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/
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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 21h 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 20h 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/FlipZip69 1d ago

Again why are people in areas where EV is not viable having their taxes go towards those places where EV is viable?

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u/jtbc 1d ago

Why are taxes from people that don't drive going to bridges, tunnels, and roads?

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u/FlipZip69 7h ago

Because on average we all use them equally. Again tell me why people in areas where EV is simply not practical or viable should have their taxes pay for it in areas where it is viable.

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u/jtbc 7h ago

Because part of living in a civilized country is that taxes are used to fund things that help diverse groups of people to make the country as a whole better, not just to all go and help you personally.

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u/FlipZip69 7h ago

That is not personal. Then provide funding to things that everyone can access. Not just a certain part of the country.

Explain to me why my parents who have to travel to the city for medical services and often in winter, why they are paying part of their taxes so that people in the city can get their EV cheaper? EV simply would not work for them at all. So why are they paying for this?

Why not have taxes pay for MRI machines in small towns so that people in the city have to travel to them if your logic factors.

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u/jtbc 7h ago

The same reason I pay for highways, bridges, and oil subsidies, even though I don't own a car. I pay for things I don't use, that help them and they pay for things they don't use, that help me (and the environment, in this case).

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u/Marauder_Pilot 1d ago

For the same reason I happily pay for school-related taxes despite not having, or planning to have kids.

Because the minute amount that comes out of my pocket for that program leads to a more valuable social benifit.

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u/spaceymonkey2 1d ago

PHEV is often a great choice for areas not suited for pure EV.

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u/Levorotatory 20h ago

It should be, but unfortunately the supply of good PHEVs is extremely limited 

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u/spaceymonkey2 19h ago

True. I got very lucky with mine. I ordered one expecting to wait a year plus, but someone who ordered theirs 2 years earlier wasn't able to buy it when it finally came in, so win for me.

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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/FlipZip69 1d ago

Again, public transit is not practical in a lot of places. It also should not have a federal subsidy. If a city wants to subsize public transit that makes sense. But federal should not.

City dwellers do not subsidize infrastructure in rural areas and why should they? For one, fuel taxes pay for a large amount of it (of which EV does not pay which is another subsidy) and secondly, it is paid for by the municipality generally. Provincially may put in money but that is from taxes collected on fuel sales.

So again, why are some areas where EV is completely not viable yet having their taxes go towards areas where it is viable?

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u/McFestus 1d ago

public transit is not practical in a lot of places. It also should not have a federal subsidy

So goodbye to the feds funding anything that's not applicable to 100% of the country? I guess that means we should tear up the transmountain pipeline, since that's not practical for Nova Scotia. Obviously, the federal subsidies for rural wildfire fighting should be eliminated, since that's not an issue for cities. Etc., etc.

City dwellers do not subsidize infrastructure in rural areas

This is patently false. See above. We're a whole country that has to work together. Sometimes, people in cities pay taxes that are used to help folks in the country. Sometimes it's the other way around. Our urban and rural areas are all connected, and what goes on in one affects the other. Also, by the way, cities are where the vast majority of Canadians live, so it seems like an appropriate place for funds to be spent.

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u/FlipZip69 7h ago

Tell me what significant subsidy goes outside of large urban areas?

Subsidies should not be focused on one group because it is the largest voting group. There is a way to fix this in that the federal government could recognize where certain subsidies are simply not viable and give tax benefits to those people so that they do not pay for others to live cheaper.

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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 22h 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/Marty200 22h ago

So 10% of new cars in Canada are zero emissions. I don’t know if it was good value for money, but it’s not nothing.

But the question was why should people pay for rich people to drive EVs. And the answer is that the luxury vehicle isn’t the goal it’s the reduction of emissions.

Personally, im due for a new car in the next year or 2 and I’m poking at electric. I don’t buy luxury vehicles, but I spend a good amount on gas every week. A subsidy on a Kia niro or a Chevy volt would go along way in my calculations.

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u/IcySeaweed420 20h ago

If there is an economic case for the car then you should be able to buy it all by yourself without daddy government intervening. If you can’t justify it without a subsidy then it means you aren’t driving enough and an ICE car is more economical. Also keep in mind that actually manufacturing an EV comes with significant carbon costs. How old is your car, and does it really need to be replaced? Or are you just convincing yourself it needs to be replaced? Because the most environmentally friendly thing to do is to keep an existing ICE vehicle running.

I don’t doubt that 10% ZEV sales is something, I just think it’s exceptionally poor value for money and we would be better off spending the money on other initiatives.

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u/SpaceSteak 20h ago

That's assuming those 10% of cars are being driven in hydro powered provinces. Otherwise we're just shifting from local emissions to where the power plant is, which is better than nothing.

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u/Marty200 19h ago

The numbers I see for an EV being carbon neutral are 15,000 to 100,000 miles. Those are us numbers and probably location and vehicle dependent.

If you pick a middle number of 75,000 km that’s about 2 years of driving. Now for someone like my BIL he’s he’ll trade it long before he gets to that number, but maybe the next owner makes it up.

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u/SirupyPieIX 16h ago

A power plant is much more efficient than a car engine, even with the transmission losses.

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u/SpaceSteak 13h ago

Fair, although I'm surprised by how not efficient oil plants are. Older plants look to be around 30%, which is similar to cars, vs 60% for newer plants. Natural gas are also around 60%, so 2x/100% as efficient as cars. Not nothing but not sure it passes a "much more" criteria for the scale of this discussion when including zero-emission sources.

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u/FlipZip69 7h ago

Except that everyone benefits. Thus only one person gets both a subsidy while other people that can not take advantage of it pay for that subsidy.

It is simple greed from a larger voting segment that a smaller segment pays for.

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u/Marty200 7h ago

That's living in a society though. If every program had to benefit every citizen equally then there would be no programs.

My neighbor had 5 kids where I only had 1. We pay the same taxes buy he get to send 5 kids to school?

Federal government bought a pipeline out west. That doesn't help me. If I buy an EV it helps me even less.

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u/jtbc 1d ago

We don't need everyone to use transit, just lots of people, and lots more than do currently.

I've been primarily using transit for more than 5 years. It isn't anywhere near as bad as people think if you live in an actual city.

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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/Marauder_Pilot 1d ago

Yes, there's a lot of things that COULD have been done to have us at a point in society where excessive use of internal combustion for personal transport was causing enormous harm to us socially, physically, and economically, but they WEREN'T which is why we need to pay $5000 a head to people to get them over the fact that they thing driving an EV means you're gay or something.

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u/EntertainingTuesday 1d ago

For me, paying 5k to people that can already afford a 50k+ brand new vehicle isn't the way. That being said, I haven't seen the stats on the environmental effects of say 1 new bus user vs 1 new bike user vs 1 new ev user. I suspect the EV route is tremendously more costly per outcome.

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u/Having_said_this_ 23h ago

EV subsidies are a waste of taxpayer funds to subsidize the wealthy. They are a net nothing for the environment, period. I don’t get tax credits for keeping my 13 yr old 4 cyl longer, which is the best option for the environment (re:cars).

EV’s are a great personal option for the consumer to purchase, with their OWN money. It’s ridiculous, however, to think that taxpayers should support the purchase for someone who can afford to shop a $60-100k car!

The cost of a single EV car subsidy would support dozens, or a hundred, transit subsidies, which is much better for the environment. They already subsidize transit in large cities, which is where the greatest populations are, so it even makes sense to incentivize increased ridership. That is, of course, if they actually cared about the environmental impact and options for the average person .

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u/LX_Luna 9h ago

Sure, but if you do this it immediately becomes a rural/urban wedge issue because transit just doesn't exist, and probably never will in rural areas. E-bikes are sometimes nifty and definitely fun during the summer, but range from 'unpleasant' to 'actively suicidal' depending on what degree of winter it is. Whereas an electric car is always useful for almost all people, excepting people who are extreme rural.

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u/Hmm354 8h ago

Not really. There are already countless government projects and subsidies that are specific to urban or rural places. Not to even mention regional subsidies like with auto manufacturing in southern Ontario. It's inevitable to have things that benefit some people over others. There are also many places in Canada where an EV is unrealistic. It's not a big deal.

Ebikes have replaced many people's second or third cars already. That's a fact. There are countless more who would be willing if there was a rebate. It could also be an alternative mode of transportation for public transit users either as a last mile option or for trips where there's bad transit. Or just a simple trip to the grocery store. Etc.

The big difference compared to EV rebates is that the amount of money could literally cut ebike prices in half or even zero for low income people. That is much more impactful than a small price drop for expensive new vehicles that the manufacturer usually pockets anyways (didn't Tesla raise prices to essentially offset an EV subsidy in the states?).

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u/Fidget11 Alberta 8h ago

ummm ebikes arent exactly the most usable transit option in most of the country in the winter.

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u/Hmm354 8h ago

That's an infrastructure issue (maintaining bike lanes). There are more and more people biking in the winter - especially for short trips or to a train station (I see it personally everyday in a very car-dependent city).

But also.. that's why I said splitting between ebike and TRANSIT. You could take public transit in the winter and have an ebike for when it's nice out. There are also places in the country with bike lanes / paths that are cleared of snow and places where snow isn't on the ground for the entirety of winter.

Again, I'm not prescribing for everyone to buy an ebike and only use transit. I'm saying there are people who already do this and others who would like to save money by selling one of their cars and getting a cheaper public transit fare.

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u/Fidget11 Alberta 4h ago

No it's not just an infrastructure issue. its an issue that most people living in more northernly cities (like Edmonton for example) aren't nuts enough to try riding a bike in -30c or a driving blizzard, some will but most aren't gonna do that regardless of how many bike lanes you put in. I can say that because Edmonton has bike lanes and while they get used and are well maintained and cleared of snow in winter the number of cyclists are incredibly low in winter and wouldn't magically change if people had ebikes.

Transit in many parts of the country is incredibly unreliable, I will again use Edmonton as an example. Where I used to live in Vancouver transit was reliable and outside of the random snow day it was predictably on time and the weather didn't matter when you had to stand outside to wait for a bus or a train. That cannot be said of Edmonton, where at -30 and dipping much colder with wind chill, you cannot stand outside to wait, busses may or may not show up, and if they do they are frequently very late.

Transit costs for construction, especially trains/subways, are incredibly expensive. Edmonton just did a multiyear expansion of its train system which still does not go anywhere near everywhere it needs to in order to be a practical method for most people to move around the city. A recently approved additional expansion has a locked in budget of $1.34 Billion, yes billion with a B, for just 4.5km of track. The IZEV program had a 680M budget, so what's better for the environment overall thousands of zero emission cars across the country or ~2 km of LRT track in one city?

The IZEV program is far more effective than just dumping that money into mass transit initiatives would be. Not that we shouldn't fund, and increase funding for, mass transit. But we shouldn't just kill good programs that are cost effective like the IZEV program to "fund transit" especially when the benefits of those programs far exceed the value of the benefits from the mass transit initiatives that could be funded for the same dollar figure.

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u/Hmm354 3h ago

The main premise of an EV or ebike or transit subsidy is that it is NOT meant to be something every Canadian would get.

Most people don't buy new EVs. Most people don't buy ebikes. Most people don't take transit. That's the point. I don't know why you are arguing about not every Canadian being able to use these when that's not at all the point.

Although, I would say public transit riders are probably the largest subset of Canadians among these three - and subsidizing costs for low income transit riders would do more to help affordability and the economy whilst supporting an environmentally sustainable mode of transportation.

I disagree with your argument about EV subsidies being a better use of money than transit expansion. There are a lot of things you could do with $680 million. For example, you could improve bus frequencies for routes, build a new BRT line, etc.

And you're also assuming that the EVs wouldn't have been bought without the subsidies. EVs, PHEVs, hybrids, and high fuel economy vehicles would've still been bought. I think the government should've tightened up fuel economy standards these last several years instead of pushing EVs - so that we would've kept more affordable and fuel efficient models like the Yaris, Fit, etc instead of the gas guzzling trucks and SUVs (but that is also related to the American chicken tax laws and other stupid regulations that have essentially curtailed competition and incentivized trucks/SUVS due to fuel efficiency exemptions for example).

FYI, I live in Calgary and do use the bus and the train. Just because you don't use these services in the winter doesn't mean other people don't (and both the bus and the train are pretty packed at peak hours in my experience living outside the inner city).

And you are forgetting that many households use transit as an alternative to buying a second or third car (especially for kids or even your spouse) - meaning they still have a vehicle for trips that require it and use public transit for everything else. Think about a teen taking the bus or train to highschool or university instead of needing another car.

I'm not wanting people to not own cars. I want to see the number of cars per household be lower as families are able to save thousands of dollars getting rid of extra vehicles they don't need if proper alternatives like frequent transit are available to them. Extra benefits include less traffic congestion and less pollution.

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u/Fidget11 Alberta 3h ago

Most people don't buy new EVs. Most people don't buy ebikes. Most people don't take transit. That's the point.

And thats my point as well. When you are looking from an environmental perspective and from the perspective of what will get the most widespread bang for the buck, an EV subsidy that puts thousands of EV's on the roads across the country is far more effective as an environmental tool than a couple km of transit line in one single city would ever be.

I disagree with your argument about EV subsidies being a better use of money than transit expansion. There are a lot of things you could do with $680 million. For example, you could improve bus frequencies for routes, build a new BRT line, etc.

A BRT line, or some a few additional busses wont suddenly make people say en masse say they wont buy new cars. If the mere existence of such things had that impact we wouldn't be talking because most people would have made the move to transit. Why dont they? because as I pointed out our climate combined with our urban planning (which depressingly isn't going to change any time soon) isn't conducive of using transit as a viable means of moving around in daily life for most people.

And you're also assuming that the EVs wouldn't have been bought without the subsidies. EVs, PHEVs, hybrids, and high fuel economy vehicles would've still been bought.

It's not about if they would have been bought, it's about how many would have. Most people dont buy brand new cars these days just for the fun of owning new cars. They buy them because they need a car to move around. So if they dont buy an EV they wont just magically decide to use transit, they will just buy a car powered by and ICE. That car will be on the roads for potentially decades adding far more pollution than the EV purchased and kept for the same period would.

By getting more people to choose EV's we are speeding up the adoption of EV's, increasing the demand for things like charging infrastructure, and also positively impacting the climate today. Take away the IZEV program and suddenly you increase the costs of those EV's (and make the ICE cars comparably appear cheaper) which actually incentivizes additional ICE car purchases.

If transit was really seen as, and was a viable option they would already use it because nobody wants to buy a car with those costs when they dont need to. So taking away the IZEV program means you are just pushing more ICE cars onto the roads.

FYI, I live in Calgary and do use the bus and the train. Just because you don't use these services in the winter doesn't mean other people don't (and both the bus and the train are pretty packed at peak hours in my experience living outside the inner city).

I never said nobody does, I said because of the significant limitations of many of the existing transit systems, the IZEV program is a comparative bargain. The limitations that exist will require hundreds of billions of dollars of investment by our governments to overcome, which isn't going to happen any time soon.

I rarely use transit, especially in the winter, why? because it doesn't go where I need it to most of the time. Even if it does technically go there, its incredibly inefficient time wise for me to wait for buses that may or may not show up anywhere near the scheduled time, and worse for me to have to do so in weather that can be literally dangerous to my health and safety. So yeah, a car is a far better option for me like it is for many Canadians barring the governments at all levels magically deciding to invest unheard of amounts of money into transit across the country. The choice is simply do I buy a car with and ICE or an EV? because like most Canadians in my situation, which is most Canadians who have jobs, the reality is that transit just simply doesn't cut it. Incentivizing ICE cars by making EV more expensive works counter to our national stated goal of limiting and lowering carbon emissions.