Canada Set to Side with China on EVs

They can also be incoherent. Don't know about Canada, but here in France we also have a bunch of auto manufacturers and the government seems completely lunatic with these policies.

On the one hand, there's a very strong push to reduce car usage. In Paris, the speed limit has been reduced to 30 km/h, 50 on the ring road, many lanes and parking have been removed to improve bike infrastructure. Then, when sales drop and jobs are on the line, those same people are absolutely shocked.

Now, personally, I'm all for reducing traffic in cities. I'm not particularly keen on breathing exhaust all day every day or getting run over by two tons of steel. Sure, a whole debate can be had on specific use cases, people living where there's no public transit, etc. But my point is that you can't, on the one hand, push for something, then be angry when you obtain the consequences.

Up until a few years ago, there was a very hard push for diesel engines. Local companies invested a lot in those. Now these engines are practically banned, and even gasoline ones aren't faring too well. So, automakers have to scramble to move to electric, but it takes time. While other companies, built from the ground up to this, already have models head and shoulders above what we can produce. And politicians, true to nature, come up with all kinds of weird incentives. They've recently introduced a weight tax on vehicles [0]. On the face of it, it's an "SUV-tax" to limit "gas-guzzlers". Cue surprised faces when they realize a Tesla weighs as much as an SUV (I'm talking European models here, so no absurd Escalades or what have you).

[0] This is France, so laws have exceptions. Electrics get an "allowance", which basically reduces the mass considered for the tax. But it's not entirely clear how that works. Ditto for hybrids.

the third option is to force foreign companies to manufacture locally (which is often the case). It's kind of the best of both worlds.

Trump says he wants every car sold in the United States to be made domestically.

The old integrated cross-border auto manufacturing system is over. Stellantis is already moving production of Jeep from Brampton to Illinois, and others are expected to follow.

Canada has something like 500k jobs tied up in the automobile industry. This plays a larger role in the decision than “US strategy” but I am assuming with this stupid trade war it can tip the balance to reducing that tariff.

The current Canadian prime minister is Mark Carney. He is an international banker. I think you have your answer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Carney

Developing an EV industry depended on US cooperation. That cooperation is gone since Trump was elected.

> Exporting your manufacturing base to a nation that opposes the fundamental values of a nation is completely suicidal

How do you feel about integrating your manufacturing base with a nation that opposes the fundamental values of our nation, and constantly fantasizes about annexing our nation?

Unless you're arguing for Canada to make its own EV manufacturing industry independently from both China and America?

What's the alternative to Canada? To be depended on the states who, very openly, threaten them on every possible occasion?

Unfortunately, it's not 2000s/2010s anymore, and rules of the game have changed. Most countries realize that there is a future that's not purely Pax-Americana (including USA as well). Sovereign nations will choose what's best for them and their future, especially in the cases of a neighbouring bully.

Serious question: hasn't the western world largely exporting their manufacturing base to China for everything, just not EVs/batteries? There is a major conflict here between corporate profits vs national security. Consumers generally don't care about vague concepts like national security if it makes things cheaper.

Palmer Lucky touched on this last week - how China would love to slowly winnow away American automobile manufacturing capacity, because that capacity would be converted to wartime production in the event of a large scale war.

> This is the wrong take. Economic dependence on China is a massive national security threat.

and instead dependence on the U.S.?

China has been a stable and reliable trading partner with Canada for a long time. Canada is far too small a country to produce everything it needs within it's own borders. If anyone ever declares war on Canada then we're toast, so we're best not going out of our way to make enemies with the world's dominant superpowers –one of which is actively threatening our sovereignty.

The problem is that as of now, the dependence on USA is more destabilizing. It is a country that has fundamental values difference against Canada, threatened Canada just recently and if war occurs, it is huge issue for Canada.

Are you seriously suggesting that Chinese automobile companies exporting to Europe and possibly North America are oblivious to the existence of winter? Their own country has cities like Harbin where temperatures can reach -35.

Maybe not -40C, but honestly that's not required to capture a huge chunk of the Canadian market (BC around Vancouver, and SWO Ontario).

China has significant climatic variation, and Harbin (for example) at around 45 degree latitude is right in line with Montreal.

https://english.news.cn/20230712/a56c80cac8e749f0bcf02579463...

Canadians love to exaggerate how cold it gets.

None of the 4 biggest Canadian cities have EVER had -40C temperatures. No, wind chill does not count.

In fact, most years they’re not even getting to -30C, and if it does happen it’s only for 1 to 2 days. The rest of the time you’re dealing with average -10C, which China also regularly deals with. But guess what, even if you can’t use your EV one day out of 364 days that’s not that big a deal. Most people should just stay home that day.

The source is I’m Canadian and lived in Ottawa for a decade.

I love how you went back and edited post-facto to try to shore up your claim. Come on.

Edmonton, where I'm actually from, has had record lows of -40, but these are extreme outliers. When people speak of -40 in Edmonton they mean wind chill, not real temps. Look at a scatter plot of actual temperatures in Edmonton and it's really not the drama you're implying.

Cold climate is not the barrier to EV adoption. Pricing (and politics) is. Anywhere in the world where EVs have been price competitive to ICE vehicles, consumers have preferred them.

There are political / economic interests in Canada (and North America generally) that absolutely do not want EV adoption. One would expect that from an oil&gas producing nation. Doesn't mean that reasonable people who understand that climate change is an actual thing should support this position.

"its big jerk trading partner" = USA?

It's not clear from that sentence who you mean, so I was clarifying.