Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s goal of eliminating gas-powered cars in favor of 100 percent Electric Vehicles (EV) by 2035 is unlikely to happen due to a lack of consumer demand, auto executives say.
Trudeau’s Liberal Party has set a green energy goal to see all new car sales be EVs by 2035 — effectively eliminating gas-powered cars from the new car market. Like in the United States, those goals are unlikely to be met.
This week, Toyota Motora nd Honda Motor executives said they do not see how the Canadian government expects to switch 100 percent to EVs in just a decade when consumers are largely uninterested in anything but gas-powered cars that can reliably drive long distances and in freezing temperatures.
“We need to make sure that we’re revisiting targets to align targets with reality,” Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada President Frank Voss told Bloomberg:
The government can only do so much to entice consumers to purchase vehicles that they would like to see implemented. Consumers will choose what they need. [Emphasis added]
Likewise, Honda Canada CEO Jean Marc Leclerc told Bloomberg that “There’s a lot of things that need to fall into place to give people the confidence to make the transition” to EVs.
In Canada, like the U.S., EVs remain a tiny fraction of new car sales — indicating slowing consumer demand that both governments had wrongly predicted. Last year, for example, just 11 percent of new cars sold were EVs.
At the same time, more than 1.3 million gas-powered cars were sold in Canada last year, making up the overwhelming majority of cars sold.
In the U.S., President Joe Biden is reportedly pumping the brakes on his EV mandates that would require nearly 7-in-10 new cars sold in the U.S. market to be EVs rather than gas-powered cars by 2032. The regulations would essentially mandate that American consumers buy EVs.
The report came as polls showed that Biden’s EV mandates were wildly unpopular.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
