Ottawa won’t impose national threshold for electric car purchases, says Garneau
MONTREAL — Ottawa has appointed an advisory group to develop a plan for getting more zero-emission vehicles on the road, but it won’t follow Quebec in requiring automakers to sell a minimum number of electric cars, Transport Minister Marc Garneau said Friday.
“We just decided that instead of giving ourselves a specific number what we would do is try to make the conditions more favourable for people to buy zero-emissions vehicles,” he said in an interview at an electric vehicle show.
The job of the new 22-member panel, which includes industry and other stakeholders, is to come up with options by next year for addressing the barriers to zero-emission vehicles (ZEV), including vehicle supply, cost, infrastructure readiness and public awareness.
Quebec has the country’s only legislation requiring automakers to sell a minimum number of electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Starting with the 2018 model year, 3.5 per cent of all auto sales in the province will have to be from those types of vehicles. The threshold rises to 15.5 per cent for 2025.