Quebec narrowly misses goal of putting 100,000 electric vehicles on the road

More and more cars on Quebec roads havegreen licence plates these days, justnot as manyas the province hadhoped.

The government'saim wasto have 100,000 electric or plug-in hybrids on the road as of Dec. 31, 2020, it will close out the year with 92,000.

The figureswere provided bythe Quebec Electric Vehicle Association(AVEQ), which publishesup-to-datestatistics on the province's transport electrification plan.

Even though Quebec narrowly fell short of the stated target, it'sclose enough for the president and founder of AVEQ, Simon-Pierre Rioux. Hesaid "we reached our goal."

Rioux said Quebec has come a long way since launching its first incentiveprogram in 2012to promote electric car sales in the province, now known as Roulez vert.

"There were a lot of obstacles to buying an electric car, whether it was the additional costs compared to a gasoline-powered car, the anemic charging infrastructure, the lack of availability at dealerships," he said, adding the COVID-19 pandemic slowed vehicle sales in the final months of the year.

Robert Poti, a former provincial cabinet minister who headsthe industry group thatrepresents the province's auto dealers, disagrees with that assessment. There's no real link between Quebec's failure to hit 100,000 and COVID-19, according to Poti.

"From May until today, COVID has had no effect on vehicle sales in my opinion," said the president of the Corporation des concessionaires d'automobiles du Qubec(CCEQ). "People shopped online at the start of the pandemic so that when businesses reopened, their vehicles were available."

For Poti, the real problem is most folkscan't afford an electric car.

"People who have [an electric car], they're men who are on average 46 years old," he said. "Their salary ranges between $70,000 and $80,000."

Among the other factors that may have curbed consumers' enthusiasm in recent years: arelatively modestnumberof charging stations,Quebec's sprawling geography and electriccars' limited range, which decreases during episodes of extreme cold,said Poti.

"I can't bring Gaspsie closer to Quebec and I can't bring Abitibi closer to Montreal," he said.

Looking ahead

The good news is waiting lists for green carsat dealerships are getting shorter.

"We've noticed in recent months that some manufacturers have gone to great lengths [...] and we are starting to see results," said the AVEQ's Rioux.

He acknowledgedthe cost of buying an electric car is still high, but it's become progressivelycheaperfor mulitiplecar manufacturers to produce them over the past decade.

"Not only have we increased the range of vehicles, but we've managed to lower the cost," Rioux said. "They're the only vehicles on the market whose cost is dropping."

There are also federal and provincial government financial incentives of upto $13,000 for the purchase of a new fully electric vehicle.

Add it all up andRioux thinks the provincial government's most recent goal of having 1.5 million electric cars on the road by 2030 is "doable."

Roughly50 per cent of green cars sold in Canada are purchased in Quebec, which Poti said indicates Quebec's is"the most conscientious" population in the country.

Since 2012, the Quebec government has spent more than $576 millionto encourage the sale of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles through its Roulez vert program.