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Honda shelves $11B Canada EV factory as its electric retreat deepens (electrek.co)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/63799437

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[–] 1 point 4 months ago (9 children)

Then explain to me (and remember Im an EV owner) why In 2025, zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs)—which include battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles—accounted for only 8.7% of all new motor vehicles sold in Canada. Thats DOWN from over 13% the year before after most of the rebates dropped. Obviously, with 92% of new buyers NOT choosing them, they're not appealing to many, especially since they've had about 30 years to convince people.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    Just bought my first EV, it was a bit steeper, but i expect to save $40,000 in maintenance and gas over the same 12 years i owned my previous car.

    Cant imagine ever going back to ICE.

    I'm curious where you are getting the sales drop, i see an increase: https://electricautonomy.ca/data-trackers/ev-sales-data/2026-03-13/zev-sales-in-canada-rise-to-11-2-per-cent-market-share-in-q4-2025-statscan/

    New ZEV registrations across Canada hit 11.2 per cent market share in Q4 2025, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada.

    While that is an increase over the 9.7 per cent market share of ZEVs from Q3 2025, it represents a drop in overall volume.

    If i had to guess why, its due to the incentives starting to wind down (such as BC droping its sales tax rebate), the cost offset is reducing.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    Those are registrations of EVs not sales, so it includes all EVs sold to date. The actual sales of new EVs are declining says Stats Canada:

    "Zero-emission vehicle sales: In 2025, 169,972 ZEVs were sold in Canada, a decline of 35.7% from 2024. This sharp decrease was likely influenced by changes to federal and provincial ZEV incentive programs. In particular, the suspension of the federal Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles program in January 2025, along with the reduction of rebates offered under Quebec's Roulez Vert program, likely contributed to lower ZEV demand in 2025.

    In 2025, new ZEVs accounted for approximately 8.7% of all new motor vehicles sold in Canada. Again, this represents a significant decline from 2024, in which ZEVs accounted for 13.8% of new motor vehicle sales."

    https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/260316/dq260316c-eng.htm

    There's nothing wrong with EVs for certain tasks, particularly commuting to work. But the uninformed claims that EVs are taking over gas cars and that a company is doomed if it doesnt jump into EVs is just silly. They're clearly NOT preferred by most buyers - and our north American automotive history is littered with many EV startups that have already tried and gone bankrupt. I think Lucid is on the brink just this week, and we've already seen Fisker, Canoo, Lordstown, Coda, Proterra, LION busses, Sparrow, Faraday and Nikola bite the dust. Electra Meccanica SOLO was designed and started in BC and its done too.

    I even have a tiny bit of money invested in an EV startup but after 7 years of struggle Im heavily doubting they'll make it to mass market.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    I definitely think if they were cost comprable, and they are headed in that direction, they will be the preferred option, but i agree that its happening a lot slower than I expected.

    Thanks for the links!

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Growth doesn't have be a straight linear line always going up. We're in a transitional stage where the big issues are currently being addressed. The growth in EV adoption has been exponential, i.e slow to start with 20 years of basically nothing then 5 years of some improvements with a bit more adoption. Then 5 years of explosive growth, and the next 5 years will likely include more explosive growth as we address all the issues that they currently have.

    Pretty much all technology improves like this until they plateau. Just look at mobile phones, they first popped up ~50 years ago and had very slow improvements for about ~25 years until they started to pick steam in the 2000s, and then absolutely exploded in the 2010s.

    You're just an old person yelling at clouds who can't read the writing on the wall.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

    I'll repeat it for the deaf ones at the back of the room - Ive not only owned an EV for 8 years now, I have money invested in two EV startups, Edison Motors (because its a hybrid truck) and Aptera (because its solar powered). Im a past member of my local EV Owners Club and I've been following EVs since I first spotted a Citicar in 1978, so the only part of your comment that is correct is that Im older and much wiser than you.

    The problem with your analogy with mobile phones is that when the smartphone came along, it was EXPONENTIALLY superior to anything that preceded it. Not only could it be a phone but its a handheld computer, wallet, GPS, text, camera, video, it can start your car, run your entire smart home... just about any electronic application can be applied. That beats a Nokia dumb phone by miles which is why everyone has one.

    Thats definitely NOT true of EVs. They do some things better - like lower maintenance costs and have more torque and less noise. But they also do somethings worse - like much longer 'refueling' for road trips and they are almost impossible to repair by owners, they lose considerable range in the cold and they are more expensive to buy. Which is why they will remain a niche product. Because some people will find them more useful but obviously a lot of people don't.

    There are some things that more money will solve, like charging infrastructure, but there are some physics problems that EVs will never solve - like how its impossible to put the same amount of energy into an EV that you have in the size of a gas tank of an ICE car. The little 10 gallon tank in an gas Fiat 500 will take you 500 kms. The Fiat 500 EV with a battery only goes 220 km using up MUCH more room for its battery and it weighs 500 pounds more. Poorer physics is impossible to market as 'superior'.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    It's cute that you think age means wisdom. If that were true, then the older ruling class wouldn't be absolutely fucking our planet.

    Every problem that EVs have, there's a solution for. People are actively working on them, and some government are pushing EVs for environmental reasons. Once the problems that they have are solved they will be objectively better than ICE cars.

    Also, mobile phones weren't always the objectively best choice. There was a period of time where landlines were the better option because of the lack of infrastructure supporting them. It wasn't until the infrastructure started to expand to cover everywhere that the explosive growth really happened.

    And your "physics problems" are also solvable, people are currently putting billions of billions of dollars into battery research. There will come a point where batteries are superior to a tank of fuel for most use cases. I don't want to be the person saying "oh, solid state batteries are right around the corner," because companies have been promising them "next year" for like a decade now. But they almost certainly will eventually be viable commercially, and they only need to be half as good as they promise to really push the viability of EVs for the majority of use cases.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    And your “physics problems” are also solvable, people are currently putting billions of billions of dollars into battery research. There will come a point where batteries are superior to a tank of fuel for most use cases.

    So, we're equating spending money with finding solutions to a physics problem?Would that money include the billions for the NorthVolt plant that just went belly up in Quebec? Doesnt seem very successful. Im glad you're certain cause the people with the big bucks certainly don't seem to be.

    Have you looked at BYD (the BIG Chinese EV maker) lately? It has a Q1 2026 net profit decline of 55% year-on-year. Thats massive. Companies that cant attract investors dont succeed and when Warren Buffet pulls out of your company after 17 years, you know things are bleak.

    Just because some companies spend big money does not in any way guarantee anything. "Hope" does not equal success. More accurately the number of EV startups that have failed far outnumbers the very few that appear to be succeeding. For now.

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