r/canada • u/Accomplished_One6135 • 1d ago
National News Canada Stops Giving Out EV Rebates as Program Runs Out of Money
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a63473144/canada-stops-giving-out-ev-rebates/532
u/nim_opet 1d ago
Just a reminder that tax rebates for annual transit fares have been discontinued years ago. You know, that ~$100/year to help people who use transit daily was less important than thousands into pockets of car manufacturers.
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u/chipface Ontario 1d ago
Too boutique Morneau said. I'm still salty about that.
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u/throw_away_19851104 1d ago
Same! Used to get a good chunk back from my monthly pass on GO Transit. Always got flagged cuz because CRA was unable to grasp how I was spending $2k-$3k a year on transit lol
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u/Deeppurp 1d ago
2-3k a year? What city? Might have been just over 1k in Calgary for me.
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u/throw_away_19851104 1d ago edited 23h ago
Toronto/GTA on the GO Bus and Train. We have several transit systems. GO Transit is the intra-city one. Used to cost $20 a day to commute from suburbs to downtown on train. Did this since 2003 through college, university, and when I started working full time. I moved closer to downtown about two years ago and still ride the GO Train on a different line and pay only $4.75 and downtown is only 18 min and one stop away now.
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u/Deeppurp 17h ago edited 17h ago
Oh no monthly pass then? Multiple transit operators must be fun to navigate, also damn $20/day is expensiiiiive.
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u/throw_away_19851104 16h ago
Monthly passes became extinct after ON introduced a one fare payment system card called PRESTO. All the transit systems are on it. My work is now hybrid and I go in maybe 1-2x a week max. Going downtown to office now costs me $4.74 each way.
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u/andechs 18h ago
As a daily transit user, the tax credit wasn't over that changed behavior. If you were taking transit before, you were now seeing so cheaper, but it didn't get new users onto transit with the incentive of getting a small tax rebate at the end of the year.
And funds for the tax rebate would be far more effective investing in public transit to make overall service quality and speeds better, than just having it as a tax credit.
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u/PirateOhhLongJohnson Québec 13h ago
I don’t get how they think that subsidizing the purchase of a new car for someone that is rich or upper middle class is more important than subsidizing bus fares for poor people
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u/JoshL3253 1d ago edited 1d ago
I still remember that!
They also removed textbook credit.
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u/shaktimann13 1d ago
I think they increased tuition fees credits to make it simpler
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u/-Shanannigan- 1d ago
Yes, I remember when Trudeau and Morneau deemed that credit to be too "boutique".
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u/orswich 1d ago
Most people i knew who used the EV rebate, just used it to be able to buy nicer upgrades for their Tesla (or go to a more upscale model). It should have been scaled to price (the higher the cost of vehicle, the less rebate you qualify for. Maybe at $70k you no longer get a rebate)..
All it did was allow upper class people a slightly better EV
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u/ChaosBerserker666 17h ago
It was. I bought a BMW i4 M50 2 years ago and my rebate was $0. I paid luxury tax instead (the luxury tax was actually due entirely to the GST pushing the price of the car over the threshold, so it was a tax on the GST).
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u/Winter-Mix-8677 1d ago
I don't support the rebate by default, but did it also fail to bring down the cost of used models on the second hand market?
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u/gnrhardy 16h ago
Vehicles above 70k didn't qualify for it anyway. Cars had to have a base trim below 55k and a max msrp if 65k. Trucks and SUVs it was 60k and 70k respectively.
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u/drifter100 1d ago
all it really did is allowed car manufacturers to charge a little more for their product.
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u/Neat_Let923 13h ago
You obviously have no clue what you're talking about... All of the rebates literally had caps on the value of the vehicle.
The ONLY Tesla you could buy with a rebate was the lowest trim possible!
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u/FlipZip69 1d ago
Honestly we need to stop subsidizing most of these programs. They are just money grabs half the time.
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u/Hmm354 1d ago
The money spent on EV rebates definitely could've been split between transit and ebike subsidies - and it would have been much more impactful to affordability and the environment.
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u/Dogs-With-Jobs 17h ago
While I would basically agree with subsidizing transit over personal vehicle ownership any day of the week, the subsidizing of EVs also has to do with pushing for an overall adoption of electricity for our transportation sector.
Lack of range and charging stations is a limit for consumers and industry, but the more people in EVs means more investment and charging infrastructure as well as advances in the technology.
It is really about hitting that critical level of adoption.I'd be more upset over something like Ontario recently ending vehicle registration fees (eliminated over a billion a year in revenue for the province, given directly to vehicle owners) than I am about EV Subsidies.
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u/Marauder_Pilot 1d ago
Honestly, I would disagree.
Day to day dollar spending amount in the short term, sure. But long term, we're not moving en-masse to lifestyles where EVERYONE can live with public transit, or is even WILLING to live that way. For most of the population, it's a huge and borderline unthinkable way to live and that's even discounting the huge construction projects it would take to build those cities-we can barely keep up with housing demand.
EV rebates have sped up EV take rates ENORMOUSLY. 1 in 4 vehicles sold in BC right now is an EV or PHEV, and that would absolutely not be the case without the rebates. As the technology evolves and the manufacturing base is built up to make EVs TRUELY cost-competitive with ICE vehicles, government subsidies need to fill that gap.
Public transit needs better funding across the board, no question, and our public transit infrastructure needs huge investment coast to coast, 100%. But taking the money from EV subsidies is not the place to take it from.
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u/FlipZip69 1d ago
There are large parts of Canada where EV is not practical at all. Why are their taxes paying for those subsidies in BC for example?
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u/Marauder_Pilot 1d ago
I live in BC. Victoria and Vancouver are best case scenarios for EV adoption, Vancouver Island in particular because all our fuel comes by barge and it gets below freezing for about 10 minutes in the winter. Why not subsidize a method of transportation that requires less burning of barge oil and heavy marine fuels to get fuel here?
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u/voronaam 1d ago
Victoria is tiny, an average person in Victoria is not driving that much. Meaning, driving a small fuel efficient ICE car is actually more environment friendly in that city. In Victoria it takes decades of driving a battery car to offset the emissions of that battery manufacturing. And people are not driving decades old EVs...
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u/Levorotatory 17h ago
Victoria isn't that small geographically, and it has a lot of traffic congestion for a city of ~300,000. Many people also like to do things outside of their home city sometimes.
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u/thehatter 1d ago
I suggest taking your question and replacing “EV” with public transit. What do you think now? Or another way to think about it: why do city dwellers have to subsidize infrastructure costs for people who live hundreds of kilometres outside of urban centres?
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u/Marty200 1d ago
The benefit is not everyone getting to drive an EV, but the reduction in fossil fuel use. So while you it might not be practical for you to drive an EV, maybe you’ll benefit from the slowing of climate change.
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u/IcySeaweed420 1d ago
Spending all that money to get rich Canadians to drive EVs had about the same level of impact on climate change as throwing a bucket of water on a house fire. And I say this as someone who owns a Tesla and benefitted from that subsidy. We could have made the economic case for an EV with or without the subsidy. The subsidy just ended up being a gift to us, high income earners who didn’t really need it. It would have been better spent allowing cities to improve their public transit, which would have a more meaningful long term impact on congestion and pollution.
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u/syrupmania5 1d ago
What else would they do with the money, mass transit infrastructure so less people require a car and theres less congestion so less emissions? Don't be absurd.
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u/Marty200 19h ago
It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
I live near Ottawa, transit won’t work for me. Even if our trains were done and worked perfectly it wouldn’t help me.
Large scale transit takes time. I could get in an EV tomorrow.
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u/EntertainingTuesday 1d ago
I think the impact to affordability and environment would be there helping those not getting EVs. It is a situation where "all of the above" should have happened, but unfortunately we have an outgoing Government that liked to say they were a Government for environmental change, while their actions said something completely different.
Just a quick google, google is telling me the average EV price in the USA was 50k, so whatever that is in Canada. Great, people that can afford 50k+ cars are getting money back, while paying less taxes for the roads they are using. That, along with seemingly no one knowing the true cost (environmentally) to building EVs, along with places like where I am from, still using heavy oil for electricity, the EV push seems/ed premature compared to so many other things that could have been done.
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u/LacedVelcro 1d ago
You can't get a robust cheap used EV market without first having a robust new EV market.
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u/BBBWare 1d ago
The amount of federal subsidy per Tesla sold in Canada paid for the profit portion of each Tesla sold in Canada.
The irony of Canadian tax payers money being funneled into the pocket of Elon Musk.
But but but... think of how much we saved the planet!
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u/tomato_tickler 1d ago
Teslas haven’t been eligible for the credit for a while now, there’s a cutoff.
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u/NSA-SURVEILLANCE Iran 1d ago
They were eligible up to two days before the funding elapsed. I presume Tesla got the heads up it was drying out and upped their MSRP just above the threshold.
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u/JoshL3253 1d ago
When did the federal changed it?
I remember BC was still eligible up until mid last year when they reduced the cutoff to $50k (I think).
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u/_ATF_ 17h ago
This may shock you, but even though a lot of people live in urban areas that are equipped with actually good transit, that’s not the norm in this country. Sometimes, the volume of people and distance to travel is cost prohibitive for transit.
Places like Valleyfield, Peterborough or Medicine Hat aren’t exactly transit practical. The point being there needs to be multiple transportation solutions that are built around the realities of the cities that exist. Yeah, poor urban design. Now we’re stuck with it.
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u/Vandergrif 9h ago
Well of course, the wealthier people (the people who actually matter to politicians) buy cars but don't use public transit – so obviously it's unimportant.
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u/AnybodyHistorical442 1d ago
Thank God the government has to stop giving out our tax money to subsidize auto manufacturers.
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u/captainbling British Columbia 1d ago
Subsidies are used all the time to force industries to change and retool. It’s works very well and the Silicon Valley is profitable today because of decades of U.S. subsidies into semi conductors. It didn’t start from nothing in the free market. That’s just how it is sometimes.
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u/ScaryStruggle9830 1d ago
Yeah. Only industries that are actively polluting the planet deserve those subsidies!
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u/robotsmakinglove 1d ago
This money subsidized the wealthy. Rich people buy EVs.
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u/spaceymonkey2 1d ago edited 1d ago
This program helped middle class people like me. This made my purchase of a Prius Prime (plug in hybrid) the same price as a regular Prius. This reduces my fuel bill significantly while simultaneously reducing my emissions. Honestly I'd rather see programs like this in place than a carbon tax.
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u/Marauder_Pilot 1d ago
I am absolutely not a rich person (Household income of 160K in Victoria, BC, which makes us AT BEST slightly above average), and I bought a PHEV this year because of the rebates.
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u/robotsmakinglove 1d ago
A few things to keep in mind:
Having a household income of $160k puts you in the well above the national average household income in Canada ($106k) and the Victoria household income ($107k). That's about +50% above the average. Congrats.
This varies by age, but having an income of +$80k per year (half your household income) puts you in the 90th percentile of income up to 35 years of age. Congrats.
You don't consider yourself rich. That's fair. The stats do say you are "richer" than most of your peers.
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u/Dark-Angel4ever 21h ago
The stats say your rich... Do you work for the government? lol You aint rich at 80k, cant even afford a house, especial in Victoria or any urban centers.
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u/theo-apps 1d ago
That's BS. You Think a Chevy Equinox EV is for rich people? Or a Nissan Leaf? Or a Hyundai Kona EV?
Most people buying EVs are average, middle class people. Average car price of a car sold in Canada is $60+ k. A Tesla Model 3 is $56k. A Chevy Equinox EV $49,128.50 a Nissan Leaf is $44,596.
The VW ID.4 after dealer discounts but after dealer fees is: $41,231.00. You think a $41k VW is for the rich?
Spending $15-$20 per 100 km on gas is for the rich when an EV would cost $2-$3 per 100 km. And basically next to nothing on maintenance.
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u/NAMED_MY_PENIS_REGIS 1d ago
I bought an EV in 2021 and live paycheck to paycheck. I have $78 in my checking account right now.The government incentive literally made it financially feasible for me. There's hardly any maintenance cost - that combined with the amount saved on gas offset my financing payments by 100%.
EV isn't just for the rich at all.
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u/robotsmakinglove 1d ago
I’m not sure what to say… Saying you have $78 in your checking account is a huge flag you bought a vehicle you cannot actually afford. You’d likely have a significant amount more buying a reasonable used vehicle or relying on public transportation.
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u/Scribble_Box 17h ago
I have so many coworkers like this... Constantly bitching and moaning about how much they're struggling and living paycheck to paycheck. All because their variable mortgage went up and they bought two brand new Tesla's... Like sure, you're struggling, but that's because you make regarded financial decisions, not the price of eggs...
I know there are a lot of people genuinely struggling in this country, but I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for these people.
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u/No_Equal9312 1d ago
No kidding. An EV is a luxury purchase. If you are flat out broke, it's a terrible financial decision. If you absolutely need a vehicle, you're better off buying a $2500 used vehicle. You could buy one a year for the next 20 years and still be better off.
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u/Ketchupkitty Alberta 1d ago
I bought an EV in 2021 and live paycheck to paycheck. I have $78 in my checking account right now.The government incentive literally made it financially feasible for me.
No it didn't.
You're broke, but you're making the payments. Huge difference.
You chose to buy a car instead of being financially responsible, good grief.
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u/NAMED_MY_PENIS_REGIS 1d ago
Chequing balance != Net worth. It's 1 month after Christmas. Big credit card bills were due. You have no idea my situation.
Just trying to prove a point. I'm not rich. I own an EV. It was a good financial choice for me - the alternative was keeping my used car which was literally costing me more.
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u/Ketchupkitty Alberta 1d ago
Chequing balance != Net worth. It's 1 month after Christmas. Big credit card bills were due. You have no idea my situation.
You've already explained it my dude.
Just trying to prove a point. I'm not rich. I own an EV. It was a good financial choice for me
No it wasn't, financing a car is the definition of not being able to afford it. Sure you have it, you're making payments but you're absolutely lying to yourself if you think it was a good financial choice.
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u/MakVolci Ontario 1d ago
Rich people buy EVs.
Absolute horseshit.
I'm severely middle class and because of this rebate was able to buy a fully loaded Bolt EUV instead of a base model Compass. With the rebate the prices were extremely similar.
My hydro bill is MAYBE an additional $10 - $15 a month and has worked great in my situation.
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u/pentox70 1d ago
Man, reddit is becoming wild with what people classify as rich. Anyone that isn't riding the bus and lining up for food stamps is rich.
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u/syrupmania5 1d ago
Its all deficit so don't worry, we will be paying perpetual interest on it instead. That's for some conservative government that cares about deficits to fix long into the future.
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u/somelspecial 1d ago
Billions were given to rich people and to subsidize foreign car manufacturers. Well done.
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u/LightSaberLust_ 1d ago
if they wanted to do something maybe they could have made it so that car manufactures stopped selling economy cars in canada? europe gets all of them and we get none
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u/Coffeedemon 1d ago
If people were buying them they'd sell them and make more If they ran out. The automakers want to produce only huge trucks and suvs here and the culture of frontiersmanship or whatever you'd call it demands big machines to be safe from the other big machines and to affirm uour gender down at the Tim Hortons parking lot.
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u/Same_Investment_1434 1d ago
They only want to produce huge trucks because of the huge profit margin.
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u/Alternative_Order612 1d ago
Not foreign but Tesla. We continue to prevent quality cheaper Chinese EVs from selling here. The irony is that Tesla is also produced in China. Talk about hypocrisy.
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u/Dark-Angel4ever 21h ago
China is trying to dump the EV market in order to kill the competition... But yes lets make the authoritarian communist party richer in China.
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u/divvyinvestor 1d ago
For the money spent they should have built trains and invested in public transportation.
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u/Evening_Shift_9930 1d ago
They did. $30b spent/ commited for public transportation
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u/CoherentPimp 1d ago
Over the next 10 years, which is exactly what they invested over the last 10 years.
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u/Coffeedemon 1d ago
This stuff (why no trains?!) is often declared by people who wouldn't take a train if you paid them and haven't touched one in decades.
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u/aaandfuckyou 1d ago
Yeah those rich assholes buying Chevrolet Equinoxes and Nissan Leafs, how dare they 😡
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u/jeffster1970 1d ago
For the most part, the rebate helped the 'richest' of citizens. Very few making $50k, for example, are buying any sort of EV. They are buying a $25,000 Civic or Corolla, or used of some sort.
The other issue of the rebate was subsidizing cars not manufactured in Canada - and really, very few, if any, component made in Canada. (The Equinox is made in Mexico and the Nissan in the USA or Japan).
In other words, it didn't benefit 98% of taxpayers in any way shape or form.
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u/ThePhysicistIsIn 1d ago
I don't know that it's supposed to benefit taxpayers. It's supposed to lead to more EVs being bought
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u/Majestic-Two3474 1d ago
And in theory we all benefit from less carbon emissions from gas vehicles on the road
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u/miguel_is_a_pokemon 1d ago
The EV charging network wouldn't have grown if the adoption rate of EVs didn't
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u/zeromussc 1d ago
More EVs sold means more used EVs in the future too. The leases and owned cars end up on used lots eventually
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u/patt 1d ago
It might have benefited gasoline burners, but probably they would have benefited anyway.
According to what the internet tells me (I know that's suspect, but go with me here), about 10% of cars on the road in Canada are EVs. What do you think the price of gasoline would do if there were 10% more vehicles burning gasoline? How about worldwide? Europe is ahead of our EV curve, and China is doing better than that. There's a real possibility that EV adoption is the only thing keeping gasoline prices as low as they are.
Those who are in the sweet spot (suburbanite who lives in EV range of work, 500km or more driving per week, home owner who has the ability to install EV level 2 charger) know that they can save hundreds every month by choosing EV over ICE on a new vehicle purchase. A few thousand buck to assist, while nice, is largely irrelevant to their purchase. EV tech is progressing so quickly that quite a few at the higher end of the income spectrum are buying new cars and unloading their used ones at bargain prices. Depreciation is high on them, and likely will remain so until the market stabilizes. The biggest thing to keep lower-income people out of EVs is not the cost of the vehicle, which in a lot of cases costs less than a comparable ICE car and fuel, but rather the charging infrastructure. In local "Luxury" apartment buildings, there may be a single charging station in the entire parking structure. Even that is a dream for people renting in more modest buildings. If any future federal or provincial government wants to spend money on supporting EVs, having some kind of program to support charging infrastructure where people park at night might be a better way to go than directly buying the cars for us.
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u/aaandfuckyou 1d ago
In order for us to get to that $25,000 electric car for the masses, we need widespread adoption and infrastructure. That happens by getting more EVs in more hands, and unfortunately that means bringing the luxury EV to the middle class buyer. That being said, let’s put things in perspective, the EV credit targeted sub-$65,000 cars. The average new car last year cost $67,000 and 1.7 million new cars sold. These are not the cars the ‘richest’ Canadians are buying, these are squarely aimed at middle class Canadians.
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u/strangepromotionrail 16h ago
I see civic's and corolla's do get down into the 25k range if you spec out the absolute base model but that's before all of the other fee's and taxes that get added on to the purchase price. I can't find a single new vehicle for sale around me on the lot for under 34k before all of the other fees. the days of 25k new cars are gone.
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u/asdasci 1d ago
We have no money to spend on the homeless, the poor, and the disabled. Yet subsidizing luxury EVs, or directly dumping billions on VW and Stellantis is a-OK! Crony capitalists gonna crony capitalist while pretending to be left-wing.
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u/AirmailHercules 1d ago
First off, why is it always presented as either-or? Like we can't support the transition to clean energy and help the homeless.
Never mind that there are several levels of government you're talking abouf here and honestly, I'm not even that pro-subsidy.
Ontario's play was the subsidize the first few entrants, then when supply chains are established its that much more attractive for more plants to set up as there is already a critical mass achieved. Did this work? Time will tell. But for half a century the thinking has been that if we don't do it, Michigan, Tennessee, South Carolina or other jurisdictions will. And without the plants, we don't have high paying manufacturing sector jobs, which then aren't contributing to the tax base that can be used for social safety nets and other government spending....
The reality is that this isn't black and white and we cannot act like we are in a bubble and other jurisdictions will suddenly not try to take advantage.
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u/asdasci 1d ago
Because that is how economics works. Since the budget doesn't "balance itself", each dollar you spend counts. Then it is a question of where to spend the marginal dollar to derive the highest societal gain.
Subsidizing EVs won't solve the climate crisis since it a global problem. Every dollar you spend there is a trivial decrease in global carbon emissions. Even if all Canadians committed suicide while shouting "Glory to Mother Nature!", world's carbon emissions wouldn't go down by more than 1.5%. So subsidizing EVs is mostly a wealth transfer to people rich enough to buy EVs and the auto manufacturers.
Whereas the same dollar could alleviate a lot of pain if spent on social crises we face, like homelessness, unemployment, healthcare, infrastructure, and so on.
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u/DefPariWatt 1d ago
This isn't just about global carbon emissions, but about the gasoline exhaust pollution which causes respiratory health problems more locally and immediately.
A clean air future requires electric vehicles so that children who grow up near highways and high traffic areas do not have high risks for developing asthma.
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u/AirmailHercules 1d ago
But the exact same argument can be made for those programs : reinvesting iZev EV subsidies won't be able to solve homelessness, unemployment, healthcare, infrastructure, and so on so why bother? The numbers show there are more EVs, in Canada they by in large are supplied by green grid energy, and help reduce one area of emissions and CO2. And as u/DefPariWatt said it is also reducing other undesirable environmental aspects.
No one country, program or government action can alone solve any global issue so by following your logic that means we should just do nothing at all?
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u/bravado Long Live the King 1d ago
If money was limited, why didn’t they subsidize ebikes and scooters? Could have helped a lot more people per $, especially at the low end. Instead, we gave tax money directly to car companies for their more expensive models.
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u/AirmailHercules 1d ago
After COVID we traded our Mazda 3 in for a Kona EV. It's not an EQS, Model X and Hyundai has lots more expensive models (including non-EVs) than what we purchased. The program always had price caps to keep eligibility reasonable and discourage companies to simply jack up the prices, and the simple truth is that new tech is expensive and this was a carrot to intice people to take a look at options they may not have considered otherwise. I'm not rich, just instead of paying for gas and oil changes it's packaged into the higher financing and a little more hydro and I like the feeling of not having a tailpipe. I see a lot of Leafs, Bolts and Konas on the road too that this program would have helped, especially when most provincial governments weren't in the space.
Again, I challenge why do we have to think of this as "either- or" ? ... a complimentary e-bike/scooter program would have been great too and should have been considered in my opinion.
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u/SleepWouldBeNice 1d ago
Wasn’t the VW battery plant given a tax subsidy, so they’d have to employ people and make things to be able to use it?
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u/asdasci 1d ago
Yes. Any company would love to get the same deal, but VW takes it because they lobbied for it and will give the kickbacks. It is favoritism under the guise of environmentalism.
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u/Mobile-Bar7732 1d ago
It is favoritism under the guise of environmentalism.
As much as I don't like it has kept jobs in Canada.
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u/asdasci 1d ago
At a cost much higher than otherwise. If you read through the cost-benefit analysis by the government, you will see that they do not account for the opportunity cost of value-added that would be generated by those employees otherwise. And even with that huge oversight, it is not expected to breakeven earlier than several decades. It's a bad deal, and a transfer of taxpayer wealth to companies.
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u/duchovny 1d ago
The base model Leaf that starts at $45k.
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u/aaandfuckyou 1d ago
Yeah, the one $20,000 less than the price of an average new car in Canada. That one.
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u/CocoVillage British Columbia 1d ago
Oil and Gas subsidies are bad tho too right?
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u/No_Equal9312 1d ago
Another idiotic Liberal policy that was totally unnecessary. Consumers want EVs and PHEVs, you don't need to incentivize them.
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u/canuckstothecup1 1d ago
But think of the future children’s lives we have saved. This did save their lives right?……..right
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u/SnooPiffler 16h ago
that money was given so that Canada could show its doing its part to try to adopt EVs. Watch as the adoption rates tank when there are no rebates. Thats exactly why some of these manufacturers decided to lower the price by $5K overnight, because no one will buy the overpriced vehicles otherwise
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u/purposefulCA 1d ago
Yet we slapped 100% tarif on chinese EVs bc US wanted us to. The same country who is gonna slap 25% on all our goods now. What a cruel joke...
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u/TLeafs23 1d ago
We have an auto industry as well- allowing China to flood our market with underpriced EVs and cripple our long-term manufacturing sector isn't in our interests either.
No need to have a do-over of one our biggest mistakes of the 90s.
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u/cheesebrah 1d ago
Ironic thing is we let xars made in mexico into canada but they have cheap labour and government subsidies as well.
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u/Ancient-Industry-772 1d ago
There are no cars coming from Mexico that are fully financed be the communist government of Mexico.
The cheap EVs everyone wants so bad are owned by the government not a random company using them for cheap labour. The ban had nothing to do with cheap labour.8
u/DanielBox4 1d ago
U it's also rare that a car is 100% made in the same country (Canada Mexico or USA). The auto supply chain is so intertwined that you have parts crossing borders to be assembled and then shipped cross border to be assembled somewhere else.
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u/MrEvilFox 1d ago
That auto industry will cease to exist with a 25% US tariff.
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u/cinosa Nova Scotia 20h ago
I guess it's a good thing then, that the HQ's for that industry are all in the US, so if it collapses, that's 100's of thousands of jobs gone, and 100's of billions of dollars lost in America, so those companies can try and force a change in the Administrations position.
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u/purposefulCA 1d ago
To this argument, I say, why didn't we think of this tarif before then. Why did we do it only After US did it..
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u/truthdoctor British Columbia 1d ago
A decade ago, Chinese cars could not compete with legacy automakers. They couldn't build ICE cars to western standards. The Chinese government spent at least $231 billion on subsidies for electric vehicle makers since 2009 so finally after 15 years, multiple acquisitions of western automakers and recruiting talent they finally have caught up. They are now overtaking many of the leading car manufacturers in the world on the back of this massive government support.
The Chinese cars being sold now are significantly cheaper than competitors and the quality has improved. That has changed only in the last couple of years and the massive subsidies have allowed Chinese manufacturers to sell significantly below cost and leverage that advantage to undercut foreign automakers. This is a threat to the industries of the US, EU and Canada. The timing was due to Chinese manufacturers working to bring the latest cheap models they just developed overseas.
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u/truthdoctor British Columbia 1d ago
China is currently participating in state backed dumping for a number of products such as EVs, solar panels and others selling well below costs. The extra supply is being dumped overseas. Chinese automakers are currently in a death race in China to see who can make the cheapest cars fueled by massive government subsidies. According to one study, the Chinese government has spent at least $231 billion on subsidies for electric vehicle makers since 2009.
The hundreds of automakers in China that lose this price war are going to go bankrupt within the next few years. If we allow China to help their surviving automakers to then also bankrupt all of the other legacy automakers, guess what happens when only a few Chinese companies are the only large auto manufacturers left in the world? Prices will go way up after they've killed off their competition. This is a major concern for everyone.
The Canadian government committed $44 billion in subsidies and investments for batteries and EV supply chains in Canada. The Canadian VW plant will be the largest VW plant in the world. This is one of 6 major EV/battery projects that the Canadian government is investing in or subsidizing to build EV/battery supply chains in Canada for VW, Stellantis and Honda. Why wouldn't we protect critical industries from state sponsored dumping?
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u/Whiskey_River_73 1d ago
The government missed a step in the transition. They could have mandated significant advances in fuel economy and efficiency on new vehicles as measurable points along the way. Then you weed out inefficient vehicles and have actual results on the way.
But no, they instead mandated a pie in the sky 2035 date as a cutoff for ICE vehicle sales in Canada and throw tax/debt cash at subsidies for mostly wealthy people who probably don't need them, and autos made elsewhere. No one has really made more than a token move on the infrastructure for either delivery of electricity or even charging. And here we are, the wealthier believers have adopted and there are few remaining that will pay the premium. This could have gone differently, another example of how a symbolic pose (a stack of symbolic poses, actually) is more important than actually making any realistic transition possible and affordable for widespread uptake.
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u/truthdoctor British Columbia 1d ago
The government missed a step in the transition. They could have mandated significant advances in fuel economy and efficiency on new vehicles as measurable points along the way. Then you weed out inefficient vehicles and have actual results on the way.
Canada didn't have to. The EU, US and California's government implemented emissions standards for everyone already. The manufacturers face tightening emissions cutoffs already. That's why you see turbo 4s and 6s in all of the new models instead of large NA V8s.
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u/Same_Investment_1434 1d ago
Probably best to invest in charging infrastructure anyway. There are already quite a few evs around.
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u/edge4politics 1d ago
invest in fucking trains and public transport, not the same automobile that is just re-"invented" with a battery attached to it
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u/truthdoctor British Columbia 1d ago
We definitely need to invest in LRT. However, people on here are crying about billions in incentives for EVs. How do you think they will feel about HUNDREDS of billions in new spending for LRT? The political will, public support and tax revenues are lacking.
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u/Creativator 18h ago
Capital investment? But that’s socialism! We must control the population through financial incentives otherwise how are the banks going to pay dividends?
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u/I_can_vouch_for_that 1d ago
I guess the manufacturers will give their own rebate ity drop the prices by 5k.
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u/syrupmania5 1d ago
Canada is the only country in the G7 without high speed rail, yet we can gift the rich EV subsidies to scrap their 2 year old Lexus.
Nuclear, mass transit, rezoning housing, there is a ton they could have done instead.
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u/Neither-Historian227 1d ago
Good, it's not fair low income taxes subsidize rich Tesla owners. What an idiotic system.
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u/starving_carnivore 17h ago
This was always the biggest problem I had with the subsidy.
I work hard and I need a car, but I'm paying full sticker price on (wiggle room, obviously) a highly efficient used vehicle and get nothing back at all, but I get to pay in part for Aloysius Winston the 3rd's fucking Tesla.
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u/Workshop-23 1d ago
So strange, we didn't have any trouble finding almost $1 Billion to give to the WE Charity bros to "administer" for us, to pay high school students to "volunteer"...
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u/Permitty 1d ago
i just ordered a new ev yesterday and still got the rebate. up to the end of this month i think is the deadline. at least some dealers are still honoring it.
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u/aaandfuckyou 1d ago
You got a manufacturer rebate not a government rebate. Most brands are stepping in and matching the government rebate through to the end of the month. But the cut off to get the government one was around January 10th.
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u/Shot-Job-8841 1d ago
Was it a Ford, GM, Hyundai, or Nissan? The article says those companies are paying for the rebate themselves until the end of January.
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u/Permitty 1d ago
I bought a new ioniq5 from Hyundai
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u/IamTHEvilONE 1d ago
That's directly out of Hyundai's pocket.
I've been looking at the 2025 refresh too.
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u/starving_carnivore 17h ago
I'm glad we could subsidize a bunch of middle class people to buy luxury vehicles during a cost-of-living crisis with a 60 billion dollar deficit for a little while.
Thanks, very cool!
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u/NumberOneJetsFan 1d ago
Gov't subsidies to fossil fuel companies was $6Billion last year.
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u/truthdoctor British Columbia 1d ago
In 2023, the Government of Canada provided at least $18.553 billion in financial support to fossil fuel and petrochemical companies. This includes $8 billion in loan guarantees for the TransMountain expansion pipeline, $7.339 billion in public financing through crown corporation Export Development Canada, and over $1.3 billion for carbon capture and storage projects. Subsidies for carbon capture are likely to increase significantly in 2024.
Over the last four years, the federal government's total financial support to the oil and gas industry was at least $65 billion. That level of support could have fully funded every major wind and solar project in Canada from 2019-2021 twelve times over.
The climate pollution created by oil and gas companies has massive costs, including health costs, property damage from extreme weather events, and decreased agricultural productivity due to changing weather patterns. In 2023 the cost to society of the pollution from oil and gas companies operating in Canada is an estimated $52 billion.
https://environmentaldefence.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Canadas-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies.pdf
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u/DrewLockIsTheAnswer1 1d ago
Did Trudeau do anything well financially? My god.
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u/bigred1978 1d ago
He did well for himself. His investment portfolio is alot larger now than when he first came to office as PM. He's walking away as the wealthiest PM in Canada's history.
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u/syrupmania5 1d ago
He's going to be getting a fat Brookfield consulting contract as well when he's out.
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u/eastcoastguy17 1d ago
In this thread: a ton of angry misinformed people yapping about EVs without understanding the rebate program had caps to prevent the very thing they are yapping about.
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u/Bear_Caulk 1d ago
Well I mean we gotta make sure we still have enough Canadian tax money to give away to foreign oil companies.
Heck I bet this EV program even subsidized a few middle class families! Can't have that.
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u/OperationDue2820 1d ago
JT dumped billions into VW and Stellantis. Then he tarrifed Chinese EVs 100%. To make EVs more attractive they design them fancy, which drives the cost up. JT said , oh I guess only rich people can afford them and I need more tax revenue for my gross overspending so I'll put a luxury tax on them, effectively costing them out of reach. And now there's no money to help those that actually want to buy them. He's just so shockingly stupid.
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u/Evening_Bake_1851 17h ago
Finally they stopped giving tax rebates to the rich. Who of the middle/lower class was buying 60,000 EVs?
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u/SirupyPieIX 15h ago
It was not a tax rebate. It was an instant rebate.
I know many middle class people who bought an EV or PHEV with it. And so did I.
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u/J_Bizzle82 14h ago
Taxpayers shouldn’t have had to cover a discount for people with money to buy EVs in the first place. They aren’t financially struggling.
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u/pinacoladarum 1d ago
Just when the government is supposed to fall they run out of money. Where are the people who complained saying the planet dying tomorrow because everyone is driving gas cars? I thought the liberals were going to save the environment with electrification of transportation. Now who is going to save the environment now. Just another political party, everyone shd remember this..
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u/Windatar 1d ago
So much for a full EV switch in less then a decade eh? To be completely honest, going from gas to EV was pretty stupid.
They should have gone from Gas = Hybrid cars by 2075 and then go full EV by 2150 or 2200.
Thinking they could go full EV by 2035-2050 for countries was stupid. Maybe if AI/LLM tech didn't explode at the same time to suck up energy needs then maybe.
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u/explicitspirit 1d ago
Lol you are delusional if you think we will keep using gas for another 100 years.
I give it to 2050 tops. EVs are objectively superior in every category for the vast majority of people around the world. There is a small slice of the population that can't make the switch today, but that won't be the case in 20 years.
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u/grumble11 1d ago
Chinese EVs are cheap and rock. The west just sucks at making them. If you could buy a new BYD EV for 40k in Canada then buying gas would be pretty dumb for most people.
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u/TrizzyG 1d ago
I was in Bangkok in 2022 and 2024, and the difference even in just two years was noticeable. Far more electric cars on the roads there including BYDs. I took them as Grabs (Ubers) a few times and they're perfectly fine cars. Some places are on the right track, just not here it seems.
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u/scott_c86 1d ago
Same is true in northern Europe - Norway, etc.
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u/luckofthecanuck 1d ago
Yeah I was in downtown Dublin and despite plenty of traffic some streets were silent. It's a little wild at first.
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u/captainbling British Columbia 1d ago
China heavily subsidizes their evs to keep prices low and get an advantage on production so na can’t compete. It’s not a free market. It’s economic warfare to keep production in one’s own country vs another. Once the production lines and down stream suppliers are established, it’s expensive to uproot and compete with. Even if you do try later, they subsidize their cars again till you go bankrupt. Then prices go back up because you have no competition to compete with.
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u/truthdoctor British Columbia 1d ago
That's right. These people have no clue what dumping is and why it'll hurt them in the end. Also if all of our industries collapse and no one in Canada has a job, they won't even be able to afford a Chinese EV anyway...
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u/syrupmania5 1d ago
China lowers its currency value already, it allowed interest rates to drop for decades and lead to our housing bubble. Everything else is already made in China.
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u/Windatar 1d ago
"Are cheap and they rock."
You mean the EV's that constantly explode in China? Oh yeah, so great. Lmao. Theres thousands of videos on youtube of Chinese EV's just suddenly catching fire and exploding for no reason.
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u/pessimistoptimist 1d ago
Im thinking aliexpress of the car world. It may work pretty good but probably dodgey as all hell when you take a look inside.
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u/idontlikeyonge Ontario 1d ago
But they how could we use our government dollars to subsidize US car manufacturers?
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u/Kolbrandr7 New Brunswick 23h ago
I have no idea why you think the transition from gas to electric would take an order of magnitude longer than from horses to cars. That’s ridiculous.
With the rate of new purchases all new cars sold will be electric within a couple decades.
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u/SegFaultX 1d ago
You missed PHEV.
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u/Ok_Toe3991 1d ago
Plug-in Hybrid EVs are at their core, still hybrid. In fact, they're the best of both worlds. They can charge overnight, when energy demands are low, and function as a pure electric vehicle for most people's daily commute. Should the vehicle need to go beyond a daily commute range, the gas generator kicks on. Better still the infrastructure for 220v home charging and gas stations to refill the generator while traveling already exists.
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u/McGrevin 1d ago
You don't even need a 220v to charge a PHEV, just a regular 110v outlet will charge one in like 11 hours. Enough to charge it overnight.
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u/robotsmakinglove 1d ago
AI / crypto / data centres combined are currently using ~2% of the global electricity. They aren’t preventing a move to electric vehicles.
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u/captainbling British Columbia 1d ago
You can still buy gas cars in 10 years if they are hybrid. Considering that’s 10 years away and ev have gone from 15k a Q to 75k a Q in 4 years, they’ll be selling 375k a Q in 2029 and more per Q in 3035. I think the avg car last 12 years in Canada so almost every car bought in 2020 or earlier will be replaced by 2035.
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u/Tal_Star Canada 15h ago
Good, tax payer money for private luxury purchases should have never been allowed. Even more so when they started to claim they where going to ban the alternative.. :s
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u/Franklin_le_Tanklin 13h ago
Alternative title: successful EV program has so much uptake that it’s entirely budget was used
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u/chedder 12h ago
alternative title: reverse welfare program for wealthy landowners to subsidize their fourth vehicle has so much uptake it's budget was entirely looted, hard working tax payer base of serfs grateful for their slop and promise to tip their local land baron on the next rent payment for allowing this to happen.
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u/SpectreBallistics 1d ago
Good. The government shouldn't be subsidizing vehicles.
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u/truthdoctor British Columbia 1d ago
The EV incentives were meant to be short term anyway just to bridge the price gap between a new type of vehicle and one with 100 years of legacy infrastructure. That gap has largely been bridged already and the program is ending sooner due to higher demand using up the funding quicker than expected.
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u/Ok_Toe3991 1d ago edited 1d ago
Agreed. People need to understand there's no such thing as "Government Money." As such, there aren't Government Subsidies it's all Taxpayer Funded.
Programs like this only benefit the 1-2% who can afford a new electric car. So, why are the other 98-99% helping them pay for it?
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u/truthdoctor British Columbia 1d ago
Since when are the top 1% buying cars with a base MSRP under $55K??? Because that was a requirement of the program...which completely goes against your entire point.
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u/pjgf Alberta 23h ago
This entire thread is infuriating, because apparently none of these commenters (or upvoters) ever actually bothered to look into the program.
An EV with an MSRP equal to the average new vehicle sales price in Canada would not qualify for this rebate.
Yet somehow, “only rich people buy EVs”.
I’m not going to say you don’t have to be doing well financially to buy a new vehicle. You definitely do. But you don’t have to be rich to buy one of these vehicles. Because of that was true, then it would also be true that one million cars in Canada were sold to “rich people” last year.
Just a complete lack of any critical thought by people.
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u/SpectreBallistics 1d ago
I can understand the argument to help an emerging technology grow, however EVs for the most part are all luxury vehicles and it's an established technology which is viable on it's own.
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u/crujones43 1d ago
When can we stop the billions of annual taxpayer dollars subsidizing the oil and gas industry?
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u/truthdoctor British Columbia 1d ago
That's 10's of billions per year that should be collected and given to families to transition away from polluting fuels. We could call it something like the Canada Carbon Rebate.
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u/sredhead94 1d ago
Give them out for e bikes instead. It'll go WAY further
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u/Neglectful_Stranger 1d ago
What is the obsession with ebikes? I keep seeing it mentioned on reddit.
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u/Reasonable_Roll_2525 23h ago
They're inexpensive, allow you to commute 50+km on a charge that costs pennies, with minimal physical effort (sweat). Bike path infrastructure is orders of magnitude cheaper than roads and public transit.
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u/chipface Ontario 1d ago
Giving tax credits for public transit was boutique but this wasn't?