Toronto, Ontario – In this week’s electric and autonomous vehicle report, the British Columbia government is hoping to spur EV adoption with the Go Electric EV Charger Rebate program, a Quebec car meetup broke a world record and Ontarians are starting to come around on electrification in a big way.
High-Rise, High-Voltage
The government of British Columbia has announced that it is expanding the Go Electric EV Charger Rebate program to better accommodate drivers living in apartment buildings and condos.
Condominiums, apartments and workplaces that purchase and install eligible EV chargers can now receive a rebate up to 50 percent of costs to a maximum of $2,000 per charger.
“To better support British Columbians living in condominiums and apartments, we’re offering rebates to make more buildings EV ready,” said Minister of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation, Bruce Ralston.
“With the highest uptake rates of EV adoption in North America, we want to make sure that more people supporting our transition to a low-carbon economy have easy access to charging infrastructure.”
The Silent Generation
You probably didn’t hear a thing, but a recent EV meetup in Quebec just broke a world record for the largest gathering of electric vehicles in one location, at 733 vehicles in a rolling procession.
In collaboration with Electric Mobility Canada (EMC) and Earth Day Canada, the silent fleet of electric cars lined up on Avenue José-Maria-Rosell on Oct. 24 for the fifth annual Saint-Hyacinthe three-day Electric Vehicle Show.
“The reason why we wanted to organize this event is just to show that there is a clear evolution of electric mobility and electric vehicle adoption in Quebec and Canada…We wanted to show that things are really evolving and more and more people are adopting electric vehicles,” said EMC’s president and CEO Daniel Breton.
This event shatters the previous record set at an event in Denmark where 402 EVs were paraded out.
Ontario Opinions
A recent report from Deloitte shows that attitudes around EVs are shifting for Ontarians, as the general preference for internal combustion engines has dropped by 22 percent over just the last year.
The 2021 Ontario Automotive Consumer Study shows that Ontarians are becoming more open to the idea of owning an EV as now less than half (48 percent) of Canadians would prefer to be driving a gas-powered vehicle than an EV.
Pricing, however, remains the most significant roadblock to more widespread adoption as 76 percent of respondents said that they would hope to pay less than $50,000 for an EV.
Deloitte says that if governments want EVs to be a mainstay, the importance of incentives and rebates can’t be ignored.
