There are currently about 160,000 gasoline and diesel fuel pumps in Canada. The much greater time needed to recharge an EV means that far more charging stations will be needed. EVs also have a shorter range than internal combustion engine-powered vehicles and therefore need to be recharged more often. The very expensive Tesla Model S currently has the best official EV range at 650 km – impressive even for a gas-powered car. But this is reduced when travelling at high speeds or in cold conditions (in a Canadian winter, for instance), since low temperatures drain battery power faster, so its “real world” range is barely 500 km. The more affordable Nissan Leaf has a nominal range of just 400 km.

According to Natural Resources Canada, there are barely 6,000 publicly available charging stations across Canada. During the recent federal election, the Liberals promised to spend $700 million to add 50,000 more. But that is still only a small fraction of the number that will be needed. Taking all the factors discussed above into account, powering a nationwide fleet of 25 million EVs might require a couple of million non-residential charging stations, unless charging times drop substantially, vehicle ranges improve sharply and/or people habitually charge their vehicles at home. Taking the mid-range of the costs discussed above, this would require capital investment of $100 billion, not including costs to upgrade or augment major electrical transmission lines to service the increased electrical load (more on that below).

All of the costs discussed so far come before you “put in the juice.” Doing so certainly won’t remain “free” for long. Costless charging proved a great way to create buzz for EVs and to soften up the public for the coming transition. City governments and large organizations could afford to offer this as long as EVs remained a novelty, but the practice is obviously unsustainable. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is difficult to obtain clear data on what it actually costs to charge an EV. Electricity rates vary greatly from province to province, from region to region within some provinces, and according to time of day. It costs more to charge a vehicle at a fast-charging commercial station that is trying to recover its investment costs and make a profit on the electricity it sells than it does at a slower, home-based station.

Taking all of this into account, a recent study by the Anderson Economic Group concluded that refuelling in the U.S. costs US$8.58-US$12.60 per 100 miles driven for a range of gasoline-powered vehicles, while recharging costs US$12.95-US$15.52 per 100 miles driven for comparable EVs. Going by these data, driving a typical 10,000 miles per year would increase the annual cost of motoring by about US$350. While noticeable, most car owners would probably consider this bearable. But this assumes stable electricity prices for the long term. More likely, power costs will climb significantly in response to increased demand associated with a burgeoning EV fleet and the ongoing government-driven shift to less efficient and more expensive “green” energy sources.

The shift to EVs will clearly entail significant new costs for car owners and those who depend on them. Assuming that a typical EV will last 10-12 years, the changeover will cost the average Canadian car buyer at least $2,000 per year more than they would spend to replace a normal car. A home charging station will come on top of that. As will the added cost of charging their EV – already at least Cdn$500 more per year than gasoline or diesel, and set to climb.

All-in, the additional costs are likely to be $4,000 or more per year. (For a family that needs two vehicles, that would be $8,000+ annually.) That will materially reduce the standard of living of all but the wealthiest Canadian families, and will certainly price some families out of vehicle ownership altogether. These extra costs are the primary reason why Canadians have been reluctant to buy EVs.

2. How Much Can Government Pay?

The federal government is well aware of the extra costs involved with EVs, so it subsidizes them at every stage. Just last year, for example, Ottawa and Ontario poured $590 million (about one-third of the total cost) into helping Ford upgrade its assembly plant in Oakville, Ontario, to start making EVs. Governments and electric utilities also subsidize charging stations.

Most of all, governments directly subsidize EV sales. The federal government provides a $5,000 grant toward the purchase of each EV costing less than $60,000, and some provincial governments offer additional subsidies, ranging up to $8,000 in Quebec. If Canada’s 25 million gasoline-powered cars and light trucks were replaced with EVs drawing an average government subsidy of $10,000 per vehicle, the cost to taxpayers would total some $250 billion – plus billions more as early adopters began replacing their first EVs. That is obviously unsustainable, and here too, something will need to give.

It is also necessary to consider government revenue – though it is increasingly difficult to obtain clear information from the federal government. Annual budgets used to contain tables and graphs detailing revenue and spending. They are now 500-page philosophical treatises with very few financial details. It is known, however, that the Government of Canada collects about $5 billion per year in excise taxes on gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel, as well as approximately $1.6 billion per year in GST on gasoline and diesel. Provincial governments together collect approximately $8 billion per year from similar excise taxes. This C2C Journal article estimated that fuel taxes levied by all levels of government in 2019 totalled nearly $18 billion. The federal government’s carbon tax, meanwhile,brought in about $2.5 billion in its first year (2019) at $20 per tonne, but the rate is scheduled to rise to $170 per tonne by 2030, increasing the anticipated annual haul to $20 billion. Some provinces also have their own carbon taxes.

The carbon tax is intended to close the gap between the operating costs of electric and gasoline-powered vehicles, not by making EVs less expensive but by making internal combustion engine vehicles more expensive. As the number of gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles on Canada’s roads starts to dwindle, so will carbon and excise tax revenue. How will governments replace this income when there are fewer gasoline-powered vehicles to tax? If they impose taxes on electricity or EVs, EVs will become even more expensive. Regardless of what they drive, Canadians will have to pay a lot more for motoring.

The federal government is already running record deficits, so it is highly questionable whether it can continue to subsidize EVs and the required infrastructure changes at the current rate. That the costs will increasingly fall directly on consumers seems unavoidable. In the larger picture, it does not matter exactly where this money appears to come from, because when it comes to transportation by private vehicle, consumers are the same people as taxpayers. As taxpayer-funded subsidies of EVs fall, consumer-funded spending on EVs will rise. Canadians are going to pay one way or another – and pay a lot.

3. Where Will the Electricity Come From?

Last summer’s heat wave stretched the capacity of electric grids in some parts of Canada, suggesting there is little remaining margin. Electric generation will have to increase significantly to charge 25 million EVs in Canada. Where might that increased capacity come from?

Canadians consume about 522.2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. This post by a U.S. power utility estimated that an EV travelling typically 5.5 km per kilowatt-hour of electricity will consume approximately 4,090 kilowatt-hours per year, based on driving about 22,000 km per year. Using those assumptions, 25 million electric vehicles in Canada would consume about 102.25 billion kilowatt-hours per year. This would require increasing Canada’s electricity production by well over 20 percent (to account for the electricity lost during long-distance transmission and as heat in transformers, chargers, etc.). A different calculation based on different assumptions estimated that the increase would need to be a formidable 38 percent.

Either scenario represents a large and rapid increase in Canada’s electricity consumption and would require constructing dozens of major new generating facilities across the country. In 2018, 60 percent of Canadian electricity production came from hydroelectric dams, 15 percent from nuclear generators, 11 percent from natural gas and crude oil, 7 percent from coal, and just 7 percent from “green” sources including wind and solar power. Every potential source of additional power faces obstacles, objections or drawbacks.

Major hydroelectric dams can only be built on large rivers flowing rapidly downhill, and there is a limited number of such rivers in Canada, even though our nation is better situated in this regard than many others. Building dams (such as the Site C dam on northeast British Columbia’s Peace River) is becoming more difficult because environmental activists oppose their construction. Particularly in the Prairie provinces, there is a shortage of suitable rivers, so a considerable amount of Canadian electricity is still generated by burning coal and natural gas. Relying on those sources to power transportation negates the very purpose of switching to EVs.

Accordingly, several provinces including New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan and even Alberta are considering turning to nuclear generating stations. Nuclear power is cost-effective and highly reliable, but proposed new nuclear facilities habitually experience lengthy construction delays, cost over-runs and bitter political opposition – which is why nearly none are being built in any Western country. They also can harm the environment. And even if we set aside fears about the risk of future disasters akin to Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima, we still have no good way of disposing of nuclear waste.

This leaves the favourites of environmentalists: solar and wind power. Despite the relentless hype from their many proponents, these sources are much more expensive, produce only intermittent and inconsistent power (when the sun shines and the wind blows), and often produce nothing when they are needed most – on cold, calm winter nights. (This is why the nominal capacity of all such facilities must be backed up on a one-for-one basis by a reliable source such as natural gas.) As well, solar panels and wind turbines wear out after 25-30 years, creating a major waste management problem. The massive fibreglass-wood-and-epoxy blades of wind turbines usually end up in landfills.

Unless Canada can identify and agree upon a large-scale, affordable and environmentally acceptable form of electricity generation, and begin building numerous new generating stations in short order, there is simply no point in switching to EVs. In fact, doing so could spell disaster as the added electricity demand drives power prices through the roof.

4. Where Will the Land Come From?

The already-large tracts of land blighted in generating “green” energy’s modest and intermittent contribution are just the beginning. As EVs proliferate and traditional energy sources are outlawed (coal), taxed into oblivion (natural gas) or stopped by politics (nuclear), vast areas will need to be covered with solar panels and wind turbines. As this recent C2C Journal article pointed out, a study last year by the Manhattan Institute found that replacing the energy output of a single 100-megawatt natural gas-fuelled power plant requires a minimum of twenty 170-metre-tall windmills, together occupying 26 square kilometres of land. By way of comparison, the province of Alberta uses on the order of 10,000 megawatts of electricity at any given time, and this will increase sharply if EVs proliferate as planned. The associated math is not hard to do.