Canada's EV mandate must be repealed, Ford Canada CEO says
Ford Canada CEO Bev Goodman said June 10 that Canada's zero-emission vehicle mandate must be repealed as the consumer appetite for electric vehicles falls dramatically short of government requirements.
'The targets on full battery-electric vehicles need to be aligned with what customers want, and customers have spoken,' she said at the Canada Automotive Summit, hosted in Vaughan, Ont., by the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association.
Goodman said the automaker's EV sales dropped 'like a stone' to start 2025 after the $5,000 federal EV incentive program ran out of cash in mid-January.
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Ford Canada does not release monthly or quarterly sales results, but nationwide figures show ZEV sales in February and March slid to 20,878 vehicles. That's down 44.2 per cent compared with the same two months a year earlier, according to the latest data available from Statistics Canada.
ZEV sales for February and March represented 6.6 per cent of total vehicle sales in Canada, far short of government adoption requirements.
The legislated federal targets require ZEVs to account for 20 per cent of automaker sales in model year 2026, 60 per cent in 2030 and 100 per cent in 2035.
Goodman said without the incentives and other enablers that will allow Canadians to go electric such as charging infrastructure, Ottawa is not positioned to deliver on its 'very aggressive' targets. The same applies to the provincial EV mandates on the books in Quebec and British Columbia, she said.
'Ultimately, it will have a negative impact, if these mandates stick, on the industry. It will have downward pressure on vehicle sales, it will have upward pressure on pricing, and those are real concerns for consumers and the industry as a whole.'
Goodman said Ford and other automakers that build vehicles in Canada are engaging with Ottawa on getting the legislation repealed.
Environment and Climate Change Canada, the lead federal department on the mandate, known officially as the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard, did not immediately respond to request for comment.
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