This opinion was written by David Berman and was published in the Globe & Mail on June 24, 2024.
With electric-vehicle adoption more widespread, public curiosity seems to be waning as consumers’ comfort levels rise
I used to feel like a celebrity in my electric vehicle. I frequently fielded questions from curious onlookers, received the occasional thumbs-up from drivers who admired my futuristic-looking car and exchanged nods of recognition with other EV owners.
My 15 minutes of fame are over, though. The curious onlookers have all but disappeared and the nods have turned to blank stares. I’m just another driver.
One explanation is that my EV, a Hyundai Ioniq 5, was a new and much-anticipated model when I began driving it in early 2022. Now, it’s a veteran on the road, while a host of other swishy EVs have appeared on the scene.
But I wonder if something else is going on here. Perhaps my fading profile is a sign that EV ownership is now common and widely understood, which is a good thing. With EV sales capturing significant market share in Canada and around the world, maybe we are approaching a new phase where adoption has sufficient momentum even amid fading government rebates.
Oh, I know that EV sales are struggling right now as consumers face high borrowing costs, premium prices and continuing – though misplaced – concerns about range and limited charging infrastructure.
Tesla Inc. has slashed prices on some of its vehicles over the past year and has laid off workers. Ford Motor Co. is delaying the release of new models and expects US$5.5-billion in losses associated with EV sales in 2024. And Mercedes-Benz now expects EVs to comprise 50 per cent of its sales by 2030, five years later than the German carmaker’s previous forecast.
One could argue, then, that declining curiosity about EVs is a reflection of waning interest.
However, the numbers tell a different story. The Canadian market share of new battery electric-vehicle sales – which doesn’t include hybrids – increased to 8.1 per cent last year, up from 6.5 per cent in 2022, according to Statistics Canada.
In the United States, the EV share of new vehicle sales last year increased to 7.6 per cent from 5.9 per cent in 2022, according to estimates from Kelley Blue Book via Cox Automotive. In a disappointing year for EV sales, in a country that has been slower to adopt EVs than Canada, China and most of Europe, 1.2 million U.S. consumers went electric, up 48 per cent from the previous year.
Globally, there were more than 500 EV models in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency, more than double the number since 2018. EVs are no longer head-turning novelties – well, other than the Tesla Cybertruck – because there are so many of them on the roads.
Any one can see that they work just fine. They’re quiet and they accelerate like bullets. And the cost of gas is a constant reminder that EVs are generally much cheaper to operate than cars with internal combustion engines.
Most EV owners are not struggling to find public chargers. In neighbourhoods, it’s growing increasingly clear that homecharging looks like a major convenience compared with frequent trips to stinky gas stations.
Who needs to ask questions about EVs when the answers are so readily apparent?
Even fewer government incentives for EVs shouldn’t cause anything more than a hiccup in sales if car buyers are gravitating toward EVs anyway.
In Ontario, for example, when the province killed off its $14,000 rebate in 2018, EV sales fell 20 per cent in the following year, according to the Canada Energy Regulator. EV sales had fully recovered by 2020, though, and picked up considerably from there.
By 2021, Ontario EV sales – not including hybrids – were 80 per cent above 2018 levels. By 2022, sales were more than three times 2018 sales.
Quebec, where 15 per cent of new vehicles registered in the past year were fully electric, is now scaling back its own incentive. The province announced earlier this year that it will start to wind down its $7,000 rebate starting in January, 2025. The province will end the rebate in 2027.
There is no denying that rebates are a powerful motivator for price-sensitive consumers, me included. The federal government’s $5,000 rebate, introduced in 2019, certainly helped Ontario EV sales recover from their initial downturn.
However, the federal rebate offset less than a third of the provincial one, so there were likely other factors boosting sales. Like word-of-mouth, new models, an expanding charging infrastructure and resignation to the fact that the world appears to be going electric.
The proliferation of EVs, and the rising comfort level among consumers, has got to be playing a big role here, too. Indeed, we may be nearing a point where the balance will tip toward EVs – in the sense that consumers will consider EVs first, gas-burning cars second.
Are we there yet? My new anonymity suggests that we may be very close.
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