Canadians Bought More EVs in 2021, But Not at Europe’s Pace
Canadians Bought More EVs in 2021, But Not at Europe’s PaceThe good news for proponents of electric vehicles in Canada is that more of us bought either plug-in electric or all-electric models than ever before in 2021. In the first nine months of 2021, over 65,000 pluggable vehicles found buyers in Canada, up from about 54,000 in all of 2020, according to a new Canadian Press report. Data for the last quarter of 2021 is not yet available.
The bad news in that data is two-fold. First off, the 2020 figure was depressed by the advent of the novel coronavirus, so beating that figure is clearing a fairly low bar. And second, Canada is being outpaced in its switch to electric mobility by several European countries, where governments have implemented stricter emissions requirements and consumers are farther along the EV acceptance road.
Canadian Press provides some illuminating figures to show how we have fallen behind countries like France, Germany and the U.K., let alone world-leader Norway and its Scandinavian neighbours. In 2019, sales of EVs in Canada as well as in the aforementioned Western European countries accounted for between 2.5 and 3 percent of total new-vehicle sales. In the first nine months of 2021, that figure had climbed to 5 percent in Canada, but it soared to 18 percent in the U.K., to 19 percent in France and to 26 percent in Germany.
Joanna Kyriazis, a program manager at Clean Energy Canada, chose an optimistic interpretation, expressing the hope that Canada is merely behind the curve and that we are “about to see that same sort of exponential growth in EV sales if we can get around these supply issues.” The analyst pointed to surveys showing strong demand for electrified vehicles in Canada, which should only grow stronger if gasoline prices continue to rise.
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