Canadians interest in buying an EV drops for third straight year

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A new survey by Auto Trader has found Canadians’ interest in making their next purchase an electric vehicle has declined for the third straight year.

The new data released this month revealed 42 per cent of Canadians would entertain purchasing an EV, down four per cent from 2024 and 26 per cent from 2022.

Only 29 per cent of shoppers said they would consider only purchasing an electric vehicle compared to 40 per cent the year before.

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“There’s an obvious trend of interest coming down,” said Baris Akyurek, Auto Trader’s vice president of insights and intelligence.

“Look at the traditional reasons why people are not considering an EV – a bit of range anxiety, cost and lack of charging stations. Those are the three main ones and what have we done to address them in recent years? Pretty much nothing.”

Akyurek said eliminating federal incentives was also a key reason for consumer hesitancy.

The survey found 68 per cent of non-EV owners, who would consider buying an EV, believe they would be influenced to purchase one by such incentives and 52 per cent felt incentives increased their confidence in purchasing an EV.

Despite those headwinds, electric vehicles/hybrids are gaining an increasing percentage of the overall market share of vehicles sold in Canada.

Statistics Canada reports Canadians purchased 270,985 EV/hybrids in 2024. That represented 14.6 per cent of the 1,852,738 vehicles sold and is an increase of 3.6 per cent of the overall market compared to 2023.

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“Though interest in buying an EV declined to 42 per cent, that’s still a substantial number of people who would consider an EV as their next vehicle,” Akyurek said. “Sales are growing, but supply is growing at a faster rate. There’s a mismatch in supply and demand.”

That reality was reflected in Chrysler brand CEO Christine Feuell confirming earlier this month that the brand was scrapping its plan to be 100 per cent electric in 2028. Instead, all new Chrysler and Alfa Romeo products will be offered in multi-energy versions.

The federal government had hoped EV sales mandates would help push the industry to reach 20 per cent market share of all new light vehicles sold in 2026 and 100 per cent by 2035. Automakers could face up to a $20,000 fine per car not meeting those quotas beginning in 2026.

However, automakers claim those EV sales mandates are not realistic and call for them to be abandoned.

The federal Conservatives announced last week their intention to scrap the mandates if elected.

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“Right now, we’re in a position where companies will be crippled by these mandates,” Unifor Local 200 president and national auto council chair John D’Agnolo said. “There has to be some flexibility.

“We’re not in a position to have battery electric vehicles all over the place.

“We don’t have the infrastructure. We don’t have the charging stations, and we don’t have the technology in place to go from one place to another wherever we need to go.”

However, even within Unifor there’s a difference of opinion on how aggressive the mandate timelines should be.

Unifor’s Windsor Regional Environment Council released a statement Friday condemning the Conservatives’ proposal to eliminate EV sales mandates.

“Ending the EV mandate would set our environmental progress back years,” the council said in a statement. “We are already behind many other countries in the world.

“As for the economy, Canada and the industry have already invested billions to make the EV transition possible. Ending the EV mandate would cost Windsor, and Ontario, and Canada thousands of jobs and billions of dollars.”

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D’Agnolo disagreed with that firm stance and said the marketplace will decide the pace of the EV transition. He added from the companies’ perspective, internal combustion engines represent the main revenue source needed to finance the research and development needed to move along the EV transition.

“We’re (industry) being driven by the consumer,” D’Agnolo said. “We have to have a balance and keep our eye on the future too.

“But if consumers wanted battery-powered cars, the companies would be building them by the millions. Right now, they don’t want that.”

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