Latest / Kvetch & Release / Are Canadians getting more hesitant on purchasing EVs

Transcript

Are Canadians getting more hesitant on purchasing EVs · Kvetch & Release

• 0:02
  Hey, folks, we're back. It's not quite a free ride. It's
• 0:06
  a ride, though it costs a bit of money. That might be one
• 0:09
  of the problems that not everybody's jumping on board at the moment. Guess getting
• 0:14
  Canadians to consider getting an electric vehicle as their next vehicle purchase is remaining a
• 0:19
  tough sell. According to a JD Power survey that just came out, only
• 0:23
  eleven percent of new vehicle shoppers in the country say they are very likely to
• 0:27
  consider purchasing an EV as their next vehicle, a decline of three percent from
• 0:32
  last year. When you dive more into these figures, stats Canada has a
• 0:37
  few that are released that show that there were five thousand fewer EV registrations in
• 0:41
  the final quarter of last year compared to the third quarter. But having said
• 0:45
  that, gas power vehicle sales were flat or even slightly down as well in
• 0:49
  the fourth quarter. But despite the decline on the EV side, the fourth
• 0:52
  quarter figures were still the second best quarter ever in Canada. Join me to
• 0:57
  discuss and break down what does this all mean, What will it take to
• 1:00
  get Canadians to be purchasing EV's, What does it mean for windsor Essex and
• 1:03
  the birth of the EV industry that we have going on down here is someone
• 1:08
  who is very well aware of the file, helped to write the file quite
• 1:12
  frankly. Joining me right now is the president of the Automotive Arts Manufacturers Association
• 1:17
  of Canada, Flavio Volpe. How you doing, Flavia. Always a pleasure
• 1:19
  to be on with you, John, Thanks so much for joining. So
• 1:22
  we're looking at this hesitation here by Canadians. I don't know, so only
• 1:26
  eleven percent of Canadians say that they're very likely to considering purchase an EV.
• 1:30
  Next. Is that a concern for the industry. No, I think it's
• 1:36
  a good reflection on where people are in terms of comfort with the product.
• 1:40
  There's a couple of things that play here. Although let me just say that
• 1:42
  the context I think that you laid out is right. It's low, but
• 1:48
  it's higher than it was the year before, and it continues to grow.
• 1:51
  And overall sales were down or flat last year as well. So, you
• 1:56
  know, to cherry tick stats, you know this has become politicized for a
• 2:00
  lot of people. Is you know, excuse the picture a little bit.
• 2:05
  What I think is important to be real about is Canadians haven't interacted with evs
• 2:13
  in general. You know, I think that that same reports as slightly over
• 2:17
  fifty percent of been in one or driven one. Once you've driven one,
• 2:22
  and you've been in one, you understand that not only is it an almost
• 2:25
  identical experience in actual driving to an internal combustion engine vehicle, but it's a
• 2:31
  superior experience in the sense that it's very quiet. The torque is available right
• 2:38
  away, so you know, when you know, people say, what does
• 2:39
  torq mean? You know, to the non car people listening, that's you
• 2:43
  know, if you've ever described your car as zippy, that's what all these
• 2:46
  cars are. I think what people are worried about. I just came back
• 2:51
  from a business in Germany where I rented an EV from Frankfurt to Wolfsburg,
• 2:58
  which is kind of like going from Windsord to toront in Germany and in other
• 3:01
  places. You know, my GPS showed fifty places to do a quick charge
• 3:07
  if I needed to on the way between the two. I think what people
• 3:09
  are hesitant about in this country, and they still need to see kind of
• 3:13
  proof that government is government and industry is as committed to charging as is to
• 3:17
  making these vehicles, is what do I do when I need to charge?
• 3:23
  And in big cities in Europe, they just kind of plug them in their
• 3:25
  houses at night. And if you're just kind of driving around the city,
• 3:30
  if you're just driving around windsor you may never go to a charging the center.
• 3:36
  But you know, I think this is what plays into that number.
• 3:38
  Well. I wonder if this is an issue of framing, and maybe it's
• 3:45
  a target issue that the FEDS have set themselves by saying we're going to go
• 3:47
  one hundred percent EV sales by twenty thirty five. With each passing day that
• 3:53
  we're not getting, you know, closer and closer to that, it looks
• 3:55
  like it's a further away objective. We've talked about this before, or whether
• 4:00
  or not that one hundred percent is realistic? Do you think that what I'm
• 4:02
  discussing here, like, is this a framing issue? Is the media just
• 4:05
  responding to what the FEDS have put out and going, uh, oh,
• 4:10
  we're not gonna make it guys. Yeah, in part, I think you're
• 4:14
  right. And then in that you know, if I listen to it and
• 4:15
  I'm not in the business like I am, I might say, God,
• 4:19
  you're gonna force me to something that I'm kind of nervous about. I don't
• 4:21
  know how it works, and I'm not sure if I could chardge, and
• 4:25
  I don't want to be in it. I say to people that the real
• 4:27
  number is thirty five percent, and which is a tremendous number. But one
• 4:31
  third of all vehicles or slightly more, maybe up to forty percent by twenty
• 4:35
  thirty five will be electric and the rest of us will be in plug in
• 4:39
  hybrids. You know, everybody's gonna have a chance to plug in the car
• 4:42
  and do fifty sixteen hundred kilometers all electric if they want, and in a
• 4:46
  lot of use cases it'll almost never make sense to switch to that. And
• 4:49
  you need internal combustion. If you take that number thirty five percent, and
• 4:54
  that gives you comfort, trust me, John, you're gonna have me on
• 4:58
  for the next ten years. Here. There's no pressure buy the vehicle because
• 5:02
  you want it, by the vehicle because it's superior. One of the things
• 5:05
  I was talking to a major, a very high level exec. You know,
• 5:10
  it's a chief purchasing officer for one of the biggest car companies on the
• 5:15
  planet, in a meeting that I had yesterday, and he was saying,
• 5:18
  you know what they've got. There are two car family, his partners at
• 5:25
  home, and she maybe goes she's got a plug in hybrid. She goes
• 5:32
  to the gas station once a month. The rest is a charge. And
• 5:35
  he thinks that the equivalent of a tank costs him like five or six dollars
• 5:41
  cost her five or six dollars. You know, if your listeners hear that,
• 5:45
  it's say, I'm just coming at home and I plug it at home
• 5:47
  and I never have to worry about it. Of five or six bucks compared
• 5:50
  to the four hundred bucks you might spend on a tank of gas a week
• 5:56
  is a that's great. And if the car looks and operates to say,
• 6:00
  but it is kind of quite, I think that's kind of a Those are
• 6:02
  the things they're gonna tip the needle. The prime minister won't be the prime
• 6:05
  minister in twenty thirty five, the premier won't be, the president won't be
• 6:10
  government. Successive governments are going to back off that one hundred percent peace.
• 6:13
  And I encourage everybody to try and at your car. You'd be surprised by
• 6:17
  two things. Just how similar it's a car to the car that you're driving.
• 6:24
  And then number two. You probably like how quickly all the power that
• 6:28
  it has comes on. And any car, even the smallest powered electric cars,
• 6:31
  are really kind of zippy. They're kind of fun to be around.
• 6:34
  And if they cost you four hundred dollars less a months, or if you're
• 6:38
  driving a pickup, it might cost you six hundred dollars less a month.
• 6:41
  I mean, that kind of mass appeals to me too. Well, I
• 6:44
  would think so. I mean, listen, the biggest thing is, as
• 6:46
  you said, the cost to fill up the vehicle, five dollars is a
• 6:50
  lot cheaper than filling it up with traditional gasoline. And it actually creates the
• 6:55
  situation where it's like, oh, I could go, you know, just
• 6:59
  driving again. I could just jump in the car and go for a drive
• 7:02
  with the windows down. And that's something that's increasingly difficult these days. Yeah,
• 7:08
  yeah, Look, you know, four hundred bucks for some people is
• 7:12
  just getting back to a later level. And if you're in you know,
• 7:16
  and if you're concerned, if you're sitting in a town like Windsor where the
• 7:21
  major players there have committed to electrification, you go, oh, man,
• 7:25
  if we don't an electrifly are these investments at stake? They really aren't.
• 7:30
  Eighty percent of what we make it's exported to the US. If if thirty
• 7:34
  five percent of the US market goes electric, you know, only thirty five
• 7:39
  that's five or six million cars a year. And the capacity that we're producing
• 7:44
  in Windsor is half a million a year. You know, the electric future
• 7:49
  for you know, the people who are working in the industry in Windsor is
• 7:58
  going to be so bright from your job and your drop security point of view.
• 8:03
  And then if you want to buy one, buy one. If you
• 8:05
  don't want to buy one, don't buy one. I'll tell you I'm a
• 8:07
  big horsepower guy. I love hearing my cars. If you saw it was
• 8:11
  in my driver, you'd say, I'll tell you were in the electric business.
• 8:15
  But I'm definitely definitely going at an electric car for city stuff, and
• 8:24
  it might be a big horsepower one. John too. There are also the
• 8:26
  quickest one. Well, I heard the electric Challenger is still going to make
• 8:30
  a lot of noise, isn't it. I'd better make a lot of noise
• 8:33
  if they want me for sure. There you go. Last question for you
• 8:37
  before I let you go today, when can we expect you to be opening
• 8:39
  up this Windsor Office of the APM A again. Well it's open this week,
• 8:43
  so yeah, we're really happy. University of Wins has been such a
• 8:48
  great partner for decades really and especially the last ten years or so, been
• 8:52
  real partners in holding the line on automotives in this country. And so we've
• 9:00
  got Mike Builton and Karen Spears, two industry people that are working for us
• 9:05
  full time, and they're going to do it at the Ed Lumley Building in
• 9:09
  the Engineering School right beside some of the best leaders in this country on advanced
• 9:16
  automotor technology. Absolutely, just such great staff.