The Liberals are focusing on electric cars, but people are buying hybrids

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When politicians make important financial decisions based on movies they watched as children, they shouldn’t be shocked if the results prove to be suboptimal.

Field of Dreams is a 1989 hit movie based on a 1982 novel about a 1919 baseball scandal. Iowa Kevin Costner plays a farmer who repeatedly hears a disembodied voice telling him “If you build it, he will come,” so he builds a baseball field in his cornfield. On the field, sure enough, characters from a long-departed baseball team—including the father, played by Ray Liotta—walk off the field to play a baseball game.

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As far as I know, deal with The tens of billions of dollars being funneled to auto giants to help them build electric-car battery factories is rooted in the same principle: No matter how uncertain the future of electric vehicles, governments in Ottawa and Ontario and Quebec insist that success is inevitable. If we build the factories, buyers will come.

But that’s not how it’s going. The original dream of sleek, emission-free cars that would cruise quietly through the countryside faded as the public became aware of potholes. Batteries are heavy and far from cheap. There’s also the issue of uncertain range, the relative scarcity of charging stations, and the unreliability of those that exist, not to mention that much of the planet lacks the will, ability, money, or intent to build the massive infrastructure required for the electric vehicle revolution. Granted, in Norway, with a population of 5.6 million, 93% of new cars are electric; in India, with a population of 1.5 billion, it’s 2%. Norway has a $1.7 trillion oil wealth fund. India’s average Annual Income $1,314.

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The result is that electric car sales are lagging, and car companies are rethinking their strategies. Volkswagen planning Six new battery plants, but Now The plan could be delayed. Chief Executive Oliver Blum told Czech officials: “There is currently no business reason to decide on further site selection.” Blum said the decision would be “based on market conditions, including the slow growth of the European (electric vehicle) market.”

Ford Motor Co. has similarly dampened enthusiasm for an all-electric future, delaying a $1.8 billion plan to transform its Oakville, Ontario, plant into a “state-of-the-art” electric vehicle production center, renaming it the Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex. Will Recalibration plant Introducing the F-Series Super Duty pickup, a traditional gas-guzzling, emissions-guzzling machine.

The idea for government policy on electric vehicles is straight out of Field of Dreams, but with one twist: carmakers will be forced to make electric cars, and drivers will be bribed to buy them. The regulations unveiled by the Canadian Liberals in 2023 are the poster child for such policies: sales of new gas-powered cars will be effectively blocked by 2035, and car companies will be required to prove that the supply of electric vehicles is increasing regularly, whether or not demand is justified.

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Try as they may, politicians can only do so much to impose their views on a skeptical populace, and the electric car movement is one example. While all-electric car sales are lagging, hybrid car sales are booming. Former Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda predicted this when he took office. debate The haste to jettison a century of engine technology in favor of a still-developing replacement is premature because much of the world isn’t ready. Toyota produced the first-ever mass-market hybrid more than 25 years ago, but its views are considered so out of touch that it feels the need to step aside in favor of a less skeptical, more practical successor in 2023.

But he was right. While electric car sales are down, hybrid car sales are up Require yes briskHybrid cars have both a gasoline engine and a small electric motor, so there’s no need to worry about range or charging stations. They cost less, go farther and emit fewer emissions. In 2023, U.S. hybrid car sales rose 53% from the previous year, and in the first few months of this year they rose another 50%. The Wall Street Journal Reported Hybrids have sell Nearly three times faster than an electric car and twice as fast as a traditional internal combustion engine. When Ford made the announcement in Oakville, it hoped the transformation would “pave the way for the introduction of multi-energy technology to the next generation of Super Trucks.” But they were talking about hybrids, not electrics.

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Don’t expect this to impress the politicians. The governments of Ontario, Ottawa and Quebec have invested billions of dollars and made a lot of rhetoric into their battery blueprints, and they won’t change their tune just because the market changes. Fields large enough to accommodate multiple baseball fields are already being cleared for battery plants, walls are being built, recruitment In progress.

At least as important is the amount of political capital involved, since there aren’t three leaders behind the big subsidy checks — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier Doug Ford and Premier Francois Lloyd-Hilary Simpson. Legault — popular enough that they can afford to lose more. Ford and Trudeau recently visited the Ontario Goodyear plant to announce an expansion that will receive $64 million in subsidies. Electric vehicles are good for tire sales because their added weight wears out tires faster than usual. The plant will produce specially designed electric vehicle tires, which will no doubt be made with specially designed price match.

Until electric car prices drop and range and charging conditions improve, buyers will likely continue to choose hybrids over pure electric cars. But Western governments are doing their best to keep it that way. Trudeau announced Monday that Canada will join the United States in imposing a 100% tariff on cheap cars imported from China, ensuring that buyers cannot get competitive prices and that the gap between electric and hybrid cars remains.

Canada will have a battery industry one way or another. The treasury is open to government subsidies. If only they could convince Kevin Costner to help increase sales.

National Post

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