Tag: technology

Do EVs meas­ure up? Winter test­ing by the CAA offers up some sur­pris­ing res­ults

We drove 14 of them through sub­zero tem­per­at­ures until they ran `dry’ — on pur­pose

The plan for 14 battery electric vehicles gathered by the CAA? Charge them up, run them in subzero Canadian winter conditions and record how far they went.

This article was written by Michael Bettencourt and was published in the Toronto Star on March 15, 2025.

MONT­TREMBLANT, QUE. The last thing any auto­maker wants to see dur­ing EV test­ing is their vehicle need­ing a tow. Yet that’s exactly what the plan was for 14 bat­tery elec­tric vehicles gathered by the CAA: charge them up, run them in chilly, but com­mon sub­zero Cana­dian winter con­di­tions, then record exactly how far they trav­elled by the time they slowly expired by the side of the road.

This had been planned care­fully to make sure all 14 expir­ies didn’t hap­pen unsafely on the side of a busy high­way, which we drivers appre­ci­ated.

The goal was to check how the winter dis­tances actu­ally trav­elled com­pared to the offi­cial gov­ern­ment range rat­ings given to the vehicles. These rat­ings are gen­er­ally seen to rep­res­ent close to a best­case scen­ario, as gas vehicle effi­ciency rat­ings do.

It’s true the vast major­ity of EV char­ging is done at home or work for local driv­ing. But, for longer drives, or those without home­work charge options, bat­tery elec­tric vehicle drivers in Canada can’t always just find an avail­able char­ging sta­tion along their route. And even if they do, it’s import­ant for them to real­ize that, unlike at a gas sta­tion, rechar­ging their EV in winter is going to take longer.

None of these elec­tric vehicles hit their offi­cial range, even with care­ful driv­ing at the speed limit. Not even close. But this was winter. So this may sur­prise no one, given that tem­per­at­ures ranged between ­6 C and ­15 C on our full two days of range and DC quick­charge test­ing.

Some EVs here actu­ally got closer to their offi­cial num­bers than we expec­ted, while oth­ers fared worse.

But, on aver­age, this group of 14 EVs were recor­ded roughly a quarter less range than their win­dow stick­ers advert­ised.

Before we detail which EVs and com­pan­ies fared best and worst at trav­el­ling the fur­thest in the cold, how accur­ate each vehicle pre­dicted this reduced range to the driver and other key para­met­ers, it’s worth high­light­ing how these fig­ures were achieved.

The big range test star­ted in Ott­awa and ended in Mont­Tremb­lant, Que., but unlike the two hours that the usual 162­kilo­metre drive takes, our much more mean­der­ing route totalled 431 kilo­metres. This con­sisted of four to seven hours of driv­ing in total, the route designed to exceed the winter range of most of these EVs, all of which could eas­ily make the usual route in winter on a full charge. The dis­crep­ancy in times stems from the dif­fer­ence in size of some of the bat­ter­ies. This meant some vehicles trav­elled a lot longer (and farther) than oth­ers.

Unfor­tu­nately, at least one TV report I saw framed the test as an EV “Will I make it on a full charge?” mys­tery, before show­ing the Kia EV6 being hauled onto a flat­bed.

Umm, no, the plan was for the vehicle not to make it. If it had made it, as the Chev­ro­let Sil­verado EV did, it would have been obliged to loop around our des­tin­a­tion hotel until it finally ran out of elec­trons.

While this report covered details of driv­ing from Ott­awa to Mont-Tremb­lant, it didn’t state the offi­cial dis­tance of this CAA­planned route, or any men­tion at all that we were tak­ing a route more than 2.5 times the usual dis­tance from the nation’s cap­ital to the mecca of Que­bec ski coun­try.

The CAA organ­izers made a few other requests (as well as the stip­u­la­tions that we stick to our assigned route and to speed lim­its). We were to keep auto cli­mate con­trols set to 21 C at the low­est fan set­ting, no cruise con­trol, no extra regen­er­a­tion modes and no over-or under­aggress­ive driv­ing styles designed to extract more dis­tance (so called “hyper­mil­ing”). Not even heated seats or steer­ing wheel were allowed.

Driv­ing no more than five over the limit did feel like hyper­mil­ing often in the super­quiet Ford F­150 Light­ning Lariat ER (exten­ded range) I drove. It was one of only three vehicles to slowly roll to a stop once it hit a zero per cent charge. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV9 were the other two with no “reserve” elec­trons.

But, if those two were any­thing like the Light­ning, that last one per cent las­ted much longer than the closely watched per­cent­age points just above it. Oth­ers las­ted between four kilo­metres (Volvo XC40 Recharge) and 28 kilo­metres (Sil­verado EV and Honda Pro­logue) bey­ond zero per cent.

While most of the 14 EVs star­ted fully charged, the two elec­tric pickup trucks did not. My Light­ning star­ted the day at 89 per cent charged, while the Sil­verado EV star­ted out with the low­est state of charge of the day, at 73 per cent.

This was not done on pur­pose, but happened due to a com­bin­a­tion of much lar­ger bat­ter­ies in the EV pickup trucks than the oth­ers, plus slower overnight char­ging speeds than expec­ted in sub­zero tem­per­at­ures using 240­volt Level 2 char­ging. As with all such real­world tests, there will always be unex­pec­ted vari­ables that come up, but the CAA range fig­ures for these EV trucks are still instruct­ive.

As the Sil­verado EV was 73 per cent charged, the CAA cal­cu­lated what 73 per cent of its offi­cial 724kilo­metre range would be (roughly 529 kilo­metres), then com­pared its achieved winter driv­ing dis­tance to its cal­cu­lated “offi­cial” fig­ure, then did the same for the elec­tric F­150.

This made it even more remark­able that it still man­aged to travel the farthest of the entire group, at 456 kilo­metres, thanks to its massive bat­tery, rated at roughly 204 kW in usable size.

Which vehicle went farthest? Charged the quick­est? And lost the least range in the cold?

The dis­ad­vant­age to the Sil­verado EV not being fully charged was that the CAA couldn’t dir­ectly observe how close it would have got­ten to its offi­cial 724 kilo­metres of range. But using the effi­ciency achieved over a roughly three­quarter charge, it was cal­cu­lated that it might have trav­elled only 14 per cent less than its offi­cial range, or roughly 623 kilo­metres in total on a full charge. This 14 per cent loss was tied for the best in the entire group, along with the Pole­star 2, a four­door Tesla Model 3 rival that’s much more effi­cient over­all than the Sil­verado, but, of course, has a much smal­ler bat­tery.

After the Sil­verado EV, the five vehicles that trav­elled the farthest were:

Tesla Model 3 at 410 kilo­metres, but rated at 584 kilo­metres

Pole­star 2 at 384 kilo­metres, rated at 444 kilo­metres

Kia EV9 at 349 kilo­metres, rated at 435 kilo­metres

Volk­swa­gen ID. 4 at 338 kilo­metres, rated at 423 kilo­metres

The quick­est char­ging EV of them all in the 10 to 80 per cent cold weather DC test was the Kia EV9, at 33 minutes, a sur­pris­ing 10 minutes and 12 minutes quicker than the Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5, respect­ively, and all of the 2024 mod­els. (Only the Tesla Model 3 and the F­150 Light­ning in this test were 2025s.)

All of the quick charge tests were done at the same Elec­trify Canada loc­a­tion, one of the few in the coun­try with four 350 kW charge ports.

The next quick­est in this 10 to 80 per cent test was the VW ID. 4 com­pact SUV (34 minutes), and the Model 3 (37 minutes), fol­lowed by a slew between 40 and 45 minutes. Bot­tom of this list was the Toyota bZ4X, which came in at a pain­ful 92 minutes.

The full res­ults of the tests are at the CAA’s web­site, and are a valu­able resource for poten­tial EV buy­ers con­cerned about winter range. (Even if there are no pho­tos of EVs on flat­beds.)

The goal was to check how the winter dis­tances actu­ally trav­elled com­pared to the offi­cial gov­ern­ment range rat­ings given to the vehicles

Ontario delays diver­sion rate plan

Only 12p er cent of singleuse batteries and 13 per cent of rechargeable batteries were recycled in 2022, short of the 40 per cent target, according to the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority.

This article was written by Patty Winsa and was published in the Toronto Star on February 5, 2025.

The Ontario gov­ern­ment is push­ing back a plan to increase diver­sion rates for bat­ter­ies this year, giv­ing the bat­tery man­u­fac­tur­ers, who now over­see the pro­gram, an extra year to reach a tar­get to recycle 50 per cent of the bat­ter­ies pur­chased in the province.

The province is also com­bin­ing recyc­ling tar­gets for single­ use and rechargeable bat­ter­ies into one cat­egory, which could hinder the devel­op­ment of recyc­ling streams for small, hard to recycle bat­ter­ies as pro­du­cers look to heav­ier bat­ter­ies that are easier to recycle to meet tar­gets, which are meas­ured by weight.

“It’s a ques­tion of, `Are you actu­ally push­ing and driv­ing more mater­i­als to be recycled?’ ” said Peter Har­greave, an envir­on­mental con­sult­ant, of the move to com­bine tar­gets for recyc­ling streams. “I think the con­cern is that as we water these reg­u­la­tions down, the type of pro­gress we want to see poten­tially isn’t going to hap­pen,” he said.

Har­greave believes the changes were made because of pres­sure from pro­du­cers — the com­pan­ies that make and sell waste­gen­er­at­ing products — who became respons­ible for the col­lec­tion and recyc­ling of bat­ter­ies, as well as the asso­ci­ated costs, in 2020. So­called pro­du­cer respons­ib­il­ity has also been exten­ded to other items such as tires, and in 2023, to muni­cipal Blue Box pro­grams.

Since pro­du­cer respons­ib­il­ity came into effect in Ontario, data from the Resource Pro­ductiv­ity and Recov­ery Author­ity (RPRA), the reg­u­lator that over­sees the province’s recyc­ling and diver­sion laws, shows that bat­tery pro­du­cers are fall­ing far short of recyc­ling tar­gets.

Only 12 per cent of single­ use bat­ter­ies and 13 per cent of rechargeable bat­ter­ies were recycled in 2022, short of the 40 per cent target, accord­ing to an interim inspec­tion by RPRA. A final report on bat­tery recyc­ling for 2022 by RPRA is expec­ted later this year.

In 2020, the province had a 47 per cent diver­sion rate for single­ use bat­ter­ies, accord­ing to Stew­ard­ship Ontario, which used to over­see recyc­ling for pro­du­cers. Rechargeable­bat­tery recyc­ling wasn’t meas­ured under that sys­tem.

New pro­du­cer respons­ib­il­ity organ­iz­a­tions, or PROs, took over the man­age­ment of waste diver­sion for com­pan­ies man­u­fac­tur­ing, or using bat­ter­ies in their products, in 2020.

Other jur­is­dic­tions have been more suc­cess­ful at intro­du­cing tougher recyc­ling laws for bat­ter­ies, such as the EU, which has enacted a num­ber of recyc­ling reg­u­la­tions in anti­cip­a­tion of a dra­matic increase in the demand for bat­ter­ies due to elec­tric vehicle use in the next five years.

The EU has a 50 per cent recyc­ling tar­get for waste bat­ter­ies that has to be met by the end of this year. It will also require that port­able devices such as smart­phones and laptops have replace­able bat­ter­ies by 2027, and that lith­ium­ion bat­ter­ies have man­dat­ory min­im­ums for recycled con­tent for metals such as lith­ium and cobalt start­ing in 2031.

Ontario has delayed the tar­get to recycle 50 per cent of bat­ter­ies sold to 2026.

The changes, which are amend­ments to the province’s Resource Recov­ery and Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Act, were announced in Decem­ber fol­low­ing pub­lic con­sulta­tions in Septem­ber and Octo­ber.

Com­pan­ies such as Panasonic Canada weighed in dur­ing the pub­lic con­sulta­tions held by the Min­istry of Envir­on­ment, Con­ser­va­tion and Parks.

The com­pany said that hav­ing to meet tar­gets for two types of bat­ter­ies “impedes our abil­ity to accel­er­ate col­lec­tion in both cat­egor­ies.

“This is another example of added com­plex­ity that adds unne­ces­sary costs to the sys­tem and ulti­mately the con­sumers,” accord­ing to a writ­ten state­ment by com­pany pres­id­ent Hitoshi Narawa. “The fact that Ontario is so expens­ive only hinders efforts to col­lect more bat­ter­ies, as we need to spend an inor­din­ate amount of time, man­age­ment and funds to col­lect bat­ter­ies.”

The min­istry said in an email that it com­bined the recyc­ling tar­gets for primary and rechargeable bat­ter­ies “to reduce bur­den while main­tain­ing a sim­ilar level of recyc­ling at the fol­low­ing tar­gets — 45 per cent for 2025 and 50 per cent for 2026 and bey­ond,” based on stake­holder feed­back. Des­pite the com­bined tar­get, the reg­u­la­tions con­tinue to require sep­ar­ate report­ing on the two cat­egor­ies, accord­ing to the min­istry.

“The amend­ment is meant to reflect what is feas­ible to achieve today while encour­aging pro­du­cers to con­tinue to improve the over­all col­lec­tion and man­age­ment of bat­ter­ies,” accord­ing to the min­istry’s email.

Crit­ics say the changes will do more than just reduce the reg­u­lat­ory bur­den for pro­du­cers.

Bat­tery recycler Ter­rapure Envir­on­mental believes delay­ing recyc­ling tar­gets could “dis­in­centiv­ize pro­du­cers and (pro­du­cer respons­ib­il­ity organ­iz­a­tions) from improv­ing their cur­rent recov­ery rates,” accord­ing to com­ments sub­mit­ted by the com­pany dur­ing the con­sulta­tions.

Ter­rapure is Canada’s largest recycler of lead bat­ter­ies under five kilo­grams, which have high recov­ery rates because recycled lead is cheaper than mined lead, mean­ing there’s a high incent­ive to recycle lead bat­ter­ies.

But the com­pany believes aggress­ive recov­ery tar­gets are needed “to pro­mote increased efforts to col­lect and recycle bat­ter­ies of all types, par­tic­u­larly primary and non­lead rechargeable bat­ter­ies,” said Greg Jones, the com­pany’s man­aging dir­ector, com­mu­nic­a­tions and pub­lic affairs, in an email.

Call2Recycle, one of Canada’s biggest pro­du­cer respons­ib­il­ity organ­iz­a­tions, said in an email that it is com­mit­ted to “max­im­iz­ing diver­sion rates regard­less of cat­egory and accord­ing to the reg­u­la­tions in place.” The not­for­profit organ­iz­a­tion over­sees the col­lec­tion and recyc­ling of single­use and rechargeable bat­ter­ies under five kilo­grams for a num­ber of com­pan­ies.

Call2Recycle has a net­work of more than 3,000 drop­off loc­a­tions in Ontario and more than 12,000 nation­ally that include many retail­ers, a net­work that relies on con­sumers drop­ping off their used bat­ter­ies, which the organ­iz­a­tion said it emphas­izes in advert­ising and pub­lic edu­ca­tion cam­paigns.

If the rate of bat­tery diver­sion in the province doesn’t increase, experts say more rechargeable lith­ium­ion bat­ter­ies could end up in the waste stream and pose a sig­ni­fic­ant safety con­cern.

“These types of bat­ter­ies present ser­i­ous risk of fire when improp­erly dis­posed of,” said Donato Ardel­lini, the founder and CEO of Envir­on­mental 360 Solu­tions, in an email to the Star. “This change will increase the safety risks being faced by waste­dis­posal busi­nesses like those we oper­ate.”

The province has an interim goal to divert 80 per cent of all waste by 2050, but the trans­ition to pro­du­cer respons­ib­il­ity — with the think­ing that products will become more recyc­lable if pro­du­cers have to pay to divert them from land­fill — hasn’t been smooth sail­ing.

There has been push­back from pro­du­cers not only with regards to bat­tery recyc­ling but for other pro­grams as well, includ­ing a pro­posed bottle­deposit pro­gram for non­alco­holic con­tain­ers, with expense often cited as the reason.

And Envir­on­mental 360, which also recycles tires, alleges the RPRA isn’t doing its job when it comes to ensur­ing pro­du­cers are meet­ing recyc­ling tar­gets for tires.

The com­pany has asked for a judi­cial review of the author­ity as well as a judi­cial review of the min­is­ter of envir­on­ment, con­ser­va­tion and parks, with a request to have an out­side admin­is­trator take over the RPRA and enforce both “col­lec­tion and man­age­ment require­ments for tires and bat­ter­ies under the Resource Recov­ery and Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Act, 2016,” accord­ing to emails sent by the com­pany to the Star.

The resource author­ity said in an email that it looks for­ward to address­ing the com­pany’s “mis­guided applic­a­tion” and that “none of E360S’ legal man­oeuv­rings will dis­tract us from con­tinu­ing to enforce the legal require­ments set out in Ontario’s reg­u­lat­ory frame­work for recyc­ling as it has been doing since the frame­work came into force.

“RPRA is proud of its pro­gress­ive, risk­based com­pli­ance frame­work that sup­ports reg­u­lat­ory out­comes for the province.”

No gas, no meter, but still on the hook

Toronto­ area homeown­ers who tried to ditch nat­ural gas unable to get Enbridge out of their lives

Paul Dowsett shows off the spot where Enbridge had to dig up the sidewalk to physically disconnect him from their grid. Dowsett was told contradictory things by Enbridge about how to end his gas service.

This article was written by Marco Chown Oved and was published in the Toronto Star on February 2, 2025.

Break­ing up is hard to do — even if some­times you’re just try­ing to dump your gas com­pany.

As cli­mate change prompts more people to elim­in­ate nat­ural gas from their homes, there are those who say the pro­cess to do so is need­lessly con­fus­ing.

They say they’re spend­ing hours on the phone, being given con­tra­dict­ory instruc­tions about whether they need to have their meters removed, and that, months or even years later, they still can’t get Enbridge Gas out of their lives.

The Star spoke to some homeown­ers who have tried to close their Enbridge Gas account. Their exper­i­ences paint a mud­died pic­ture: Two of them had their nat­ural gas meters removed. Four say they were told that was unne­ces­sary.

Four of them say they’ve received bills for gas they didn’t use and three say they’ve had their account reopened for them without their con­sent.

Two say they were even sent to col­lec­tions for refus­ing to pay for accounts that had been closed for nearly a year.

These dis­gruntled former cus­tom­ers have been left with the view that even Enbridge doesn’t really know how to dis­con­nect from Enbridge.

Enbridge Gas has a mono­poly on dis­trib­ut­ing nat­ural gas in Ontario and cur­rently serves more than 3.9 mil­lion cus­tom­ers. The com­pany does not make money from selling nat­ural gas, which it can­not mark up by law. Instead, it makes its busi­ness profits through monthly cus­tomer charges and new hook­ups, cre­at­ing an incent­ive for cus­tomer reten­tion.

The folks who spoke to the Star say Enbridge makes it hard for them to leave — and they’re not alone. Between 2022 and 2023, the most recent data avail­able, the num­ber of com­plaints made to the Ontario Energy Board regard­ing Enbridge Gas dis­con­nec­tions and recon­nec­tions shot up from 46 to 82.

Con­trary to the con­tra­dict­ory testi­mon­ies col­lec­ted by the Star, Enbridge spokes­per­son Kendra Black said: “Enbridge Gas has estab­lished pro­ced­ures for account clos­ures.”

She says any­one who wants to close their account, sus­pend their nat­ural gas ser­vice, or remove nat­ural gas ser­vice from their prop­erty should call the Enbridge Gas Con­tact Centre at 1­877­362­7434.

“We have updated our call centre train­ing to ensure Enbridge Gas rep­res­ent­at­ives clearly com­mu­nic­ate options to sus­pend or can­cel their nat­ural gas ser­vice,” she added.

(Enbridge Gas’s web­site, mean­while, states any­one can close their account online in “two to five minutes.”)

`We’re off gas now’

Like a grow­ing num­ber of Cana­dians, Sean Medeiros and his wife wanted to cut their cli­mate­warm­ing emis­sions and save money, so they replaced their aging fur­nace, water heater and stove with a heat pump, heat pump water heater and induc­tion stove. Once they were com­pletely elec­tri­fied, Medeiros con­tac­ted Enbridge Gas to close their account and says he was told: “You’re all set.”

“At that point I figured, OK, a human has told me I’ve done it cor­rectly. So we’re done. We’re off gas now,” he said.

Over the next months, Enbridge Gas employ­ees con­tin­ued to come by the house, Medeiros said. Even after he explained he wasn’t using nat­ural gas, they’d still leave stick­ers and let­ters say­ing that there is no act­ive account at this address and the occu­pant should con­tact Enbridge Gas to avoid poten­tial fees asso­ci­ated with ser­vice recon­nec­tion.

“It was get­ting to the point of har­ass­ment. They would come to the door. They’d ring the door­bell. They stand there and wait and they’d knock and they wouldn’t go away until some­body answered the door.

“But in the 12 years that I had an Enbridge account, not a single meter reader ever rang the door­bell.”

Last fall, Medeiros got a $250 bill for nine months of cus­tomer fees and zero nat­ural gas use, after a new account was set up for him without his know­ledge. He called Enbridge Gas and was told the bill would be can­celled, but later received a notice that it would be sent to col­lec­tions any­way. He com­plained to the Enbridge Ombuds office and got the bill can­celled.

Medeiros isn’t the only one to have trouble.

Genevieve Kenny closed her account in 2023 and, a year later, she said, her part­ner inex­plic­ably star­ted receiv­ing Enbridge Gas bills even though he had never opened an account. “It just felt sneaky,” she said.

It is unclear how Enbridge got her part­ner’s name. Kenny has refused to pay the new bill and her case is still unre­solved.

Asked why Enbridge Gas would open up an account for someone without their con­sent, spokes­per­son Black said the com­pany “mon­it­ors gas meters without cus­tomer own­er­ship.”

“We have this pro­cess in place to address when a cus­tomer has reques­ted to end nat­ural gas ser­vice (in the case of a move, for example), and a new occu­pant has not con­tac­ted us . … This pro­cess is in place as cus­tom­ers may move into a res­id­ence with an exist­ing nat­ural gas meter and begin using gas without noti­fy­ing us.”

Folks who have ended their gas ser­vice should not be affected, Black said. “Cus­tom­ers who have per­man­ently closed their accounts, fol­lowed the pro­cess (by call­ing the call centre) and com­mu­nic­ated their choice to close their accounts will not be included in fol­low­up activ­it­ies. Any errors in fol­low­up will be cor­rec­ted imme­di­ately fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion with the cus­tomer,” she said.

`I was never going to pay that bill’

Last fall, the Star fea­tured Toronto­n­ian Paul Dow­sett, after he, too, received a bill for hun­dreds of dol­lars nearly a year after he had closed his Enbridge Gas account.

“I knew I was never going to pay that bill. Like, what lever­age did Enbridge have over me? What could they do, cut off my gas?” Dow­sett said.

Fol­low­ing the instruc­tions Enbridge Gas gave him at the time, Dow­sett had his gas meter “locke­doff.” But nearly a year later, he was told he would need to have it removed entirely to per­man­ently shut off the gas.

“The people that I was talk­ing to at Enbridge didn’t know how to guide you on the jour­ney (off gas). It was like I had to help Enbridge to under­stand. And I think it’s because it has never been con­tem­plated within the halls and board­rooms of Enbridge that any­body would ever want to remove their gas ser­vice,” he said.

Con­trary to the con­tra­dict­ory testi­mon­ies col­lec­ted by the Star, Enbridge spokes­per­son Kendra Black said: “Enbridge Gas has estab­lished pro­ced­ures for account clos­ures”

“We sud­denly are in a new era, where it is pos­sible to get off gas. Not only pos­sible, desir­able . … It’s now the right thing to do. And this is something that Enbridge is now going to have to play catch up with.”

Con­trary to Dow­sett’s exper­i­ence, Enbridge Gas spokes­per­son Black now says “remov­ing a meter is not man­dat­ory for per­man­ently clos­ing a cus­tomer’s account.”

“Cus­tomer meters are only removed as part of the pro­cess of dis­con­nect­ing the ser­vice at the street,” she added.

Con­fu­sion fol­lowed lock­ing­off meter

Daniel Hall is an archi­tect with Sus­tain­able.to, a firm that spe­cial­izes in eco­friendly renov­a­tions. So his determ­in­a­tion to go fully elec­tric was as much about redu­cing his per­sonal emis­sions as it was about being able to con­fid­ently give advice to his cli­ents.

But on mul­tiple calls to Enbridge Gas, when he explained he no longer had any­thing that required nat­ural gas in his home, the com­pany’s rep­res­ent­at­ives still tried to con­vince him to retain his account, which would cost him more than $360 a year.

“They all tried to upsell me by say­ing, `Well, are you sure you don’t want to keep the meter and the ser­vice, just in case in future you need it? What hap­pens when you sell the house?’ ”

“I reas­sured them each time, no, I’m fine. We don’t need the gas ser­vice.”

Hall even­tu­ally had his meter removed and work­ers shut the gas off at the main line run­ning down his street, leav­ing his ser­vice line bur­ied in the front yard and his garden intact.

“I think they’re just used to it being the default — the nor­mal — that every­one has a gas con­nec­tion. And they’re puzzled that you wouldn’t want one,” he said.

Some say it should be easier

Adam Caplan decided he wanted to have an emis­sions­free home shortly after the birth of his first child.

He too spoke with sev­eral Enbridge rep­res­ent­at­ives who tried to talk him out of cut­ting off his gas and even­tu­ally fol­lowed their instruc­tions to have his meter locked off but not removed.

Hav­ing heard about oth­ers who later got bills in the mail, he said he’s wary about what will hap­pen next.

“I don’t expect the gas com­pany to want to help you get off gas. But I feel like there could be help from gov­ern­ment levels to make it an easier pro­cess for the people who are try­ing to do the hard work,” he said.

Crews hampered by a water system unequipped for current fires’ scale

This article was written by Patrick White and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 10, 2025.

Firefighters in Los Angeles are facing a dire scenario that has become increasingly common around the world as urban areas grapple with the growing threat of wildfire: a lack of water.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets reported that firefighters in the fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades region hooked up to hydrants only to find there was little or no water pressure.

The water-scarcity issue sparked a round of blame among Angelenos and elected representatives, with presidentelect Donald Trump falsely claiming that Governor Gavin Newsom’s fish conservation efforts were responsible for the lack of water for firefighting efforts.

But fire experts, as well as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, note that municipal water systems, including in her city, were never designed to repel wildfires of the scale now scorching the city.

“We all know that this has been an unprecedented event,” she said Thursday at a news conference. “We also know fire hydrants are not constructed to deal with this type of massive devastation.”

The typical hydrant system is designed to provide enough water for a contained building fire lasting a few hours. The U.S. Fire Code states that hydrants should provide at least 1,900 litres a minute. To ensure continuous pressure, many municipalities use subterranean cisterns to store adequate water.

Los Angeles has about 114 such tanks spread across the city – including three Palisades-area cisterns that hold about 3.8 million litres each. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said on Wednesday that all cisterns were filled prior to the fire as part of emergency-preparedness protocols.

Extreme demand on those tanks exceeded the rate at which they could be replenished, the department said in a news release, limiting flow to some hydrants, especially at higher elevations.

Mark Petrella, director of Los Angeles County Public Works, said on Thursday that waterbombers were drawing from the city’s reservoirs, which remained full despite the extreme demand.

“A firefight with multiple fire hydrants drawing water from the municipal water system for several hours is just not sustainable,” he said during a news conference. “That’s why the air support is so important.”

That air support was vital to slowing down the fires on Thursday. High winds earlier in the week had grounded aircraft.

“If we don’t have water, we find water,” said Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, who has been attacked on social media for the lack of water.

Water shortages have come to be expected during wildfires around the globe, which often flare up in drought-stricken regions and can knock out vital water infrastructure.

The L.A. scenario is reminiscent of the devastating 2023 wildfire that destroyed Lahaina on the island of Maui, where fire crews could not find hydrants with adequate water pressure. An analysis by drinking-water engineer Robert Sowby found that a combination of power outages, leaks from fire-damaged structures and a scarcity of emergency water supplies led to the shortage.

Major firestorms can have cascading effects on infrastructure that entirely knock out water systems, Dr. Sowby told The Globe and Mail in an interview. “In Maui, it was intense wind that knocked down the power lines that started a fire that then knocked out power to the water system,” he said.

“I don’t know that that’s happening in Los Angeles yet, but we may see some cascading effects of infrastructure failures because of this widespread fire.”

But considering the speed with which both the Maui and Los Angeles fires moved, hydrant pressure could be a moot point, said Alan Westhaver, a wildfire-management specialist.

“No conceivable fire-suppression response (or amount of water – except heavy rain) can effectively or safely outduel wildland fires of this intensity,” he said in an e-mail exchange with The Globe.

Mr. Westhaver co-created FireSmart, a program that educates Canadians on protecting communities from wildfire. As bigger fires encroach on towns and cities, the focus should shift to making properties and structures more resistant to ignition.

Water-supply issues, he said, are “another distraction that gets in the way of implementing effective actions that will reduce losses under these severe circumstances.”

Buyer’s remorse: Some Canadian EV owners sour on Tesla after Elon Musk’s pivot to the right

This article was written by Jason Kirby and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 4, 2025.

Brand surveys suggest Tesla is losing ground in Canada, as the number of Canadian who would consider buying a Tesla has slid for two years since peaking in 2022, according to online polling firm YouGov.

When Jeff Cowie bought his first electric car in 2019, the Tesla Model 3 checked all the boxes: It meshed with his environmental ideals, offered a fun driving experience and the technology aligned with what he was used to as an avid Apple user.

Mr. Cowie admits he was also impressed by the bold ambitions of Tesla Inc.’s space-exploring chief executive officer, Elon Musk.

The wheels have since come off, in more ways than one. After just 33,000 kilometres on the road, the car developed a noisy suspension problem that left Mr. Cowie, who lives near Vancouver, feeling like “I was driving around in a jalopy,” he said.

Then there were the noises coming from Mr. Musk, namely the multibillionaire’s sharp turn to the right, his cozying up to Donald Trump and his embrace of wild conspiracy theories.

“He sold me a false bill of goods all around,” said Mr. Cowie, who, after learning he’d need to fork over $5,000 for repairs, sold his Tesla last April. Another Tesla was not an option – he replaced it with a Hyundai Ioniq 5 instead. “As Elon exposed himself for who he truly was, I wanted to get as far away from him as possible.”

Mr. Musk’s full-throated support for Mr. Trump, backed by the US$250-million he spent to help Mr. Trump retake the White House, has paid off as far as Tesla’s stock market value – and Mr. Musk’s net worth – are concerned. Since election day in the United States, Tesla’s share price has soared 66 per cent, having doubled at one point, as investors gamble that his insider status in the Trump administration will reap benefits for the company.

But it has also sparked much soul-searching among existing Tesla owners and potential buyers. A brand that was once cherished by the environmental left for bringing electric vehicles to the mainstream is now far less palatable for that crowd owing to its boss’s politics.

“For the customer base that jumped on board with Tesla because it was the future of green technology and who liked to brag two years ago about their Teslas, I think Musk has alienated them,” said Jake Brower, an associate professor of marketing at Queen’s University.

Dr. Brower is now quite familiar with that sentiment. When he and his wife talked about buying their first EV last summer, “the very first thing she said to me was, ‘We’re not looking at a Tesla. I don’t want a penny of my money going to anything Musk is involved in,’ ” he said.

The couple bought a Ford Mustang Mach-E battery EV instead, taking advantage of big incentives from the manufacturer, dealer and federal government that shaved a combined $20,000 off the suggested price.

Such purchase decisions are playing out on a larger scale. Tesla’s annual vehicle sales in 2024 fell for the first time in more than a decade, the company reported on Jan. 2, despite a record number of deliveries in the fourth quarter that came thanks to yearend discounts and financing incentives.

In California, where Tesla found its earliest adherents, the number of new vehicle registrations for Teslas dropped 3.5 per cent in the third quarter from the year before, though the Tesla Model Y remained the top-selling car in the state during the first nine months of last year, according to the California New Car Dealers Association.

In October, actor Jason Bateman revealed he’d sold his Tesla because Mr. Musk’s politics made him “feel like I’m driving around a Trump sticker.”

Indeed, Mr. Musk has inspired a cottage industry of bumper stickers for Tesla owners who want to distance themselves from the CEO – one sticker that reads “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy” is among the bestselling bumper stickers on Amazon.com Inc.’s U.S. online store.

Tesla doesn’t break out its results by geography in its financial reporting, but the trajectory of the company’s sales in Canada can be gleaned from EV rebate numbers published by Transport Canada under its Incentives for Zero-Emission Vehicles (iZEV) program. For battery electrics, every vehicle with a base-model price of less than $55,000 for cars and $60,000 for larger vehicles qualifies for a rebate of up to $5,000.

During the past year, the number of Tesla buyers in Canada who received rebates declined, even as the overall number of rebates for battery EVs increased. For instance, in the past threemonth period from Sept. 1 to Nov. 30, roughly 9,300 Tesla buyers received rebates under the incentive program, down from around 19,980 during the same period in 2023.

In terms of market share of battery EV rebates, Tesla accounted for just under one-quarter of iZEV rebates for November, down from 47.5 per cent in November, 2023.

The rebate numbers are an imperfect measure. The flow of Tesla buyers receiving rebates has swung wildly depending on the timing of the company’s own incentives and price cuts, and the numbers don’t capture highpriced EVs, such as Tesla’s top-ofthe-line models and trims, though 13 variants of the popular Model 3 and Model Y do qualify.

Even so, Erik Johnson, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets who follows the EV sector, said in an e-mail that, based on the rebate numbers he’s looked at, “it’s clear Tesla’s market share is eroding.”

There could be several factors driving the change, he said.

For one thing, there’s been a lack of new models from Tesla. The angular Cybertruck has been sighted on Canadian roads, but with a starting price of $137,900, it’s hardly a mass-market vehicle.

At the same time, after having the EV market largely to itself, Tesla must contend with rivals who have ramped up their own EV offerings and are providing large incentives to attract customers, said Mr. Johnson.

During the past year, the number of Tesla buyers in Canada who received rebates declined, even as the overall number of rebates for battery EVs increased.

The year 2023 was particularly strong for Tesla in Canada because it rolled out a cheaper, rear-wheel-drive version of its mid-sized vehicle, which qualified for the federal government’s iZEV rebate and became the bestselling EV in the country.

However, those vehicles were made in China. Last summer, Ottawa imposed a 100-per-cent tariff on EV imports from China, which took effect in October. In November, Canada imported only 46 battery EVs from China, down from nearly 3,000 a year earlier.

It’s unclear what impact that may be having on Tesla’s supply of vehicles in Canada. The company did not respond to interview requests.

Mr. Johnson said a “potential backlash from consumers concerned with Elon Musk’s politics” may also be behind the sales and market share slide.

That’s how Andreas Souvaliotis, an entrepreneur and marketing expert, sees it. To him, Tesla is so closely intertwined with Mr. Musk that the man and the company can’t be separated.

“When you wrap one brand around another and the core item, the leader, becomes unpopular, it becomes difficult for the brand to recover from that,” he said. “I don’t think Tesla will ever be hot again.”

Others disagree. David Soberman, a professor of marketing at the University of Toronto, said with the U.S. so deeply divided, whatever customers Tesla might lose on the left, it could ultimately pick up buyers on the right.

“There will definitely be people who bought Teslas before who are left-wing tree huggers, and they probably won’t buy a Tesla now. But I think there are a lot more people that will,” he said.

In Canada, brand surveys certainly suggest the company is losing ground. The share of Canadians who would potentially consider buying a Tesla has been sliding for two years since peaking in 2022, according to YouGov, an online polling firm. However, the survey also shows the company’s reputation has ticked up in Canada since the U.S. election.

The resolve of the anti-Elon crowd could be tested in 2025 if, as rumoured, Tesla releases a new model priced below US$30,000 after subsidies. In a recent note, Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu said such a model, which he dubbed the “Model Q,” is on its way, citing his discussions with a Tesla executive.

For his part, Dr. Brower sees a different distinction that could safeguard Tesla sales: that between Tesla’s green-minded erstwhile fans and those buyers who were drawn to the company primarily for its first-mover status.

“The real core market for them is the cutting-edge, earlyadopter types, and I think to get the newest, flashiest thing, they’ll hold their nose when it comes to Musk,” he said. “They’ll be the ones lined up to get Tesla’s first home robot when it’s created.”

But even some early adopters are done with Mr. Musk and his car company.

Baha Ohcebol, a Toronto based technology entrepreneur, was specifically drawn to Tesla for its Autopilot self-driving technology when he bought a fully equipped Model S for roughly $170,000 in 2022.

Once he drove the vehicle, however, he was underwhelmed by its quality and its technology. That, coupled with Mr. Musk’s “crazy tweets,” led him to list the vehicle for sale.

“I’d been thinking about selling it for the last six months, but I got serious about it right after the U.S. election,” he said. “That’s not the only reason I’m selling, but it was the trigger. I don’t want to be associated with that guy.

Could sales drop dent soaring stock?

Musk’s links to Trump helped inflate market cap, but analysts have eye on the bottom line

This article was written by Kara Carlson and was published in the Toronto Star on January 1, 2025.

Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg are estimating Tesla may deliver around 510,400 vehicles in the final three months of 2024, falling just short of the company’s forecast.

For all the exuberance about Tesla Inc. benefiting from Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Wall Street isn’t so sure the carmaker can avoid its first annual sales decline in over a decade.

Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg are estimating the company may deliver around 510,400 vehicles in the final three months of the year. That would set a new quarterly record for Tesla, but the company would need to sell about 4,600 more cars to make good on its forecast for slight growth in 2024.

Tesla has a lot riding on the production and delivery figures it’s expected to report Jan. 2.

The carmaker added more than $733 billion (U.S.) in market capitalization from Election Day through midDecember, when its valuation peaked at $1.54 trillion. While investors have been betting Musk’s emergence as the marquee donor to presidentelect Trump will pay dividends for his companies, an annual sales dip could lead to some secondguessing.

Trump’s policy prescriptions are, after all, far from a slam dunk for Tesla. While a federal framework for autonomous vehicle deployment is cause for optimism, it’s not clear the company’s technology is ready. Trump’s advisers also are recommending he repeal electric vehicle subsidies and roll back fuel economy and tail pipe pollution regulations that generate significant revenue for Tesla.

“This number is a total wild card,” Gene Munster, managing partner of growth investment firm Deepwater Asset Management, said of Tesla’s fourth quarter deliveries. Munster is wary about Musk distancing himself from politically left leaning consumers and embracing fans of Trump, who haven’t been buying EVs.

That said, the prospect of tax credits going away soon could “really juice” Tesla’s sales, he said.

Musk has maintained throughout the year Tesla is between two “growth waves” and repeatedly predicted that autonomy will lead to a next leg of expansion. The first touched off when the company began rolling out its most affordable EV, the Model 3 sedan, and followed that up with the smashhit Model Y sport utility vehicle.

Whether Tesla manages to eke out any growth or not in 2024, the company lost significant momentum in the midst of a broader slowdown in the global EV market.

Even as China’s BYD Co. continued its ascent up the sales charts, the company increasingly relied on the strength of its plugin hybrid lineup. Volkswagen AG, Mercedes Benz Group AG and Volvo Car AB, meanwhile, were among the automakers to scale back their EV objectives for the coming years at some point in 2024.

In the U.S., Ford Motor Co.’s plugin vehicle business is bracing for a $5 billion annual loss. And in Japan, a potential partnership between Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. to jointly work on software development, batteries and other EV components has given way to considerations of a full blown combination under a joint holding company.

Even against this backdrop, Musk has offered an upbeat view on 2025. When Tesla last reported quarterly earnings in October, the CEO said his best guess was the company could increase sales by 20 per cent to 30 per cent next year.

That outlook rests, in part, on Tesla launching more affordable models in the first half of next year the company has yet to identify.

Chris McNally, an analyst at Evercore ISI, wrote in a report to clients Monday that his best guess is Tesla will offer new variants of the Model 3 and Y that are $4,000 to $5,000 cheaper through an improved electrical architecture and “decontenting,” a reference to using lower cost parts or removing certain components or features.

Tesla has already gotten a jump on its affordability drive by closing the year with a flood of deals, ranging from cutrate financing to years of free charging and cheaper leases.

Musk’s 2025 sales growth forecast “is likely to prove aggressive,” according to Garrett Nelson, an analyst at CFRA Research.

“We see headwinds facing EV sales from the possible combination of a stronger dollar, higher domestic oil production from easing regulations, and lower oil prices,” Nelson wrote in report. “After a year in which Tesla’s vehicle sales growth will likely be flattish, we see its volumes growing only 10 to 15 per cent in 2025, or only half as strong as its guidance.”

B.C. company hopes to reverse velomobiles’ history of failure

This article was written by Pippa Norman and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 30, 2024.

ENZO Drive Systems founder Ali Kazemkhani, right, gets feedback on the Veemo velomobile through talks with customers on Facebook. ‘These people are going to play a big role in our journey because these are people who use it,’ he says.

Slow, steady approach is how ENVO plans to cash in on $180-billion market

In the past five years, at least three makers of velomobiles have declared bankruptcy, dampening their dreams of revolutionizing sustainable transport with the bicycle-car hybrid.

But Ali Kazemkhani, founder of Burnaby, B.C.-based ENVO Drive Systems, thinks his electric mobility company can succeed where others have failed.

Velomobiles are unique pedal-powered vehicles that have been around for more than 100 years, forming a strong community of racers. But today’s commuter versions are a slight departure from those used in the racing scene.

With features such as two to four wheels, an upright seat, cargo space, Bluetooth connectivity, batteries and a roof to protect against wet weather, it can be difficult to discern upon first glance where these vehicles belong in transit. Yet in most jurisdictions, the vehicle is bikelane friendly, making it a comfortable option for car-less people or people who can’t ride a bike.

However, multiple attempts since 2019 by makers in the United States, Canada and Germany to sell these vehicles have ended in the company filing for insolvency. Mr. Kazemkhani said he chalks this up to not the concept, but the business plan.

“The product didn’t fail, the business failed,” he said.

In 2023, ENVO acquired Veemo, a velomobile that was created by Vancouver-based company VeloMetro Mobility, after it went bankrupt.

Mr. Kazemkhani said ENVO plans to use its bootstrap method of relying upon internal resources and revenue to carry on development of the Veemo, delivering it to customers with deposits who were left hanging after the bankruptcy.

Now, they’re halfway through completing those outstanding orders and using customer feedback to ensure that the Veemo’s relaunch is one that sticks.

Velomobiles are one example in a cacophony of micromobility vehicles, such as electric bikes, unicycles or mopeds, currently being used or developed for mostly urban use.

According to an analysis by McKinsey and Co., micromobility was the third-most popular mode of getting around in the world in 2022, after private cars and public transit. In a 2023 analysis, the consulting company stated the micromobility market was worth about US$180-billion, and that that value could more than double by 2030.

In the sea of micromobility options facing consumers, velomobiles stand out as one of the only covered devices available – offering people living in cold or rainy climates a weatherproof alternative.

North Carolina-based entrepreneur Rob Cotter thought of that as one of many selling points when he launched a Kickstarter campaign and founded his own velomobile company, Organic Transit, in 2012. Shortly after, he began selling the vehicles, which he named ELFs, but said he was losing money on every sale owing to the time and labour it took to hand build each one.

With a niche product that doesn’t have the same mass-produced parts as an ebike has, Mr. Cotter said his team built a lot of the ELFs from scratch. It was also difficult for the ELF to attract attention from major investors, since the market for the product was fairly new, he added.

Eventually, Mr. Cotter said he decided to file for bankruptcy in 2019, after waiting on some money from an investor that never came through. For about four years, Organic Transit was then owned by an oil and gas company, before Mr. Cotter managed to buy it back at the end of 2023.

“This time around we know our lesson, which is to raise enough capital so we can build a significant number of vehicles at a time, so it actually lowers our cost of doing business,” he said.

At ENVO, Mr. Kazemkhani said their approach to staying afloat as a micromobility company involves starting small before dreaming big. Unlike other startups who invested millions into product development before entering the market, ENVO is moving slowly with the Veemo and building a small community of buyers from which his team can gain insights before making more, he said.

Large investments into product development and company growth require a large market to make returns in. But with velomobiles, Mr. Kazemkhani said that market simply doesn’t exist yet, which is why many companies fail.

“You need to build that market organically, and it takes time, and you don’t have patience of five more years. So the investor or the management team pull the plugs and the company dies,” he said.

ENVO has the advantage of already producing other micromobility vehicles, Mr. Kazemkhani added, so it doesn’t cost more to develop new parts.

Of 50 outstanding orders passed on by VeloMetro, ENVO has fulfilled about half of them, with the rest under way. Mr. Kazemkhani said he’s in a Facebook group with the 25 customers who have already received their Veemo, so he can hear stories and feedback about the product.

“These people are going to play a big role in our journey because these are people who use it.”

Preorders for the Veemo are available on ENVO’s website, but Mr. Kazemkhani said the company isn’t launching its public marketing campaign for the product until early next year.

“We don’t want to go all in without making sure that all engineering solutions and customer service solutions are in place.”

The Veemo is currently retailing for around US$6,000 – significantly less than the average racing velomobile, which can cost upward of US$12,000.

Sandra Phillips, chief executive officer of car-sharing company Modo, worked with VeloMetro as a consultant when they were piloting the Veemo. She said the vehicle fills an accessibility gap in the micromobility market for people who can’t use a traditional bicycle. However, she predicts velomobiles will remain a niche product because they’re difficult to place within cities’ transportation systems.

“We don’t quite know what to make of it. Is it a bike? Is it a little car?” she said.

Meghan Winters, a professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University, said she thinks velomobiles are a fun and attractive option, but they don’t solve the broader transportation solution that’s needed right now. Instead, she said people need more frequent and reliable transit, and places to store their bicycles at work, for example.

However, she said she’s optimistic that the growth of electric urban mobility, which includes velomobiles, will contribute to a decline in private motor vehicles in the future.

“I don’t think there’s any other way we’ll survive. There’s just simply not space for us to continue to have large vehicles on our streets,” she said.

EV truck maker will seek creditor protection

Lion Electric suffered from supply chain disruptions, slower adoption

This article was written by Mathieu Dion and was published in the Toronto Star on December 18, 2024.

SaintJerome, Que.based Lion Electric had $561 million in debt during the quarter ended Sept. 30, incurred largely from expansion projects such as an electric bus manufacturing plant in the U.S. and a battery pack assembly plant in nearby Mirabel, Que.

Quebec committed billions of dollars to carve out its place in North America’s electric vehicle supply chain, but those efforts have been thwarted by a string of bad news. The latest: Electric bus and truck maker Lion Electric Co. expects to seek creditor protection.

The SaintJerome, Que.based company announced in a news release the expiry of covenants on a credit line and the maturity on a separate loan as no “alternatives have materialized and no further amendments, concessions or waivers have been obtained.”

As a result, Lion expects to initiate a restructuring process under Canada’s Companies Creditors Arrangement Act, and “pursue a formal sales and investment solicitation process in respect of the company’s business or assets.”

Lion’s problems stem from delays in subsidy and incentive programs in Canada and the U.S., as well as supply chain disruptions, scaling issues, too many vehicle models being developed at the same time and slower EV adoption.

The manufacturer, which went public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company in 2021, had $561 million in debt during the quarter ended Sept. 30 — incurred primarily from expansion projects such as an electric bus manufacturing plant in Joliet, Ill., and a battery pack assembly plant in Mirabel, Que.

During the same period, the company reported sales of $44 million, down from $114 million the year prior, as deliveries dropped by 64 per cent.

After reaching a peak of approximately 1,400 employees in 2022, Lion announced this month that it would retain about 300 staff. The firm also suspended work at the Joliet plant and president Nicolas Brunet resigned.

And the company sold its innovation centre in Mirabel for $50 million to Aeroports de Montreal to raise cash.

Lion’s lenders, which include National Bank of Canada, gave the company temporary help to get through Dec. 16, suspending for a second time the covenants on a credit line. The maturity on a separate loan backed by Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Quebec and Finalta Capital Inc. was pushed back to the same date.

The extensions were granted to buy time for Lion Electric to find new investors or a buyer, but it failed to do so.

The firm’s statement said it is “currently in discussions with its senior lenders to obtain additional funds pursuant to a new debtor-in-possession credit facility.”

The Quebec government has invested $177 million in Lion so far, and the Canadian government, $30 million.

The largest shareholder in Lion is Power Corp. of Canada, the holding company controlled by the billionaire Desmarais family, with a 34 per cent stake, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Lion’s market capitalization, which was as high as $6 billion in 2021, has dropped by 86 per cent this year to $81 million as of Monday.

Trading of its shares were halted in Toronto and New York.

Quebec has had success with its EV efforts, with cathode material production projects led by General Motors Co. and Korean battery firms well underway in the province.

However, Lion’s announcements come as Montrealbased electric watercraft and snowmobile maker Taiga Motors Corp. continues a restructuring process. Uncertainty also surrounds a $70billion EV battery factory near Montreal built by Swedish manufacturer Northvolt AB, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Nov. 21.

Trump transition team plans sweeping rollback of EV, emissions policies: document

This article was written by Jarrett Renshaw and Chris Kirkham, and was published by the Globe & Mail on December 17, 2024.

Incoming U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is recommending sweeping changes to cut off support for electric vehicles and charging stations and to strengthen measures blocking cars, components and battery materials from China, according to a document seen by Reuters.

The recommendations, which have not been previously reported, come as the U.S. electric-vehicle transition stalls and China’s heavily subsidized EV industry continues to surge, in part because of its superior battery supply chain. On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump vowed to ease regulations on fossil-fuel cars and roll back what he called President Joe Biden’s EV mandate.

The transition team also recommends imposing tariffs on all battery materials globally, a bid to boost U.S. production, and then negotiating individual exemptions with allies, the document shows.

Taken together, the recommendations are a stark departure from Biden-administration policy, which sought to balance encouraging a domestic battery supply chain, separate from China, with a rapid EV transition. The transition-team plan would redirect money now flowing to building charging stations and making EVs affordable into national-defence priorities, including securing China-free supplies of batteries and the critical minerals to build them.

The proposals came from a Trump transition team charged with crafting a strategy for swift implementation of new automotive policies. The team also calls for eliminating the Biden administration’s US$7,500 tax credit for consumer EV purchases. The policies could strike a blow to U.S. EV sales and production at a time when many legacy automakers, including General Motors Co. and Hyundai Motor Co., have recently introduced a wider array of electric offerings to the U.S. market.

Cutting government EV support could also hurt sales of Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc., the dominant U.S. EV seller. But Mr. Musk, who spent more than a quarter-billion dollars helping to elect Mr. Trump, has said that losing subsidies would hurt rivals more than Tesla.

The transition team calls for clawing back whatever funds remain from Mr. Biden’s US$7.5billion plan to build charging stations and shifting the money to battery-minerals processing and the “national defence supply chain and critical infrastructure.”

While batteries, minerals and other EV components are “critical to defence production,” electric vehicles “and charging stations are not,” the document says.

The Defence Department in recent years has highlighted U.S. strategic vulnerabilities because of China’s dominance of the mining and refining of critical minerals, including graphite and lithium needed for batteries, and rare-earth metals used in both EV motors and military aircraft.

A 2021 government report said the U.S. military faces “escalating power requirements” for weapons and communication equipment, among other technologies. “Assured sources of critical minerals and materials” are “critical to U.S. national security,” the report found.

Cleared for takeoff: Air Canada planes flying on canola-based fuel from Parkland’s B.C. refinery

This article was written by Andrew Willis and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 11, 2024.

Lab supervisor Bill Sihota works at Parkland’s refinery in Burnaby, B.C., in 2021. The company began pumping jet fuel made from canola and animal fats into Air Canada planes on Tuesday.

Parkland Corp. began pumping jet fuel made from canola and animal fats into Air Canada planes on Tuesday, marking the first use of domestically produced low-carbon fuel to lower an airline’s emissions.

Parkland tapped support from the British Columbia government to launch the country’s first commercial production of what the company has applied to certify as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at its refinery in Burnaby, B.C. Air Canada bought Parkland’s first 101,000-litre batch of the fuel, which produces lower carbon emissions than regular jet fuel.

Parkland is breaking ground domestically on SAF production, which is seen as a necessary shift in fuel sources critical to achieving the aviation industry’s emission-reduction targets. To date, European, Asian and U.S. energy companies have been the only source of low-carbon fuel to the country’s carriers.

“Currently, the Canadian airline industry is dependent on international imports of low-carbon fuels, making Parkland’s accomplishment a critical first step in creating domestic supply,” Air Canada chief executive officer Michael Rousseau said in a news release. “We encourage all levels of government to support the development of a competitive low carbon aviation fuel or SAF industry.”

Government subsidies are critical to SAF because the feedstocks for jet fuel, such as the non-food grade canola and tallow or animal fats used at the Parkland refinery, are far more expensive than the crude oil used to make conventional aviation gas. Without incentives, SAF costs two to three times more than regular jet fuel, which sold on Tuesday for $1.37 a litre at the Vancouver International Airport, the country’s second-busiest hub.

“This pilot project demonstrates how constructive incentives can spur Canadian production of low-carbon aviation fuel,” said Ferio Pugliese, senior vice-president at Parkland.

Calgary-based Parkland is one of the country’s largest fuel suppliers, with roughly 4,000 convenience stores and gas stations, mostly branded as On the Run, and aviation and marine fuel businesses.

Last December, B.C. became the first jurisdiction in North America to mandate low-carbon jet fuel, requiring SAF account for at least 3 per cent of fuel sold in the province by 2030. The province’s target is a 10-per-cent reduction in the carbon intensity of jet fuel in the next five years.

“I want to congratulate Parkland on this groundbreaking initiative,” Adrian Dix, B.C.’s Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions, said in a news release. “Parkland continues to be an outstanding partner and role model for biofuel producers.”

The International Air Transport Association said that last year SAF production globally doubled to 600 million litres in 2023 from a year earlier. The B.C. government projects SAF production will rise to two billion litres annually by 2030.

Every domestic airline is working on lowering carbon emissions by tapping low-carbon fuels. In April, Calgary-based WestJet Airlines Ltd. began buying SAF from Houston-based Shell Aviation – a unit of Shell PLC – as part of the carrier’s strategy to hit net-zero emissions by 2050. In Quebec, a company called SAF+ is developing lowcarbon fuels with support from aircraft manufacturers Airbus Canada and Pratt & Whitney Canada.

Parkland is shipping SAF from a refinery that activist fund manager Engine Capital LP is pushing the company to sell. As part of a two-year-old campaign, New York-based Engine said Parkland’s stock price would benefit if the company sold non-core business such as refining, paid down debt and focused on running convenience stories, or sold the entire company.

Over the past year, Grand Cayman-based Simpson Oil, Parkland’s largest shareholder with a 19.7-per-cent stake, has also pushed the company to put itself up for sale.

Parkland acquired the B.C. refinery in 2017 as part of its $1.46billion purchase of 129 gas stations and 37 commercial fuel facilities from Chevron Corp.

In the wake of Engine and Parkland’s demands, Parkland announced the sale of its gas stations and stores in Florida as part of a plan to raise $500-million from asset sales by the end of 2025. The company is at the midpoint of a five-year growth strategy aimed at doubling cash flow and returning $1.5-billion to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks.

The aviation sector needs to dramatically increase SAF production to meet emission goals, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), an industry trade group. To lower airlines’ carbon intensity 5 per cent by 2030, IATA forecast SAF demand would rise to 24 million tonnes a year. This represents a 16-fold increase in demand and would require “a minimum of about 100 new renewable fuel plants,” IATA said in a report.