Carmakers are pushing electrified vehicles into showrooms at warp speed, yet consumers yawn and regulators dither.
First, a market recap:

2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV
Chevrolet’s Bolt was just named Motor Trend’s Car of the Year, and justifiably so. The Bolt has seating for four, a 383-kilometre range, and you can have one early next year for $31,434 thanks to $11,361 in Ontario incentives.
Meantime, Chrysler now has its 2017 Pacifica plug-in. With subsidies, the price is $42,495. Not bad for a luxury minivan with an estimated electric-only range of up to 48 kilometres and a combined range of up to 850 kilometres.\

2017 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid cutaway.
Next year Jaguar will deliver a rival to the Tesla Model S. The Jaguar i-Pace will have a range of 300-plus km and will be priced in Model S territory.
Cadillac has the 2017 Cadillac CT6 Plug-In Hybrid coming next year, too. Battery-only range: 50-plus km, with combined range topping 600 km.
And on and on.

The Cadillac CT6 Plug-In Hybrid.
Carmakers are building them. Alas, consumers aren’t buying.
Green Car Reports estimates that 1,284 Canadians bought some kind of plug-in electric vehicle in September, for a market share of 0.74 percent.
Market forces will take hold eventually and sales will jump. But until then, governments must do their part to juice interest. They’re not.
The new Electric Vehicle Policy Report Card from Simon Fraser University’s Sustainable Transportation Action Research Team (https://sustainabletransport.ca/) suggests that without a change in government policies, Canada will not meet the goal of having 40 per cent of all new passenger-vehicle sales electric by 2040 — the target suggested by the International Energy Agency to limit global warming to two degrees.
Car companies are flooding the market with plug-ins. Now it’s up to governments to support them. Well see if this happens in the forthcoming National Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change.
Carmakers are pushing electrified vehicles into showrooms at warp speed, yet consumers yawn and regulators dither.
First, a market recap:
2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV
Chevrolet’s Bolt was just named Motor Trend’s Car of the Year, and justifiably so. The Bolt has seating for four, a 383-kilometre range, and you can have one early next year for $31,434 thanks to $11,361 in Ontario incentives.
Meantime, Chrysler now has its 2017 Pacifica plug-in. With subsidies, the price is $42,495. Not bad for a luxury minivan with an estimated electric-only range of up to 48 kilometres and a combined range of up to 850 kilometres.\
2017 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid cutaway.
Next year Jaguar will deliver a rival to the Tesla Model S. The Jaguar i-Pace will have a range of 300-plus km and will be priced in Model S territory.
Cadillac has the 2017 Cadillac CT6 Plug-In Hybrid coming next year, too. Battery-only range: 50-plus km, with combined range topping 600 km.
And on and on.
The Cadillac CT6 Plug-In Hybrid.
Carmakers are building them. Alas, consumers aren’t buying.
Green Car Reports estimates that 1,284 Canadians bought some kind of plug-in electric vehicle in September, for a market share of 0.74 percent.
Market forces will take hold eventually and sales will jump. But until then, governments must do their part to juice interest. They’re not.
The new Electric Vehicle Policy Report Card from Simon Fraser University’s Sustainable Transportation Action Research Team (https://sustainabletransport.ca/) suggests that without a change in government policies, Canada will not meet the goal of having 40 per cent of all new passenger-vehicle sales electric by 2040 — the target suggested by the International Energy Agency to limit global warming to two degrees.
Car companies are flooding the market with plug-ins. Now it’s up to governments to support them. Well see if this happens in the forthcoming National Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change.
About the Author / Jeremy Cato
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