Canadian goals re reducing gas-powered vehicles

In My Humble Opinion
1

If you are in Canada, better make those plans:

All light vehicles - cars and trucks - must be zero emissions by 2035.

This will never happen. Trudeau has demanded that auto makers release their plans next year for increasing the market share of electrics to 20% by 2026, just two model years away.

Since the cars are already being sold at a loss, and there is a huge federal subsidy, I’m not sure exactly what car makers are supposed to do to guarantee that 20% of their vehicles sold are electric in 2026.

As a reminder, 70% of all light duty vehicles sold in Canada are pickup trucks. So far, none of the electric pickup trucks are moving. No one wants them. But somehoe, the government can mandate that we all buy them, when the average price in Canada for an EV is well over $60,000, and the EV trucks are closer to $100,000. Getting to 20% by 2026 would require something like 70% of all car sales be electric cars. In two years. Madness.

But if you were planning an EV purchase, you might want to get your house service upgraded, because if we come anywhere close to the numbers the government wants it’s going to get more and more expensive to upgrade house services for level 2 and 3 chargers. I’ve been told that our neighborhood can only handle a handful of upgrades before all the distribution tranformers and wiring have to be upgraded, requiring tearing up all the streets. If you don’t upgrade now, it might be a long, long time before it’s possible again.

2

Did your cite say that twenty percent of car sales must be electric by 2026?

3

That’s not right. 70% of the Canadian market is light trucks, but that includes SUVs, CUVs, and minivans (as well as pickups). The pickup market share is 24%.

4

Why yes, it does. I take it you didn’t read it?

Bolding mine. Again, 70% of all vehicles sold in Canada are trucks. Trudeau thinks that in two years we’ll either be selling 70% electric cars, or somehow there will be a huge uptake in electric trucks. Given that none of the manufacturers are planning ‘low end’ (ie $60,000) trucks until 2025 at the earliest, and that almost no one in Canada bought the Lightning or any other electric truck to date, this is obviously not going to happen.

In 2030, just six model years away, the mandate is for 60% of all cars and trucks to be electric. Since only 30% of our vehicles are cars, that means that a large percentage of light trucks will have to be EV by then. This will also not happen. Battery powered trucks do not work well in Canada.

The cynic in me says they are doing this for ideological reasons, knowing that they are going to get wiped out in the next election and the next government will overturn this ridiculous legislation immediately.

That business about mandates ensuring that supplies will go to Candians is just utter bullshit made up out of whole cloth. The truth is that the mandate will drive up costs, make Canadians a captive market, and force us into a technology that’s not ready for prime time in a huge, cold country. If people actually follow this nonsense, it will be nothing but destructive until it’s repealed.

What this is also likely about is that the Federal government here gave a 12 billion dollar gift to build a battery plant in Canada, just as other manufacturers announced slowdowns in battery production due to lack of demand for EVs. So now they are going to try to create demand through mandate. Good work, Justin,.

5

I believe the mandate calls for zero emissions vehicles, not all of which need to be purely electric vehicles.

6

Oh, right you are. I didn’t know CUVs were in there, though. That’s a strange addition to the category since they are basically cars on car chassis, used like cars.

But even 24% pickup trucks makes it impossible to get to 100% zero emissions by 2035. There is no way we can replace our trucks with electric vehicles. The voters who live in the GTA and dominate our politics don’t seem to understand just how big, cold, and spread out the prairie provinces are.

One ‘out’ is if they consider plug-in hybrids to be ‘zero emission’. If so, then expect to see a lot of trucks like the Dodge Ramcharger, which is a battery truck that left the 375 HP engine under the hood to act as a generator. THAT would work. But it’ll be expensive, more complicated, and requires the retaining of the entire supply chain of gas engine parts, service, oil changes, etc. Canadians are already mortgaged to the hilt and our standard of living is going nowhere. We can’t afford $100,000 trucks and $73,000 for cars, that being the average price of an EV sale last year in Canada.

Currently, EVs are for well off people commuting in cities. Especially suburban people with garages. That’s the sweet spot for EVs today. Upper middle class white collar workers who use their vehicles primarily to go to work and back and light chores like groceries. They often have second vehicls for longer trips, carrying loads, etc.

Expanding the market from there to the people who buy cheap compact cars, truck drivers, apartment dwellers, rurtal people, farmers, etc. is not going to be easy.

7

Yeah, I just wrote about that. Plug-in Hybrids might apply.

But calling a truck with a 375HP gas generator ‘zero emissions’ strikes me as a bullshit way of getting out of the fact that we can’t currently do true zero-emissions trucks without losing a huge amount of utility.

8

Thank you for acknowledging your mistake.

9

They do:

There are three types of ZEVs on the market:

battery-electric (BEV)
plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV)
hydrogen fuel cell (FCV)

Whether a PHEV is bullshit or not depends, IMO, on the amount the battery is expected to cover in actual practice. This will depend on the distribution of owner behavior. My parents get something like a 90% reduction in gas usage from their 40-mile PHEV. That’s pretty solid. But someone with a 40-mile one-way commute might only see a <50% reduction unless they plug in at work.

10

I had a PHEV that was rated at 20 miles of electric, and actually did less than that. When we sold it, i checked, and we’d driven half of all our miles on battery. The new PHEV’s, for me, would be like occasionally renting a gas-powered car for road trips.

11

I really like plug-in hybrids. Especially series hybrids like the BMw i3 or the Dodge Ramcharger.

As a reminder, a parallel hybrid, which is what almost all hybrids are right now, retain the entire gas drivetrain - engine, transmission, differential/transfer case, etc., but add some electric motors and a smaller battery to supplement the gas engine. In a PHEV the battery is large enough to allow for 20-30 miles of battery-only driving, but only under certain conditions like maximum speeds.

A series hybrid is just a battery-electric car with a gas or diesel range extender. The engine is connected to nothing but a generator, and the transmission and differentials are gone. The only thing the engine is used for is charging the battery.

In Canada, PHEVs have their own problems. That 30 mile battery-only range may turn out to be close to zero in winter if you start out with a cold battery. Many PHEVs need engine heat to heat the cabin, but not all. Count on your electric-only range being about half to 1/3 in winter of what it is in summer. If that works for you, get a PHEV.

But calling the Ramcharger and other future PHEV trucks ‘zero emissions’ is pretty ridiculous. It has a 375hp gas engine. Even if the engine only runs half the time it will still likely consume more fuel and emit more CO2 than a gas economy car over a given year. It has a 94 kWh battery, which should give it decent enough battery-only range when driving it around town, but hook up a trailer, load up the bed, or hit the highway, and that big engine will be running.

12

In Canada, at least in places that get seriously cold (so not Vancouver), most people have a parking spot with power for a block heater, so they’re going to have at least level 1 charging. Why are they starting out with a cold battery?

13

No one is putting a level 3 charger at home.

The complete guide to Level 1 vs. Level 2 vs. Level 3 charging for EVs — ChargeLab.

14

So why would anyone concerned about emissions buy a Ramcharger instead of a gas economy car?

15

More BS that any household will need a level 3 (DC) charger. This is not even remotely necessary, and is part of the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) being peddled. You’ve been told this before and you know better. But here we are.

16

First, trucks don’t fit in standard garages. So everyone has them out on the street. Second, most job sites do not have places to charge your truck.

Put in an 8 hour day at the refinery or the construction site, and your truck battery will be cold as ice when you leave work. In the Ford Lightning, heating up the battery with the battery can cost 20-30% of range, and you’ll be sitting for some time until your battery is up to temp.

Yeah well, not right now. But the Ford Pro charger for the Lightning can draw 80 amps. Older homes in Edmonton have 60 amp services. Our home has a 100 amp service, but of course we don’t have 80 amps free. Only homes built in the last decade or so have 150A services, and they are the only ones that can install a Pro Lightning or other high amp charger without a service upgrade, which around here is $15,000 to $35,000.

Furthermore, we will have to upgrade the wiring and distribution transformers throughout the city if we want to upgrade more than a small percentage of homes to a service level that can handle fast EV charging. As most of our electrical infrastructure is buried, that would require tearing up streets throughout the city.

Without that, those truck owners with 100kWh batteries are going to be hurting:

A level 1 charger charges a Lightning at a rate of 2 miles of range per hour. So 12 hours of charging gets you 24 miles of range. Fully charging the truck with the included charger would take 160 hours or so.

The 240v midrange charger charges at 13 mph, so 12 hours of charging gets you 156 miles. About 25 hours of charging to fill the battery. 60A service houses are unlikely to be able to,use this charger, and many 100A houses as well.

The Pro charger needs 8 hours to charge the truck from 15% to 80%. With service upgrade and installation, a pro charger can cost from $23,000 to $45,000. If your city will upgrade your service.

Trucks are just difficult because they need big batteries, which means big charging requirements beyond what most homeowners can manage with the current infrastructure. in winter, those big batteries need more energy to heat and keep warm, which saps the range of trucks even ore.

I don’t think battery trucks will have much impact in Canada. We will have to go to plug in hybrid trucks.

17

Move the goalposts much? I was responding to a comment about PHEV with 30 miles of range. Full-size EV pickups obviously have different requirements.

Also, you don’t need to fit in a garage to have access to level 1 charging. Or are you now claiming that most people with pickups in western Canada (many of whom absolutely do park in garages, but whatever) can’t plug in their block heaters? Stop being ridiculous.

18

Level 3 chargers start at 50KW which is 200A at 240V. I repeat, no one is putting an L3 charger at home.

If those truck are really need for people who live in Edmonton and work in the oil patch - and I expect 80% of those never haul work items in the truck bed - then maybe it’s on the employer to set up L3 chargers on site.

19

Huh. My truck is parked in my driveway. I guess everyone does not have them out on the street.

I charge my LEAF in my driveway. (beside my truck). Not a problem. But then this does not fit with Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Keep on telling us what “everyone” has.

20

Cue the bleats from those folks who have to drive their one ton dually truck 500km to work every day over a snowy mountain pass loaded with 500kg of work tools, hauling a trailer full of hay and there are no chargers anywhere.

Yes there are outliers who will need special vehicles for special needs. And these outliers may be best served with gasoline or diesel vehicles.

But the dude in Edmonton who drives his 3/4 ton pickup truck from Windermere to his downtown office on the 24th floor of the MNP Tower building really does not have my sympathy.