We need to define what success looks like for the future Canadian EV sector.
The past two years will be remembered as the moment when the global electric vehicle market achieved hockey-stick growth, with year-over-year sales tripling from 2020 to 2022. Capital investment in the global EV supply chain has similarly surged as governments around the world offer a range of incentives in the scramble to secure vehicle production mandates, new battery plants and critical minerals.
Canadian governments, to their credit, have not been left on the sidelines in this global race. In the past year, Ottawa and Ontario, have deployed incentives to attract multibillion-dollar investments from Stellantis/LGES, Honda, Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen, Mercedes, and Umicore.
Governments across Canada, meanwhile, are building charging infrastructure and supporting EV-focused innovation in both university labs and accelerators. The Volkswagen announcement this month is a testament to that work.
And to do it in the face of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which would provide a battery factory approximately $2 billion per year of support, is all the more impressive and demonstrates a commitment to securing Canada’s place in global automotive value chains.
For the rest of this article: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2023/03/27/canada-must-now-build-on-ev-investments.html