Toronto, Ontario — Quebec announces plans to get two million electric cars on the road by 2030, autonomous cars grapple with angry drivers and insight on how the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) new emissions standards will affect you. This is the latest in electric and autonomous vehicles.
Electric Expansion
The Quebec government has proposed two draft regulations aiming to increase the requirements for the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) standard, and expanding the current target of 1.6 million cars in six years to two million cars by 2030.
Environment Minister Benoit Charette states that strengthening the ZEV standard from five years ago is crucial to achieve greenhouse gas reduction targets, currently requiring OEMs to ensure the supply, variety and availability of EVs in Quebec through a system of credits.
According to The Canadian Press, the province aims to achieve 100 percent of new vehicle sales to be EVs by 2035.
Off-script Drivers
Researchers at the University of Warwick are angering drivers then putting them into driving simulators, hoping to identify patterns in reckless and aggressive driving to prepare AVs for the realities of real-world driving.
This aims to quantify road rage into an empirical data set that AVs can understand, identifying behaviours such as swerving, lane jerking and impolite hand gestures as indicators for aggressive driving, thereby allowing the AV to safely navigate around these behaviours.
Currently, the study has confirmed serious gaps in aggressive driving research and suggests further research is needed to identify quantifiable metrics.
Power Balance
The U.S. EPA has proposed what some Americans have described as the “toughest ever” and “more stringent than anticipated” regulations, potentially allowing the federal government to dictate fleet-limits on emissions for vehicles between 2027 to 2032 model years.
This could result in EVs making up 67 percent of new vehicle sales by 2032, compared to Canada’s own mandate that requires 83 percent of new light-duty vehicles to be ZEVs.
Experts have called for OEM sales mandates as a way to ensure EVs remain in supply in Canada, with Ottawa saying that legislation will be enacted later this year.
