don’t know what to think when I tell them I pay less for a full charge than most people do a single gallon of gas.
I think the best way to shift the apprehension is that home charging is the future, and you really only need to worry about infrastructure when you are going out of town. It’s a lot easier to put chargers on lampposts than it is to put gas stations every few miles, but oil lobbyists are making sure everyone is absolutely terrified of electrification.
I don’t have a parking spot at home, but my office installed four car chargers, and there were already 120V sockets in every second parking stall. Unlimited charging is included in the parking fee, and they don’t care if you plug into the 120V socket. I’ve left my car there when I was on vacation, and not a peep from them.
What do you have?
They. Are. Too. Expensive.
Yeah well I don’t want a big ass SUV that costs a whole arm.
I want a reasonably priced Honda E. A Fiat electric. A VW e-Golf.
But most of all, I want better public transportation.
I had a Fiat 124 Spider a couple years ago that I absolutely loved. Bring that mother fucker back as electric and I’m buying day one.
The first 124s are so good looking.
I mean, I do want a somewhat decent sized EV but not one that costs an arm. I mostly want a couple hundred kms of range without it costing an arm. I go on 200-300km trips almost on a weekly basis in the summer.
Also I’m still not sure how they think people will charge their vehicles if they live in apartments and townhomes or basement suites where they park on the street overnight.
Where I live there are many public charging stations. But probably not enough to match the demand if everybody switched to electric cars overnight.
There are new types of solid state batteries coming soon that will allow super fast charging within a few minutes and extended range beyond what current batteries can do. Let’s hope it arrives soon.
probably not enough to match the demand if everybody switched to electric cars overnight.
The same way that McDonalds wouldn’t be able to cope if the Public suddenly discovered Mig Mac Sauce can prevent cancer?
It’s okay to plan capacity a little less aggressively and then come up with demand, and not coping with a bizarre surge is almost okay.
The faster the charger, the more powerful of a charging station you need, and the more expensive they are. No matter how fast your car is capable of charging, it’ll be limited by the charging station so the speed itself won’t change.
On the other hand, solid state batteries are supposed to have quite the increase in charge density so there’s the hope that they can be a lot cheaper since you don’t need as big of a battery.
On the other other hand, isn’t the car market slowing down as a whole? Sales seems to have slowed dramatically these last few years as people are relying on other ways to get around more and more, so rather than replacing cars with EVs, it’s more like cars are just plain disappearing, even it’s only at the rate of partial replacement levels.
Yeah people can’t afford them anymore. They gotta pick between a home or a car.
Probably because fuel is coming back down and they are expensive AF to buy upfront.
Initial cost and lack of charging infrastructure are the two biggest drawbacks for me. The lease on my current car ends in a year, and I’m looking for a viable EV. But most EVs that are bigger than a breadbox and have a 250+ mi. range start around $7-10k beyond my budget.
You should go back and look at how much you’ve put into maintaining that leased car, and make sure to factor in cost of gas versus electricity. Could be $7-$10k over 5 years. Also be real, how often are you driving more than 250 miles in a single trip?
Maintenance has been negligible - $250 a year for oil changes & a couple hundred for replacing damaged tires. I might check into my state’s tax credits to see if that would make up the difference in cost.
The range problem is that I can’t charge at home. I could probably go as low as 140 miles if I’m willing to visit a charging station every weekend. But, the one to three times a year when I do drive somewhere for vacation or to visit family, I’d either have to plan very carefully or rent a car.
Ah yeah, no home charging is basically a deal breaker for EVs because that’s eliminating one of the largest benefits (always having a full tank). Unless your workplace has charging I think you’re better off with a used ICE.
Also that little maintenance sounds to me like you might be breaking the terms of your lease agreement, they usually stipulate that you have to follow the recommended schedule.
Even ‘low’ gas prices can’t compete. If I charge on a street charger from 0%, it costs about $16 for 550km of range. It’s free at the office. I bought mine when free unlimited fast charging was offered. I’ve put nearly 60k kms on the vehicle, and I’ve paid less than $200 for ‘fuel’ over the last 4 years.
They can’t compete in the long term.
In the short term I don’t have 20k sitting around to save 6k a year in fuel.
That’s why there needs to be aggressive rebates and incentives. It’s the only way the market gets built. The dumbest part of this whole thing is how easy it would be to get it right.
- Increase gas taxes quarterly, just a fraction of a percent.
- Gas taxes go towards rebate programs, and to incentiveize manufacturers to manufacture locally.
- Carbon taxes to go public transit - increasing the quantity and quality of service while reducing the end user costs to drive demand.
- The more people who use new and improved public transit rather than buying cars to commute, the closer we get to climeate goals.
- The more people who convert to EVs, the closer the country gets to climate goals.
- Repeat this process so that every year, it gets more and more expensive to operate a vehicle that kills the planet, and it gets cheaper and cheaper to get where you need to be with green tech.
I’m waiting for my ICE car to die. And I’m waiting for those new batteries that handle the cold better.
Preferably a non-tesla. Tesla would have a NAZI in the mouth
Same. I have an 08 sedan with 220K km. I’m not going to pay for a new car so long as my old car is still working reasonably reliably. It’s at the point that I won’t pay for a big repair, so it’s just a matter of time.
That said, if electric cars aren’t available to buy reasonably quickly, then I might not have much of a choice. I’m lucky that I don’t need to drive much for work, but I do need to often enough to need a car.
And fuck Tesla. I’ve heard way too many horror stories about their lack of quality control that I’ll never even look at buying one
The Tesla brand has become distasteful due to the owner’s antics, and no other carmaker builds an EV that’s capable of long range travel due to a lack of quick charge capability and infrastructure.
edit: “the owners” meaning the person who owns the company, ie Elon, not the people who bought the cars. Apostrophe added for clarity.
Well, that, and Musk’s been torpedoing his own reputation by opening that mouth of his more and more these last few years. Tesla owners always though he was one of them, but he’s been proving them wrong more and more every time he opens that mouth of his, so it’s no surprise that people who are pro-EVs are seriously thinking about ditching Teslas.
Yeah, that’s what I meant.
You could rewrite this as “Canadians crunched by inflation, corporate profiteering, are unwilling to spend money on top-trim, high-margin electric vehicles that manufacturers want to them buy instead of cheaper cars that they can afford”.
It is true, though:
- More people rent, and so can’t charge at home
- Interest rates have made monthly car payments out of range
- People are squeezed everywhere else
- Automakers (and frankly, the rest of the supply side) got addicted to debt-fueled spending and are absolutely unwilling to go back to an era of lowered expectations. I mean, we all have to do with less, but we can’t expect our Captains of Industry to share the pain.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the biggest factor was just interest rates.
EVs still do tend to cost more than ICE vehicles, and the used market is still pretty new for EVs.
Autotrader is mostly a used car marketplace. So it doesn’t really surprise me that after a year where used cars cost more than news ones, and new cars were flipped for immediat profit.
Now that is starting to settle down and people who still can afford a new car just gets it right from a dealership.
I’ve experienced a similar decline in interest. Mostly because of one key thing, I got an e-bike.
The cost of gas was way too expensive, and I considered selling my gas powered car and buying an EV but the used and new market is well above anything I can afford, they only seem to produce SUVs or crossovers instead of anything the size of a Honda civic. I figured I’d just keep the gas car I have until it beefs it and use it for multi person trips, or far away trips.
Like it really is hard to beat when I can spend 1500-3000 on a bike that costs pocket change to charge, and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to maintain. Honestly with the lack of public transit in a lot of Canada, a bike and whatever car you already have is a great way to save on gas money.
instead of anything the size of a Honda civic
Chevy Bolt. But they’re over $50k CAD before rebates. Fuck that.
God if the Chevy Bolt was like idk even 35k I could maybe justify it but ideally I think we need the Hyundai Elantra of EVs to exist…something in and around the 20k mark for them to be a purchase normal people can make without sticker shock
Even the used ones are still pricey. I’d get a 10 year old Tesla Model S for $25k before I’d spend $35k on a used Bolt.
I got an e-bike this past year and its been fantastic. Folds up and I keep it in a corner when I’m not using it. It’s been great for getting around town
Which bike?
Envo Lynx 20, not the best bike in the world but it was $1200 from Costco and it does the job for me. Moat folding ebikes are really expensive and so dang heavy its nearly impractical. The Envo is relatively lightweight so it’s not cumbersome
I’ll buy an EV when I can get one with all the tech that’s in the car already working without a monthly subscription cost.
Sales doesn’t equal interest.
I’m very interested. But, our country isn’t interested in making life affordable.
Maybe people don’t want to drive a vehicle that spies on them? All EVs are privacy invading.
Get out of your bubble a bit and you’ll realize that basically no one in the real world cares about that
basically no one in the real world cares about that
I’m going to assume that ignorance is your idea of “not caring”. I think people would care if they knew the truth.
Put it this way, if you offered informed people an EV that spies on them or an EV that doesn’t, would anyone pick the one that spies on them?
With the price difference it would make? I’m sure most people would go for the cheaper, spying option.
As long as they are informed, they’re more than welcome to choose that option. As it stands, there are no options for privacy-respecting EVs.
It still doesn’t mean it’s one of the main reasons why sales are down, which is what you implied at first. Proof of that? Gas cars have the same kind of tech, people still buy them.
It will doesn’t mean it’s one of the main reasons why sales are down, which is what you implied at first.
Of course, I don’t think it has a major effect on sales in the grand scheme of things. Speaking of only my own reasons, I personally wouldn’t buy a car that spies on me if I had other choices. That takes all electric cars off the table.
Gas cars have the same kind of tech, people still buy them.
I do agree that modern gas cars also have spyware in them (it’s a fact), but ALL EVs have them.
At least with gas cars, you can still buy one old enough to be free of spyware.
Eventually, all cars will have spyware, but forcing people to buy them out of necessity isn’t the same as them choosing to buy it because they want to.
I don’t care either way. Car manufacturers have made it easy for me to pick cycling as my main form of transportation. LOL
People don’t care about it until they get bitten. Then they act all outraged and make outrageous demands for compensation.
That’s a bit of a non-issue when smartphone penetration is as high as it is.
From reading other stories it’s not just Canada.
