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Journalist Markham Hislop interviews leading energy experts from around the world about the energy transition and climate change.
Welcome to episode 319 of the Energy Talks podcast. I'm energy and climate journalist, Markham Hyslop. The global auto sector is in chaos. China's EV makers have declared war on the internal combustion engine, and the Western and Asian legacy automakers who are desperately trying to pivot to electric. The OEMs like GM, Ford, and VW are hiding behind tariff walls recently erected by US and European governments.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, news outlets are running stories about EV sales stalling even though easily accessible data shows the opposite. Welcome to the disruptive peer disruptive period that accompanies any energy transition. Historians may see nothing but smooth technology adoption curves, but to those of us living through the disruptive transformation, change feels like a fun house mirror. We don't know what to believe. To help me sort through the confusion, I'm joined by Joanna Kyriazas, EV analyst with Clean Energy Canada.
Speaker 1:So welcome to the energy talks, Joanna.
Speaker 2:Thanks. Great to be here, Markham.
Speaker 1:Well, it's nice to have you back. We don't have you on enough. And part of that is because the it's not that we don't like to have you on here, Joanna, but it's nuts at the global level. I mean, what China has done over the last year, how its EV sector has emerged as a major force in the automotive, industry worldwide. I mean, you know, I I I I bore my my poor, podcast listeners by quoting, Carlos Tavares of Stellantis all the time, who says they're coming for us.
Speaker 1:You know? And some of us are gonna go bankrupt. They're that competitive. Their costs are that low. They produce superior quality.
Speaker 1:They're technically proficient. They're you know, they lead in technology. It's crazy. And then you get to Canada, and, you know, it's like, well, what EV revolution are you talking about?
Speaker 2:I think I think there's an EV rev revolution happening here too. It may not be Chinese, vehicle led, but I certainly notice a difference walking down the street. I'm seeing a lot more EVs on the road, both in terms of number and in terms of models.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I suppose. You know? And and, BC and Quebec lead at about 20 percent adoption rate, and then there are the the laggards. Alberta says I go to Alberta once a month, for a week, and I see the odd Tesla, you know, the odd VW ID 4, and it's beyond that.
Speaker 1:Oh, and and, you know, the odd Ioniq 5, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV 6, but not anything compared to what I what I see in, in, Vancouver or even here on on Vancouver Island. What's it like in Ontario?
Speaker 2:In Ontario, I think we have the benefit of a a larger market size, and so just more people here and and also more people who are interested go electric go electric. But it's a different world still between Ontario and Quebec. You know, if I just walk across the bridge, to Quebec, all of a sudden, every other vehicle is an electric vehicle. I've got access to, what is it? $13,000 worth in, provincial and federal rebates to go towards a new EV.
Speaker 2:I've got access to one of the best charging networks in North America. I've got help to install a home charger. So I think in Ottawa, we get a little bit of help being so close to Quebec and and get some of that overflow. Like I bought a used, electric Kona and I think it was originally, you know, purchased by someone in Quebec. So we get some of the overflow benefits, but, definitely, we're still seeing a pretty lopsided, EV transition, across Canada.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I get I hear all the time, especially in Alberta, is, you know, well, there wouldn't be, as many EVs if it wasn't for subsidies. And I think, well, yes. Of course. That's that's true. But it's also true that EVs are like a lot of technology, including the oil sands.
Speaker 1:The same principle holds. Your you spend more on CapEx, your capital expenditure, your purchase price, and then you spend a lot less on OpEx, your operating costs. And so the, in the case of the oil sands, the profits are high enough that the, the private market stepped in, and they could raise the capital to build these, you you know, 3 or 4 $100,000,000,000 worth of, assets that they've got up in Northern Alberta. But if you're talking about the average family, really now we've reached the point where, we're seeing some price parity in North America, but there are 3 or 4 models that are this are actually below the price of internal combustion engine cars. But, really, here, the point is that governments, sorry.
Speaker 1:EVs are competitive with gas powered cars. All governments are doing now is making it go faster than it might have otherwise. But in from my point of view, for as an energy transition journalist, I, the switch to electric transportation is inevitable. It's just it's a done deal. Costs are gonna continue to fall.
Speaker 1:It's the only thing to be determined now by policy is pace. Would you agree?
Speaker 2:I agree. So let's let's get to a number of things that you just raised right there. So first on cost, you're right. It costs so much less to own an EV than it does to own a comparable gas car. We we compare popular electric vehicles with their gas counterparts every year and find that a typical Canadian driver can save 3 to $4,000 by going electric in terms of their fuel and maintenance savings per year.
Speaker 2:That means even when the EV version of a of a vehicle is slightly higher priced up front, you end up paying back that higher up front cost in often less than a year. And then you're just pocketing the savings. And it makes sense. Right? It's, between $5.12 to fully charge a typical EV at home in any province in Canada.
Speaker 2:Here in in Ontario, I can fully charge my car for a buck 79 if I'm using that ultra low overnight electricity rate that Ontario recently rolled out. So, like, incredibly cheap to own these vehicles and the prices upfront keep coming down. The second thing you were talking about is, yeah, the inevitability of this transition. So I just look at I just look at, the amounts of money that automakers are investing. Right?
Speaker 2:That's like money doesn't lie. And they're investing 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars into battery technology, critical minerals, EV supply chains. The most recent investment into Canada that we saw the the Honda investment in Ontario of $15,000,000,000 right, to build, an EV battery, plant as well as a manufacturing, sorry, an assembly facility, and some of the upstream parts of the supply chain. Like, that was so incredibly telling because Honda is one of the laggards when it comes to the EV transition rights. And it itself describes as one of the car companies that takes longer to make a decision.
Speaker 2:But when it does make a decision, you know, it's it's really sure that it's going in that direction. And so that that was, yeah, a very meaningful investment. And it was also pretty cool that Canada got to be the recipient of it. And are we're gonna be playing such a, you know, vital role in in Honda's, electrification strategy globally.
Speaker 1:Now I know you as an EV analyst, for Clean Energy Canada, you spend a lot of time working with other groups and advising governments, and you meet with governments regularly and and with the auto industry to talk to them about what plant where, you know, where things are going, what their plans are. And I've had a couple of debates, recently on social media with economists, and these are academic economists. We might call them classical, you know, liberal economists, and and they are very critical of the federal government's subsidies for battery plants and EV EV plants. And my argument is, because I I I take the clean energy industrial policy point of view, and this is the next industrial revolution. Digital and clean energy are I think I forget who who it was, which agency, but they came out and said, look.
Speaker 1:This is the 6th industrial revolution. This one will be led by the digital technologies like AI and by clean energy tech like batteries and EVs. So if that's the case, why in the hell would we not want to get as a leg up on clean energy manufacturing in the supply chains? This window is only open for a little while, and then it closes. And and then once those supply chains harden, it's very difficult to get into them.
Speaker 1:And with the Americans now having adopted the, the inflation reduction act and instated their intent to build a North American EV and clean energy technology industries, it just makes so much sense. So when I see some when I see the federal government or the federal government with the occasionally Ontario will tag along and put in a few billion, I think if you don't build it like the Chinese did, you buy it or you sit out. And for me, I I I sitting out would be a typically Canadian approach to this. Oh, we'll muddle through. We'll sell them some critical minerals.
Speaker 1:We'll, you know, oh, we'll build out our electricity. We'll we'll export electricity at 2ยข a kilowatt. God, won't we make a killing? You know, that that would be a a typical and I think that's the wrong approach. I think what the the the government, the industry are doing, it makes the most sense.
Speaker 1:You build assets. Build get us into the industry and into those supply chains. That's a long winded. I don't even know if there's a question in there. What do you think?
Speaker 2:I agree. So Australia is an example of a country that made a deliberate decision to give up its car industry. They they said, we're not gonna compete on this. We're gonna focus on critical minerals and, you know, other industries. Canada could have done the same.
Speaker 2:They truly could have, but we did what we had to do. Like, the auto industry is one of our largest industries. It's Ontario's largest export industry or the 2nd largest. It's, it's one of the beating hearts of our economy. And the exciting thing about the auto industry is that it does have a clear future in in the clean energy future.
Speaker 2:It's, you know, we don't need to wind it down. We just need to transition it. And so if that's what Canada decide decided to do and and we did, then we had to get in the game. And the game was competing for these global investments by offering some pretty sweet incentive packages, like all other jurisdictions were doing. And as you said, there was a limited window where these global supply chains are being completely redrawn, and we had to get in the game, or, or we would miss out.
Speaker 2:And we did get in the game in a really big way. Like, Canada's auto sector is much, better positioned now as a result of the transition to EVs than it otherwise would have been. It was on a declining path.
Speaker 1:I wanna point out some hypocrisy because the very often, the the, oil bros in my rep in my on my threads point out that, wow, you know, point out the subsidies. And they refused to acknowledge that, you know, because they want Canada get into the LNG game. Texas and Louisiana are major LNG players because Texas and Louisiana, the states, provide huge subsidies, and local governments provide huge subsidies. So when you're building industry, even if it's fossil fuel centered industry, governments are at the table. The taxpayer is at the table.
Speaker 1:They're building the subsidized infrastructure. They're giving grants. You can't get out of this. And so it's no surprise given particularly the fact that China has subsidized its EV industry to the tune of 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars. You can't avoid it.
Speaker 1:That it is just these are table stakes. Suck it up. Let's get it like, let's get after it and quit our whining. Economists, I'm looking at you.
Speaker 2:Well, there there's a difference as well when it comes to subsidizing an industry that is sunsetting, like the oil and gas industry. The IEA just came out with a report, yesterday, was it, that said Yep. Oil will peak in 5 years, and then we'll enter a period of potential oversupply.
Speaker 1:And And we know what that does to prices, don't we?
Speaker 2:Yes. And then Right. Then there's, the case of subsidizing an industry that has huge growth potential far out into the future. And so we're not even talking about an apples to apples comparison here. Yeah.
Speaker 2:One one side of that discussion is more worth, you know, pumping some taxpayer dollars into.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about perception here because late in last year, stories appeared all over the North American, news media. Oh my god. We're having an slow down and, you know, they're pumping the brakes was a common headline. Right? And then last week, Bloomberg released some data.
Speaker 1:That shows that, in fact, 6 out of the 10 US automakers had big increases in in EV sales percentage wise. Not all of them. Tesla went backwards. GM went backwards, so did Volkswagen. Nissan stayed roughly the same.
Speaker 1:Everybody else had big, huge increases. So what do we make of this? I mean, is this just an an a sort of a counternarrative being pushed in advance of of the the Biden 100%, tariffs on Chinese EVs. Is that what this is about? Because it's not clearly not databased.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I know. We're there's definitely a disconnect between the narrative that we're hearing that, EV sales are flagging and then the actual sales data that continues to come out. So as you said, globally, I think Bloomberg just released a report yesterday. Global sales, are continuing to grow and set to rise about 20% this year.
Speaker 2:In Canada, we just got some new data out today, for the Q1 of 2024 showing EV sales continue to rise. We're at 11.3% of new car sales are electric, this quarter compared to 8.6%, last year around this time. So that's, it's about a 53% growth in sales. It's not a you can't paint the entire story, though, with a broad brush. So I think one part of it is that not every market is experiencing the same growth, and some in some markets, sales growth rates are slowing down.
Speaker 2:That is to be expected. You know, if you if you're looking for or I guess I should say, on a 100% growth in sales is easy to achieve if you're going from 1% of sales to 2%. But once you start getting into the double digits, it's a lot harder to go from 10% of sales to 20% in in, you know, 1 year. So that's to be expected that the rate of sales growth is slowing down. I think another kinda source of this narrative is consumer, surveys looking at, you know, interest in buying an EV in the future.
Speaker 2:And there are a number of those surveys that are showing, in Canada, consumer interest is cooling a little bit. But I think there are a few things at play here. One is the affordability crisis that we're all in is impacting all new car sales and interest in purchasing a new car. EVs are included in that, but it's not an, solely EV problem. Second is some of the surveys look only at non EV owners, and that group is getting smaller, which is which is good news.
Speaker 2:But then the final thing is that there has been a huge spread in or increase in EV related misinformation over the past year. And I think this is because EVs are getting into the mainstream. It's also because there are certain influential leaders with a big platform, you know, including, former president Donald Trump, who, has waged a little bit of a war against EVs and and is starting to bring EVs into the culture wars. They're getting more politicized. And we do think that that's having an effect.
Speaker 2:It is, you know, impacting public opinion around EVs and it is making some buyers more hesitant because they're seeing these sensationalist, claims about EV engine or sorry, EVs catching fire or EVs not working in the cold. And so so, yeah, we do think it's impacting intention. But one point that's important to point out is EV sales are still only a quarter of what current interest in buying an EV is according to those consumer surveys, which show that still, you know, nearly half of Canadians are open to a new EV. And as we're seeing more models coming online, more competitive pricing, and interest rates are coming down, we expect to see, consumer interest and and sales continue to go up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I don't know why we would expect, you know, a 100% interest in buying EVs. If you look at the, AE Rogers, one of my 2, curves that I use to explain any kind of energy adoption or new new technology adoption. It's a bell curve. And we all know the the categories.
Speaker 1:Innovators are 2.5%, and early adopters are 11.5%, and early majority adopters are 34%. That takes you halfway up the curve, and then you've got late majority and laggards. Well, why would we ex you know, you go up the curve as costs come down, as operating purchase price come down, operating costs come down, value goes up, and risk sim comes down. Well, we're not there yet. And so, you know, my wife and I are, early majority adopters.
Speaker 1:We generally adopt when the technology's 30, 40% in because the price is, you know, about as low as they're gonna get reasonably, and the risk is out of them. You know, they worked all the bugs out, and and, basically, you can get a nice reliable, whatever it is, TV. I remember when when plasma TVs came in. You know, we waited about 5 years because there was there were problems with screen ghosting and all sorts of stuff, and then they were a solid TV. Great.
Speaker 1:Same thing with EVs. I have concerns I have concerns about, about range, and I have concerns about service because we're hearing sort of stories about, dealers that, aren't ready yet to service EVs. So if there are warranty issues, that, you know, it takes weeks or months to get parts, or the technicians don't have proper training yet. There are all these little things that when, when a consumer goes to buy, especially a big purchase like this, a big capital intensive purchase, you know, you wait, you do this calculation. We all do it with those four things, OPEX, CAPEX, value, and risk.
Speaker 1:And and everybody calculates them differently, which is why you have a curve and not a straight line going up. And so this idea that somehow we have to, in in order for this to have any legitimacy, it has to be a very, very steep curve is doesn't accord with theory is my point, nor does it accord with historical examples.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I agree. And I think the the network effect is such a big, it's such a big it has such a big influence where the more Canadians are directly interacting with EVs, whether it's because their family members or their friends are driving them or their kids, or whether they get in an Uber or a taxi that's electric. It just demystifies the technology. You see it's quite similar to a gas car and in many ways way better.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm not a big driver. I was never a big car person. I got an EV, and I can't believe how much fun it is to drive. I actually like driving now. It's it's faster.
Speaker 2:It's more precise. Like, there's, you know, all of these new safety features. It's quiet. So I just, I think and every time, yeah, every time my parents come, I make sure they're driving it and or, you know, I always offer offer it to my friends, and I just see my neighborhood is quickly populating with more and more EVs. Because every neighbor that gets to see you driving your EV all winter long with no problems or, you know, fitting all of your stuff in the car with 2 kids in their car seats.
Speaker 2:It all just becomes, very not normal and doable, and I think, yeah, people become more ready to take the to make the switch.
Speaker 1:I have to butt in here with a little bit of so back in the about 1937, University of Iowa at Ames, was promoting hybrid corn. They wanted farmers to pick up, you know, the much hybrid corn which had much higher yields to it. And so what they would do is they would find the most respected farmer in a region, and they would give them the the seed and say, grow this corn. And the next year or the year after, they would then ask that farmer to invite all his friends within, you know, I don't know, a 10 mile radius, 20 mile radius, whatever it was. And then they would have, like, a farm day.
Speaker 1:And all the other farmers would come and they go, oh, what's this? And then they talk to that farmer, and then they talk to the experts at the the US, Department of Agriculture or the the university had brought out. And and then some of those farmers were going, oh, okay. I'm convinced, like, this is this is the, you know, better than sliced bread. I'm I'm getting this.
Speaker 1:And then the next year was and it's it it was a a controlled it was an experiment on networking before we knew what network effects were, and it worked. And it worked really well, and you see the same thing with tractors in Saskatchewan. I could bore you all day with stories about tractor days in rural Saskatchewan. But this is really important, and it's why it's why we have adoption curves. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They go in curves, and we are rapidly climbing this curve. This is it it looks I can't believe, someday, Joanna, when we're not on a podcast, and viewers can see it too, I have a great graph from the US Department of Agriculture, and it shows from 1920 to 1950 a nice curve up of of sales of tractors. And at the top is horses and mules, which comes down just as the other you know, it's a decline curve just as the other one is curving up, and that's exactly what we're seeing today. And the thing that is and I I alluded to this in my introduction. The the the reason why it isn't clear to us now is we're in the middle of it.
Speaker 1:We're not even in the middle of it, frankly. We're maybe about 25% of the way the way through it. And and when you're in that period, it's disruptive because you've got the old technology, you've got the new technology, you've got different policies, you've got I mean, everything is in flux, and it's and so it's confusing to people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Over to you.
Speaker 2:I mean, things just keep getting better and smoother. Like, nowadays, the average range on a new EV is, I wanna say, over 480 kilometers. Even if that battery range is impacted by cold weather, which it does get impacted just like gas gas car ranges get impacted, Like, a 30% drop still leaves you with, you know, over 300 kilometers of range for that day, and that's like an extreme drop in very low temperatures. And charging keeps getting better. You know, we do a road trip between Ottawa and Toronto to go and visit my parents, and all of the on route highway stations, highway gas stations now have EV charging.
Speaker 2:So it's just part of the route already. You've got the apps that help you find where the charging stations are. Cars are charging faster, than than previously. Again, the model the model, options that are on the market now are amazing. Like, one of the I remember one of the key points couple years ago was that there's not a an EV model that meets my needs.
Speaker 2:They're all too small, and they're kind of smart car ish. Now you've got, you know, 6 seaters, 9 seaters.
Speaker 1:Hummers. You've got GMP owners.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Hummers, electric Jeep Wrangler. You've got Rivian. You've got, the Tesla Model Y. Lots of SUVs.
Speaker 2:Lots of the big vehicles that, Canadians want. Actually, I I know a lot of folks are excited about the all electric Silverado, which is supposed to be, you know, pretty competitive compared to the Ford F1 50 lightning. So, so, yeah, I think a lot of those kinks, are already far from worked out. Purchase price is coming down fast. Technology is getting better and better.
Speaker 2:And, people yeah. I we're just gonna see sales continue to rise, and and you're right. We'll just have to see how fast.
Speaker 1:Well, all of this good, you know, good feel, conversation we're having, Now we're gonna talk about tariffs because this is gonna be a contentious issue. And the point I wanna make for listeners is I haven't, I did write about it, but you may not have seen my call, in which I talked about, a week or two before US president, Joe Biden announced the the tariffs on new Chinese clean energy technologies. It was a 100% on EVs, but then it was, you know, varying percentages for other technologies. Before that, John Podesta, his climate envoy, held a press conference and announced that the Americans were, creating a task force, and they were going to begin to punish imports with high embedded carbon. And this was clearly aimed at the Chinese who, you know, still have 70% of their electricity is produced with coal, so that's a lot of carbon that goes into the power, the energy that powers these the factories that build these cars.
Speaker 1:And so it you know, it's it's kind of a it's a way to protect domestic manufacturers, but there's a principle involved here, high embedded carbon. What does Canada send to the United States that has high embedded carbon? Heavy crude oil from the Alberta oil sands. And the market and governments are looking for ways to punish high embedded carbon products. And this is a so you could kinda see the Americans.
Speaker 1:You can't call it a carbon price or carbon tax. My god. That's verboten. You can't do that. So we're gonna get at it some other way.
Speaker 1:And Flavio Volpe, who is a very outspoken the associated parts automotive parts manufacturers association, very outspoken that Canada should do the same. Where do you stand on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, we we think this is a very complicated issue, because on the one hand, Canada, yeah, has these kind of 2 big elephants, trading partners that it it needs to try to appease. So the US, as you said, is moving forward within a 100% tariff. I haven't heard Biden clearly communicate an, a desire for, you know, full solidarity, from Canada and and for any sort of request for us to move forward with a similar tariff. But, but I think it's something that we could expect to the US would appreciate.
Speaker 2:And then if and when Donald Trump gets reelected, who knows what sort of expectations that he'll have for Canada or for the grudges he might, act on. And so
Speaker 1:I think we know.
Speaker 2:I think we know. No. There's definitely some some pressure to align with the US there. On the other hand, if we swing too far in the other direction in setting tariffs, then we risk, inciting a tit for tat trade war with China when our relations with China are already incredibly delicate. So you've got our trading partners to think about, on the climate and clean energy and consumer, you know, part of the the discussion, we've set these, 100% electric vehicle sales targets by 2,035.
Speaker 2:One of the barriers is price as we've talked about in this podcast. And so, you know, we want more affordable EVs to be available for Canadians, and Chinese EVs are affordable. Right? The the BYD has some models that are selling for some, you know, $10,000 US. So, Tesla used to play the disruptor role in helping to drive EV prices down.
Speaker 2:Tesla's gone a little bit off the rails lately. And so now BYD is playing that important role. And, we definitely wanna make sure Canadians have access to affordable EVs. So that's the 2nd bucket of considerations. And then the final bucket is that we want to, build and protect, our domestic EV industry.
Speaker 2:And we have been investing, you know, 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of dollars into growing out that industry. And I, you know, I'm not quite sure how how at risk those investments are if we if we allow a bunch of, cheap EVs from China to come to come into the market. So the government's gotta find some sort of a sweet spot. I don't know if it's a tariff. If it is a tariff, I don't know, you know, where along the spectrum it should land.
Speaker 2:Right now, we've got a 6% tariff on on Chinese vehicles in Canada. The US has a a 100%. The EU just announced an up to 38% tariff. But maybe it's not even a tariff. It could be another approach such as preferring, you know, vehicles with the lowest carbon footprint when it comes to our incent the way we design our incentive programs and our regulations, which would kind of indirectly, support Canadian made EVs that are manufactured using our clean electricity compared to cleaner or sorry, kinda higher carbon vehicles made elsewhere.
Speaker 2:Such a such an approach could also incentivize those other jurisdictions to build cleaner vehicles and and, lower emissions across their supply chains.
Speaker 1:You wanna hear my hypothesis, my theory, my pet theory? Yeah. I won't say it's a conspiracy theory, but, we'll call it a pet theory. I I don't think, China particularly cares about the North American model market. It it'll take as many EV sales as it can get here, and same for Europe, to be honest.
Speaker 1:I I think that's probably a a more important market because it already has a foothold there, and there are some smaller, like the SAIC, that owns the MG brand, you know, that they have it's an important, market for them. So I can see where they might worry a little bit more about Europe. I don't think they care much about North America because I'll tell you why. Where they really want what they really want is the global south. They want Latin America and Africa and Southeast Asia and and, those kinds of markets that are just emerging.
Speaker 1:They're just building infrastructure. The belt road initiative is being rejigged to support that kind of infrastructure, whether it be power grids or whether reports or whatever. They're getting away from coal plants, in the belt and road. And the and the they overbuilt capacity in China for making EVs and batteries by a factor of, I don't know, 2, 3, 4. You know, it's incredible the amount of spare capacity.
Speaker 1:So my question always is, well, if you have spare capacity, I mean, you must plan to use it at some point. What where would you if you built so if you used it, where would you send those products? Well, the places that are just starting to to, you know, become middle class, grow they have a growing middle class, they, you know, they're looking to they're looking for help to do that, and the Americans, which used to do that after 1945, are now, you know, all worried about their internal problems and doing less of that sort of thing. I mean, they've just the table is set, and all we're waiting for now, well, we don't have to wait. China is the Chinese automakers are already their, their, EV exports to some of those markets like Brazil and Thailand, are off the charts.
Speaker 1:They're building plants there. I think I think China will look back in 10 years ago. Man, did they snooker us? That's my pet theory.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. No. I think you're right. I've seen, I've seen some articles talking about Chinese EVs thriving in markets like Brazil.
Speaker 2:I yeah. At the end of the day, 10% of the vehicles we make here in Canada stay in Canada. So the other 90% are coming are are being imported from other countries. I don't know if we added one more country's vehicle to the mix, if it was if it would really, you know, blow up our our car market. But something that I just keep thinking a lot about is kind of the political economy of the of this situation.
Speaker 2:We need Canadians to continue to support electric vehicles. And I think in order to preserve that support, then we need to make sure Canadian workers are definitely benefiting and believe they are benefiting. Right. And so to the extent that some sort of reaction to Chinese EVs helps, protect workers, preserve public support, I think that also, you know, will play a role in in ensuring that we continue to see this transition go smoothly and quickly.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you very much for doing this. And I'll point out to listeners that, next week, we're looking at I think we're looking at Wednesday. Colin McCarricker, the, good Canadian born, Quadra Island, who heads up the, transportation analysis team at Bloomberg NEF, and they just released their e 2024 EV outlook. So it'll be a lot of global data in there that I know that you'll be watching for. And he's gonna be on the podcast.
Speaker 1:He's a regular, and we'll have him on on Wednesday to talk about that outlook. So, you know, send out links to all your friends and family, Joanna. It'll be a great interest. And we've got some other stuff coming up. We've got a webinar with John Dunn, who is an an an automotive analyst and an expert on the Chinese EV market.
Speaker 1:And so that'll be very interesting. You have lots of insights as to what the Chinese are actually up to. And I think understanding China will be our greatest challenge. Our response to to China, their industrial policies will be our greatest challenge over the next 10, 20 years. I think I firmly believe that.
Speaker 1:And so I'll be interested in what he has to say. But I enjoyed this one. Always love talking about EVs in Canada, so thank you very much for this.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, Martha.