These are difficult days for electric vehicles. Tesla sales are tanking and other automakers are scaling back how many EVs they plan to build this year.
There is one bright spot in the industry, even if its not going to move the global needle on EV demand: Canadian consumers are still flocking to low-emission vehicles.
In the first quarter new vehicle registrations of EVs, which includes full electrics and plug-in hybrids, grew 53 per cent compared with the same quarter last year even as new registrations of non-electrics slowed, according to Statistics Canada.
Canadians registered 47,000 new EVs last quarter, representing 11.3 per cent of all vehicle registrations. That share, which can be volatile from quarter to quarter, is down from a peak of 12.3 per cent in the third quarter of 2023, but still up from 8.6 per cent a year ago.
There’s no question EV growth in the United States has stalled. EVs accounted for 7.3 per cent of U.S. vehicle sales in the first quarter, according to estimates by Kelley Blue Book, essentially unchanged from the year before, and falling far short of the rosy expectations set out by automakers and policy makers in Washington.
Meanwhile, the roadblocks for EV growth south of the border accumulate. On Tuesday General Motors trimmed its EV production targets for the year citing weak demand, while America’s largest oil industry group filed a lawsuit on Thursday to block President Joe Biden’s push for half of all car sales to be electric by 2030.
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