You must log in or register to comment.
As a Canadian I say…what took you so long? Breakups don’t always need to be so complicated.
Too bad we don’t have the know how or the capacity or resources to build our own EVs.
Oh wait…
It’s too bad nobody had the foresight to build a Canadian EV for everyone.
Sodium battery technology is the future, and is still a nascent technology at industrial scale. It doesn’t pollute much to make 'em, either. Canada has the highest educated population in the world, per capita. I’d love to see a big plan from Carney’s government to offer subsidies for massive sodium-battery storage facilities (and home-based energy storage, for that matter), so long as the batteries are made in Canada (or something like that).
Maybe I’m missing something, but this seems like a brilliant industry to try to get into. They operate effectively *down to –40°C, too, so they could actually work in cars for Canadian winters, or for in-garage home energy storage.
Can you imagine if we cured our Thatcherite brainworms and started doing what the private sector refuses to do with crown corporations again?
Right??? Fuck man… the things we could achieve.
Rage vibrates in IREQ
The tiny part of the country in Ontario, where American companies employ Canadians to make vehicles primarily for sale in the USA it seems, should never have been allowed to lobby for protectionist tariffs, thus blocking access to cheaper EVs for the entire country. At the very least, they should’ve HAD A PRODUCT that we could all buy instead, that was fully Canadian from a Canadian owned company. The tariffs that were put in place were uncalled for, and largely about Ford bending over for big American businesses. It’d be like saying no one in eastern Canada is allowed to import lumber from outside the country, cause BC has softwood lumber disputes with the US – except even that isn’t quite the same, as BC could provide lumber to other provinces. Ontario got this giant tariff blockade in place, offering nothing. Government shouldn’t elevate the interests of a small minority, especially one with foreign corporate owners, over the interests of the broader country.
One of the themes in Doug Fords own Anti-Tariff ad that’s caused Trump to get all pissy, is that Government shouldn’t be artificially protecting industries with tariffs – innovation requires competition. We’ve seen countless stories where US Car CEOs admit China and Asia in general has ‘beaten’ them in innovating in this space. The auto tariffs are exactly the kind of tariff that Ford is trying to make a case are ‘bad’ with his ad.
If GM and them don’t want to build EVs in Canada, have a crown corp or some other investment group pick up the factory space and set about getting a fully Canadian made EV, that can be provided to Canadians for a price competitive with foreign EVs – or at least in the same general ball park. It’d seem sensible, though I don’t know the specific requirements, that if the USA is currently ditching EVs, that these corporations may aswell move that whole production line up to Canada and/or Mexico. And if they don’t want to, or if they want to just ‘shut down’ plants and fire people… well, that’s a lot of industrial space, and trained workers, needing work. So put em to work.
As someone who works in manufacturing, I can confidently tell you that the idea that the only reason to place tariffs on cheap foreign goods, is solely to appease the US, is garbage. Canada has been trying to get its own EV industry moving for years now, and has made a rather significant investment in domestic manufacturing capabilities. Allowing China to flood the market with cheap products, undermines that investment before its even had a chance to mature.
One of the primary reasons why Canada’s EV production has been so slow to grow, is largely because the companies that we’ve been investing in, are US based. US policy on EV’s tends to swing wildly back and forth, depending on whose in office. And the expectation has been that “if” Trump won the election, then all that investment would come to nothing…so they held back on development, until the 2024 election was over. Now, there is no real commitment to continue, due to tariffs and Trump’s general disdain for green technologies.
But that does not mean that Canada should follow that trend and turn to China to suplly that technology. Canadian companies are more than capable of filling that role, with or without US support. Lifting those tariffs on Chinese products, will simply be trading one superpower dominating our domestic production, to another. What we should be doing is shifting that investment to local manufacturers in order to build our own supply chains, that are not dependent on any foreign influence. It is not a quick fix, and it will cost taxpayers more in terms of investment…but it will ensure that Canada has the potential to become a leader in EV technology, not just another customer for someone else.
I fully agree.
In addition, we must not forget that there is massive slave-like labour in Chinese supply chains - within China as well as abroad. As I posted in another thread, Brazil is just one recent example for that:
[In Brazil], in the same month that Chinese BYD’s car carrier arrived in the country, Brazilian prosecutors announced plans to sue BYD and two of its contractors for ‘slave like conditions’ at a factory site. A task force led by Brazilian prosecutors said it rescued 163 Chinese nationals working in “slavery-like” conditions at a construction site […] where Chinese electric vehicle company BYD is building a factory.
The [Brazilian] Labor Prosecutor’s Office released videos of the dorms where the [Chinese] construction workers were staying, which showed beds with no mattresses and rooms without any places for the workers to store their personal belongings.
Officials said [BYD contractor] Jinjiang […] had confiscated the workers’ passports and held 60% of their wages. Those who quit would be forced to pay the company for their airfare from China, and for their return ticket, the statement said.
Prosecutors said the sanitary situation at BYD’s site in Camaçari was especially critical, with only one toilet for every 31 workers, forcing them to wake up at 4 a.m. to line up and get ready to leave for work at 5:30 a.m.
I don’t think that Canadians want ChEaP cArS made by slave-labour.
I don’t think that Canadians want ChEaP cArS made by slave-labour.
No, we want big trucks that cost a fortune and rust out in 5 years.
I know we have a bunch of parts manufacturers. That Avro thing that Ford would trot out was fairly well publicized, even if many didn’t understand what it was.
That Avro thing was also not an actual Canadian EV. It was a vapour-ware marketing vehicle. Its purpose was to show that Canadian companies could make all the components that go in to an EV, so that Ontario could try and attract foreign companies to use those component makers. IE. it was a proof of concept marketing tool, meant to try and sell sub-contracting services to foreign companies/interests. There was never an actual plan to make a Canadian EV on Fords roadmap. In a world where foreign companies/interests are increasingly xenophobic/antagonistic, that’s not something that I want my tax dollars going towards – and in a world where Canada has no home grown options for EVs, I want foreign options available at low costs.
We’re literally watching whole cities burn due to climate change out in western Canada. And we’re playing politics with sustainable options / clean energy projects.
Besides, like Ford’s own ad references, protectionist tariffs deployed to protect an inefficient/non-innovative industry are bad. They also lead to trade wars. I see no reason to prioritize the interests of a small sector in Ontario, over the interests of the Canola farmers in Sask/Man. And you’re not too clear on where that ‘investment’ is coming from in the second paragraph, but if it’s from gov as well, that industry just looks even worse in terms of being a leech of resources – and is almost a poster child for the sort of things the Reagan piece was condemning. IE. a non-innovative industry incapable of competing with international options, being propped up by gov investments, and protected by gov tariffs, with practically no deliverable we can point to as regular non-industry employed citizens.
It was a vapour-ware marketing vehicle
Be wary of anything involving Woodbridge Auto Group and Flavio Volpe.
It’s not just US auto plants, we have a sizable auto parts manufacturing sector that employs a lot of Canadians. Then there are all the indirect jobs and the raw materials (steel, aluminum etc).
Any Chinese manufacturer who wants to sell EVs here needs to be pitching a plan to manufacture here.
we have a sizable auto parts manufacturing sector that employs a lot of Canadians.
and sucks billions in subsidies and general graft. If the US wants to cut us off, there is no business plan to keep subsidizing the auto sector. Australia concluded this years ago.
I don’t know how I feel about this.
The US is abandoning EVs and they’re dropping their EV tooling which we were just investing in. And we’re mostly tied to them.
If we built the cars here it would be okay, but Subaru imports cars and are affordable, I don’t think China will bother building them here.
The US didn’t either at first. We compromised. Now they’re reneging the deal.
I doubt they’ll drop 'em completely as to not decimate Ontario’s auto sector, which I’m a part of. That would be a political suicide. I think we’ll see a foreign direct investment (FDI) promise plus some tariff adjustment that could help reverse this:
And help with that:
The financial picture for car buyers gets even uglier when you look at the average transaction price (meaning the actual selling price, excluding tax) for new vehicles. It was $53,100 in 2023, according to DesRosiers Automotive Consultants. That’s up 29 per cent from $41,200 in 2019 and up 59 per cent from $33,400 in 2014. Adjusting for inflation, the increase from 2014 and 2023 is 30 per cent (And no, cars have arguably not become 30 per cent better during that time.)
AutoTrader’s Canadian online data shows average new-vehicle asking prices (meaning advertised prices on AutoTrader) have finally started to soften, dropping to $65,219 at the end of 2024 from a peak of $67,817 in September, 2023. But, let me be clear, $65,219 is still a lot of money for a car.
Either way it’ll be a sign for how this relationship reset will go forward. Whether it’ll be coercive, cooperative, etc.
I agree, a foreign direct investment approach would be good. We want to keep automotive skills and North American auto brands need competition otherwise we’ll never get affordable EVs.
This is happening because the CDN government knows this is moot. The Chinese EV industry is in freefall and even BYD is failing to pay it’s part suppliers.
Chinese EV makers not paying parts suppliers
Chinese EVs are the next Evergrande
And CDNs are not buying EVs. F150s still rule the sales charts.
ZEVs made up 7.8% of new vehicles sold in Prince Edward Island, followed by Ontario (7.4%), Nova Scotia (6.5%), New Brunswick (5.7%), Manitoba (4.9%), Alberta (4.2%), Newfoundland and Labrador (2.6%) and Saskatchewan (2.5%).
The only province buying EVs is Quebec.
lmao the new China collapse theory just dropped, I’m sure this one will pan out unlike every other one for the past three decades
You sound like an O&G salesman.
There’s a very large secondary reason that the gov should be blocking Chinese EVs beside the threat to our auto parts industry. Every new EV is a rolling data collector. Your phone captures a lot of data but its not covered in cameras that collect and transmit video/pics on everywhere you go and everything you pass and everywhere you park (like a Tesla does: https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/).
The Chinese are famous for copying everything they can and then producing it cheaper than the original and flooding the market with copies that are a fraction of the cost. Their goal is to dominate the world market in every area and they are well on the way. Look at home much stuff we now buy on Amazon/Aliexpress/Alibaba/Shein/Temu compared to just a few years ago.
With camera covered, GPS tracked, net connected EVs there is no way to keep the last vestige of our corporate and private lives from being collected and analyzed by the Chinese government and government linked corporations. And thats not just a threat to the auto industry thats a threat to every industry in Canada and I would dare to say, to our democracy.
We cannot and should not allow Chinese EVs into Canada. Ever.
Every new EV is a rolling data collector.
At this point I think I trust China with my data over the Neo-fascist USA.
Plus, looking towards the future, when the US falls the sane Americans will be looking to Canada for help. In this case China definitely isn’t going to be sharing data with the US.
Dude…you carry around a data collector 6 inches from your face all day that gives the data to Apple or Google. Provides a lot more data than location.
As long as it’s the government with actual power over you collecting your data. Like, who could possibly object? 🙃
Not with my camera on I don’t.
They put cameras in gas cars too. Modern cars collect and transmit too much personal data regardless of propulsion. Nor is this a chinese problem. Every car company does this. You blame china but provide a link of americans doing the bad thing. The Germans do it too, so do the French and the Japanese. Anything with a computer in it is now a surveillance device. That’s a bad thing. That’s something that should be stopped. Its odd you only point to one kind of car and one country.
Canada needs laws to stop this behavior of data collection. No product from any country should collect personal data not directly necessary for its function. Laws can be written to solve problems. Banning one country from one type of product does nothing.
And coincidentally, this popped up on lemmy today: https://www.spacewar.com/reports/Chinese_buses_have_major_security_flaw_says_Oslo_operator_999.html
It appears Im not the only one worried about Chinese control of EVs.
Its odd you only point to one kind of car and one country.
Not odd at all. Germany has no plans to dominate the entire world economy last I checked. Or the Japanese. Or France. China does.
then why bring up data at all? Or EVs? Proper data protection laws will protect Canadians regardless of the state of the market.
China dominating the world’s market can be a bad thing on its own merits. There’s no need to conflate these issues.
Because an EVs oft touted “feature” is over the air updates. Gas/diesel vehicles dont generally update anything significant over the air because you CAN’T update mechanical parts over the air but you certainly can for a car thats basically a computer on wheels with software that controls everything.
So despite your comment, no, most gas/diesel cars are not designed to be permanently connected to the internet and transmitting data at any time, without your knowledge like EVs are most definitely like Chinese EVs will be.
I wish I had your confidence in ‘proper data protection laws’ in Canada. The EU seems to have done a half decent job on that but Canada and the US are so far behind that by the time we update our privacy laws everything that can be collected already will be.
Gas/diesel vehicles dont generally update anything significant over the air
This is just not true. I work in this industry and most American brands have been doing OTAs for their ICE vehicles for at least half a decade, some for longer. Gas cars absolutely have central computers running Linux/QNX with monitoring and data collection capabilities and they’ve had them for over a decade. They’ve also been internet connected for about as long. Recall Jeeps got remote controlled back in 2015. The only thing that’s changed with EVs in this regard is marketing - higher emphasis on infotainment features. But the exact same systems are shipping in ICE vehicles now that EVs have taken a back seat for NA autos. I’m literally working on this stuff. :D So what the parent says is absolutely true - the only way to save ourselves from vehicle surveillance is our own government regulation.
Gotta say, Id never heard of the 2015 Jeep hack before. I wonder whether the changes after that point secured data any better.
Secured against unauthorized remote access any better - very likely. Secured data against unauthorized access, probably. But Jeep is authorized. The broader important point is that there’s no fundamental difference between the computer system shipped in that 2015 Jeep and today’s Jeep. There’s vehicle LAN network in addition to the CAN network. There’s usually several computers on it talking to each other, with access to the internet and Jeep’s servers (through a cell modem). There’s typically a central computer that does core function, infotainment computer that drives the centre display, an ADAS computer that does driver assist. There could be more. Today they have faster CPUs, more RAM and more storage than in 2015. Think evolution of smartphone SoCs as they’re typically related. Depending on the manufacturer and model, they could be combined into fewer or spread to more computers. Also depending on the manufacturer they collect and send different amounts of data. The overarching incentive is that data collection is profitable so every manufacturer has to contend with that and oppose it to what they’re allowed to do. Pretty sure you know how competition for profit maximization works. You probably have to go back to early 2010s models to find ICE vehicles without these computers.
Mozilla did a study on cars and data collection. They found it was an industry wide problem. Every manufacturer tested collected tons of personal data and didn’t keep it secure or private. Their writeup does not mention EVs, and it implicated brands like subaru which does not sell an EV in Canada or the US at time of writing.
This is not an EV problem.
Most cars have an internet connection. Many have a cellular modem built in. Modern infotainment systems use the internet and upload the data that way. Many cars also store data internally that is only accessible to authorized service centers through a proprietary tool, which will upload the data when serviced by a dealer. Data is valuable. Companies don’t just refuse to exploit that value on principle.
I don’t trust the laws as they currently exist, which is why I am advocating they be changed to stop this data collection.
All cars have this problem. EVs are not the issue. But not just cars, any device with a computer and an internet connection does this exact same thing. You can’t play whack a mole banning countries in specific industries and do anything. The only solution is broad data protection laws.
The OTA updates thing is mostly the result of tesla’s ineptitude and willingness to ship a defective product in the hopes they can fix it with a patch. They are not the only cars with internet connections.
🤡
There’s no need for this. There are good faith arguments that could be made to help with some of what the parent sees as real problems that might not be quite right. You don’t have to do the work but this is worse than not doing it.
YOUR SOCIAL CREDIT HAS INCREASED COMRADE
Hope you earned enough FICO points so you can afford to eat tonight!
wtf are FICO points
the dystopian social credit score used in the united states
what? how is it dystopian and how is it related to social constructs? my god it must be tiring thinking like this.
Chinese social credit scores are a myth. The sesame credit thing was a study run by one company temporarily and then stopped. It was never implemented widely and does not exist now.
Every country seems bad if you cherry pick the single worst thing you can find and attribute it to the entire country. Which is where the idea of chinese social credit came from. Its a myth.
American social credit scores encourage engagement with capitalism. They lower your score for not having debt or paying it off. The goal is to shape behavior. If you want to own a home or rent an apartment you have to buy things you don’t need.
when you don’t even know you have a social credit score 🤣
you mean a credit score? that’s nowhere near the same. I think you have no idea what your talking about, but i also think your a CCP shill so you DO know what your talking about and think your clever.
You’re right it’s nowhere near the same because credit scores are actually real.
While you’re all trying to figure out China and the US and oil geopolitics and greenhouse gases and such, I’ll be riding in a European, Korean or Japanese EV M’kay? Kay.
The Japanese aren’t really making EVs though. The leaf was a success, but Nissan hasn’t done anything since. Japan is 100% committed to plug-in hybrids at this point.
Toyota is only coming into the EV market when solid state batteries are to be used. 2027. Nissan makes half a dozen EVs for markets that buy them. Canadians are still mostly buying large SUVs and pickups, because gas is free, apparently.
Can’t speak for the ROC but in Quebec nearly 25% of all new vehicle sales are going to EV. I wouldn’t say no one is buying them…
Is Toyota still working on making hydrogen a thing?
That was a failed Japanese government plan, it never made sense.
I’m not touching ICE lobby Toyota myself but I do see BZ4X and Aryia on the road.
