"World?s Most Powerful? Tidal Turbine Starts Pumping Green Electricity To Onshore Grid

Electric Vehicles deliver longer range, faster charging, and broader price options, with incentives and lease deals reducing costs; evaluate performance, home charging, road trip needs, and vehicle types like SUVs, pickups, and vans.

Key Points

Electric vehicles are battery-powered cars that cut costs, boost performance, and charge at home or at fast stations.

✅ Longer range and faster charging reduce range anxiety

✅ Lower operating costs vs gas: fuel, maintenance, incentives

✅ Home Level 2 charging recommended; plan for road trips

Electric cars now drive farther, charge faster and come in nearly every price range. But when GMC began promoting its Hummer EV pickup truck to be released this year, it became even clearer that electric cars are primed to go mainstream for many buyers.

Once the domain of environmentalists, then early adopters, electric vehicles may soon have even truck bros kicking the gasoline habit, though sales are still behind gas cars in many markets.

With many models now available or coming soon — and arriving ahead of schedule for several automakers — including a knockoff of the lovable Volkswagen Microbus — you may be wondering if it’s finally time to buy or lease one.

Here are the essential questions to answer before you do.

(Full disclosure: I’m a convert myself after six years and 70,000 gas-free miles.)

1. Can you afford an electric car?
Electric vehicles tend to be pricy to buy but can be more affordable to lease. Finding federal, state and local government incentives can also reduce sticker shock. And, even if the monthly payment is higher than a comparable gas car, operating costs are lower.

Gas vehicles cost an average of $3,356 per year to fuel, tax and insure, while electric cost just $2,722, according to a study by Self Financial, and Consumer Reports finds EVs save money in the long run too. Find out how much you can save with the Department of Energy calculator.

2. How far do you need to drive on a single charge?
Although almost 60 percent of all car trips in America were less than 6 miles in 2017, according to the Department of Energy, the phrase “range anxiety” scared many would-be early adopters.

Teslas became popular in part because they offered 250 miles of range. But the range of many electric vehicles between charges is now over 200 miles; even the modestly priced Chevrolet Bolt can travel 259 miles on a single charge.

Still, electric vehicles have a “road trip problem,” according to Josh Sadlier, director of content strategy for car site Edmunds.com. “If you like road trips, you almost have to have two cars — one for around town and one for longer trips,” he says.

3. Where will you charge it?
If you live in an apartment without a charging station, this could be a deal breaker.

The number of public chargers increased by 60 percent worldwide in 2019, according to the International Energy Agency. While these stations — some of which are free — are more available, most electric vehicle owners install a home station for faster charging.

Electric vehicles can be charged by plugging into a common 120-volt household outlet, but it’s slow, and understanding charging costs can help you plan home use. To speed up charging, many electric vehicle owners wind up buying a 240-volt charging station and having an electrician install it for a total cost of $1,200, according to the home remodeling website Fixr.

4. What will you use the car for?
While there are a few luxury electric SUVs on the market, most electric vehicles are smaller sedans or hatchbacks with limited cargo capacity. However, the coming wave of electric cars are more versatile, and many experts expect that within a decade these options will be commonplace, including vans, such as the Microbus, and trucks, such as an electric version of the popular Ford F-150 pickup.

5. Do you enjoy performance?
This is where electric vehicles really shine. According to automotive experts, electric cars beat their gas counterparts in these ways:

Immediate response with great low-end acceleration, particularly in the 0-30 mph range.
Sure-footed handling due to the heavy battery mounted under the car, giving it a low center of gravity.
No “shift shock” from changing gears in a conventional gas car’s transmission.
Little noise except from the wind and tires.

Other factors
Once you consider the big questions, here are other reasons to make an electric car your next choice:

Reduced environmental guilt. There is a persistent myth that electric vehicles simply move the emissions from the tailpipe to the power generating station. Yes, producing electricity produces emissions, but many electric vehicle owners charge at night when much of the electricity would otherwise be unused. According to research published by the BBC and evidence that they are better for the planet in many scenarios electric cars reduce emissions by an average of 70 percent, depending on where people live.

Less time refueling. It takes only seconds to plug in at home, and the electric vehicle will recharge while you’re doing other things. No more searching for gas stations and standing by as your tank gulps down gasoline.

No oil changes. Dealers like a constant stream of drivers coming in for oil changes so they can upsell other services. Electric vehicles have fewer moving parts and require fewer trips to the dealership for maintenance.

Carpool lanes and other perks. Check your state regulations to see if an electric vehicle gets you access to the carpool lane, free parking or other special advantages.

Enjoy the technology. Yes, electric vehicles are more expensive, but they also tend to offer top-of-the-line comfort, safety features and technology compared with their gas counterparts.

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EV Adoption Limits highlight that electric vehicles alone cannot meet emissions targets; life cycle assessment, carbon budgets, clean grids, public transit, and battery materials constraints demand broader decarbonization strategies, city redesign, and active travel.

Key Points

EV Adoption Limits show EVs alone cannot hit climate targets; modal shift, clean grids, and travel demand are essential.

✅ 350M EVs by 2050 still miss 2 C goals without major mode shift

✅ Grid demand rises 41%, requiring clean power and smart charging

✅ Battery materials constraints need recycling, supply diversification

Today there are more than seven million electric vehicles (EVs) in operation around the world, compared with only about 20,000 a decade ago. It’s a massive change – but according to a group of researchers at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, it won’t be nearly enough to address the global climate crisis. 

“A lot of people think that a large-scale shift to EVs will mostly solve our climate problems in the passenger vehicle sector,” says Alexandre Milovanoff, a PhD student and lead author of a new paper published in Nature Climate Change. 

“I think a better way to look at it is this: EVs are necessary, but on their own, they are not sufficient.” 

Around the world, many governments are already going all-in on EVs. In Norway, for example, where EVs already account for half of new vehicle sales, the government has said it plans to eliminate sales of new internal combustion vehicles by 2025. The Netherlands aims to follow suit by 2030, with France and Canada's EV goals aiming to follow by 2040. Just last week, California announced plans to ban sales of new internal combustion vehicles by 2035.

Milovanoff and his supervisors in the department of civil and mineral engineering – Assistant Professor Daniel Posen and Professor Heather MacLean – are experts in life cycle assessment, which involves modelling the impacts of technological changes across a range of environmental factors. 

They decided to run a detailed analysis of what a large-scale shift to EVs would mean in terms of emissions and related impacts. As a test market, they chose the United States, which is second only to China in terms of passenger vehicle sales. 

“We picked the U.S. because they have large, heavy vehicles, as well as high vehicle ownership per capita and high rate of travel per capita,” says Milovanoff. “There is also lots of high-quality data available, so we felt it would give us the clearest answers.” 

The team built computer models to estimate how many electric vehicles would be needed to keep the increase in global average temperatures to less than 2 C above pre-industrial levels by the year 2100, a target often cited by climate researchers. 

“We came up with a novel method to convert this target into a carbon budget for U.S. passenger vehicles, and then determined how many EVs would be needed to stay within that budget,” says Posen. “It turns out to be a lot.” 

Based on the scenarios modelled by the team, the U.S. would need to have about 350 million EVs on the road by 2050 in order to meet the target emissions reductions. That works out to about 90 per cent of the total vehicles estimated to be in operation at that time. 

“To put that in perspective, right now the total proportion of EVs on the road in the U.S. is about 0.3 per cent,” says Milovanoff. 

“It’s true that sales are growing fast, but even the most optimistic projections of an electric-car revolution suggest that by 2050, the U.S. fleet will only be at about 50 per cent EVs.” 

The team says that, in addition to the barriers of consumer preferences for EV deployment, there are technological barriers such as the strain that EVs would place on the country’s electricity infrastructure, though proper grid management can ease integration. 

According to the paper, a fleet of 350 million EVs would increase annual electricity demand by 1,730 terawatt hours, or about 41 per cent of current levels. This would require massive investment in infrastructure and new power plants, some of which would almost certainly run on fossil fuels in some regions. 

The shift could also impact what’s known as the demand curve – the way that demand for electricity rises and falls at different times of day – which would make managing the national electrical grid more complex, though vehicle-to-grid strategies could help smooth peaks. Finally, there are technical challenges stemming from the supply of critical materials for batteries, including lithium, cobalt and manganese. 

The team concludes that getting to 90 per cent EV ownership by 2050 is an unrealistic scenario. Instead, what they recommend is a mix of policies, rather than relying solely on a 2035 EV sales mandate as a singular lever, including many designed to shift people out of personal passenger vehicles in favour of other modes of transportation. 

These could include massive investment in public transit – subways, commuter trains, buses – as well as the redesign of cities to allow for more trips to be taken via active modes such as bicycles or on foot. They could also include strategies such as telecommuting, a shift already spotlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“EVs really do reduce emissions, which are linked to fewer asthma-related ER visits in local studies, but they don’t get us out of having to do the things we already know we need to do,” says MacLean. “We need to rethink our behaviours, the design of our cities, and even aspects of our culture. Everybody has to take responsibility for this.” 

The research received support from the Hatch Graduate Scholarship for Sustainable Energy Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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UK Renewable Energy Milestones: wind outpacing gas, record solar output, offshore wind growth, National Grid data, and a net-zero grid by 2035, despite planning reforms, connection queues, and grid capacity constraints.

Key Points

Key UK advances where wind beat gas, solar set records, and policies target a 2035 net-zero electricity grid.

✅ Wind generated one-third of electricity, outpacing gas

✅ Record solar output reported by National Grid in April

✅ Onshore wind easing via planning reforms; grid delays persist

In the first three months of this year a third of the country's electricity came from wind farms, with the UK leading the G20 for wind power according to research from Imperial College London has shown.

National Grid has also confirmed that April saw a record period of solar energy generation, and wind generation set new records earlier in the year.

By 2035 the UK aims for all of its electricity to have net zero emissions, though progress stalled in 2019 in some areas.

"There are still many hurdles to reaching a completely fossil fuel-free grid, but wind out-supplying gas for the first time, a sign of wind leading the power mix, is a genuine milestone event," said Iain Staffell, energy researcher at Imperial College and lead author of the report.

The research was commissioned by Drax Electrical Insights, which is funded by Drax energy company.

The majority of the UK's wind power has come from offshore wind farms, and wind generated more electricity than coal in 2016 marking an early shift. Installing new onshore wind turbines has effectively been banned since 2015 in England.

Under current planning rules, companies can only apply to build onshore wind turbines on land specifically identified for development in the land-use plans drawn up by local councils. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak agreed in December to relax these planning restrictions to speed up development.

Scientists say switching to renewable power is crucial to curb the impacts of climate change, with milestones like wind and solar topping nuclear underscoring the shift, which are already being felt, including in the UK, which last year recorded its hottest year since records began.

Solar and wind have seen significant growth in the UK. In the first quarter of 2023, 42% of the UK's electricity came from renewable energy, with 33% coming from fossil fuels like gas and record-low coal shares.

Some new solar and wind sites are waiting up to 10 to 15 years to be connected because of a lack of capacity in the electricity system.

And electricity only accounts for 18% of the UK's total power needs. There are many demands for energy which electricity is not meeting, such as heating our homes, manufacturing and transport.

Currently the majority of UK homes use gas for their heating - the government is seeking to move households away from gas boilers and on to heat pumps which use electricity.

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EV Tipping Point signals the S-curve shift to mainstream adoption as new car sales pass 5%, with the US joining Europe and China; charging infrastructure, costs, and supply align to accelerate electric car market penetration.

Key Points

The EV tipping point is when fully electric cars reach about 5% of new sales, triggering rapid S-curve adoption.

✅ 5% of new car sales marks start of mass adoption

✅ Follows S-curve seen in phones, LEDs, internet

✅ Barriers ease: charging, cost declines, model availability

Many people of a certain age can recall the first time they held a smartphone. The devices were weird and expensive and novel enough to draw a crowd at parties. Then, less than a decade later, it became unusual not to own one.

That same society-altering shift is happening now with electric vehicles, according to a Bloomberg analysis of adoption rates around the world. The US is the latest country to pass what’s become a critical EV tipping point: an EV inflection point when 5% of new car sales are powered only by electricity. This threshold signals the start of mass EV adoption, the period when technological preferences rapidly flip, according to the analysis.

For the past six months, the US joined Europe and China — collectively the three largest car markets — in moving beyond the 5% tipping point, as recent U.S. EV sales indicate. If the US follows the trend established by 18 countries that came before it, a quarter of new car sales could be electric by the end of 2025. That would be a year or two ahead of most major forecasts.

How Fast Is the Switch to Electric Cars?
19 countries have reached the 5% tipping point, and an earlier-than-expected shift is underway—then everything changes

Why is 5% so important? 
Most successful new technologies — electricity, televisions, mobile phones, the internet, even LED lightbulbs — follow an S-shaped adoption curve, with EVs going from zero to 2 million in five years according to market data. Sales move at a crawl in the early-adopter phase, then surprisingly quickly once things go mainstream. (The top of the S curve represents the last holdouts who refuse to give up their old flip phones.)

Electric cars inline tout
In the case of electric vehicles, 5% seems to be the point when early adopters are overtaken by mainstream demand. Before then, sales tend to be slow and unpredictable, and still behind gas cars in most markets. Afterward, rapidly accelerating demand ensues.

It makes sense that countries around the world would follow similar patterns of EV adoption. Most impediments are universal: there aren’t enough public chargers, grid capacity concerns linger, the cars are expensive and in limited supply, buyers don’t know much about them. Once the road has been paved for the first 5%, the masses soon follow.

Thus the adoption curve followed by South Korea starting in 2021 ends up looking a lot like the one taken by China in 2018, which is similar to Norway after its first 5% quarter in 2013. The next major car markets approaching the tipping point this year include Canada, Australia, and Spain, suggesting that within a decade many drivers could be in EVs worldwide. 

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Condo EV charging retrofits face strata approval thresholds, installation costs, and limited electrical capacity, but government rebates, subsidies, and smart billing systems can improve ROI, property value, and feasibility amid electrician shortages and infrastructure constraints.

Key Points

Condo EV charging retrofits equip multiunit parking with EV chargers, balancing costs, bylaws, capacity, and rebates.

✅ Requires owner approval (e.g., 75% in B.C.) and clear bylaws

✅ Leverage rebates, subsidies, and load management to cut costs

✅ Plan billing, capacity, and phased installation to increase ROI

Retrofitting an existing multiunit residential building with electric vehicle charging stations is a complex and costly exercise, as high-rise EV charging challenges in MURBs demonstrate, even after subsidies, but the biggest hurdle to adoption may be getting enough condo owners on board.

British Columbia, for example, offers a range of provincial government subsidies to help condo corporations (referred to in B.C. as stratas) with everything from the initial research to installing the chargers. But according to provincial strata law, three-quarters of owners must support the plan before it is implemented, though new strata EV legislation could make approvals easier in some jurisdictions.

“The largest challenge is getting that 75-per-cent majority approval to go ahead,” says EV charging specialist Patrick Breuer with ChargeFwd Ltd., a Vancouver-based sustainable transport consultancy.

Chris Brunner, a strata president in Vancouver, recently upgraded all the building’s parking stalls for EV charging. His biggest challenge was getting the strata’s investment owners, who don’t live in the building and were not interested in spending money, to support the project.

“We had to sell it in two ways,” Mr. Brunner says. “First, that there’s going to be a return on investment, including vehicle-to-building benefits that support savings and grid stability, and second, that there will come a time when this will be required. And if we do it now, taking advantage of the generous rebates and avoiding price increases for expertise and materials, we’ll be ahead of the curve.”

Once the owners have voted in favour, the condo board can begin the planning process and start looking for rebates. The B.C. government will provide a rebate of up to 75 per cent for the consulting phase, with additional provincial rebates available through current programs. It’s referred to as an “EV Ready” plan, which is a professionally prepared document that describes how to implement EV charging fairly, and estimates its cost.

Once a condo has completed the EV Ready plan, it becomes eligible for other rebates, such as the EV Ready Infrastructure subsidy, which will bring power to each individual parking stall through an energized outlet. This is rebated at 50 per cent of expenses, up to $600 a stall.

There are further rebates of up to 75 per cent for installing the charging stations themselves, and B.C. charging rebates extend to home and workplace programs, too. The program is administered by BC Hydro, a Crown corporation that receives funding in annual increments. “Right now, it’s funded until March 31, 2023,” Mr. Breuer says.

“Realtors are valuing [individual charging stations] from $2,000 to $10,000,” he said. The demand for installing EV chargers in buildings has grown to such an extent that it’s hard to find qualified electricians, Mr. Breuer says.

However, even with subsidies, there are some buildings where it doesn’t make financial sense to retrofit them. “If you have to core through thin floors or there’s a big parkade with a large voltage drop, it isn’t financially viable,” Mr. Breuer says. “We do a lot of EV Ready plans, but not all the projects can go ahead.”

For many people, it’s resistance to the unknown that is preventing them from voting for the retrofit, according to Carter Li of Toronto-based Swtch Energy Inc., which provides charging in high-density urban settings. It has done retrofits on 200 multiunit residential buildings in the Toronto area, and Calgary condo charging efforts show similar momentum in other cities, too. “They’re worried about paying for someone else’s electricity,” he says. Selling owners on the idea requires educating them about how the billing will work, maximizing electrical capacity to keep costs down, using government subsidies and the anticipated boost in property value.

Ontario currently does not provide any subsidies for retrofitting condos for EV charging. However, there is a stipulation under the Condominium Act that if owners request EV charging be installed and provide a condo board with sufficient documentation, an assessment will be conducted.

When Jeremy Benning was on the board of his Toronto condo in 2018, a few residents inquired about installing EV charging. A committee of owners did the legwork, and found a company that could do the infrastructure installation as well as set up accounts for individual billing purposes. Residents were surveyed a number of times before going ahead with the installation.

Mr. Benning estimates it cost about $40,000 to install two electrical subpanels to accommodate EV chargers in 20 parking spaces. Although the condo corporation paid the money up front out of its operating budget, everyone who ordered a charger will pay back their share over time. Many who do not even own an EV have opted to add a valuable frill to their unit.

The board considered applying for a subsidy from Natural Resources Canada, but it would require a public charger in the visitor parking lot. “The rebate wasn’t enough to pay for the cost of putting in that charging station,” Mr. Benning says. “Also, you have to maintain it, and what if it gets vandalized? It wasn’t worth it.”

Quebec’s Roulez Vert (Ride Green) program offers extensive provincial rebates and incentives for retrofitting condo buildings. If a single condo owner wants to install an EV charger, the government will refund up to 50 per cent of the installation cost or up to $5,000, whichever is less.

Otherwise, a property manager can qualify for a maximum of $25,000 a year to retrofit a building and can sometimes complete the work in stages. “They may do the first installation in one year, and then continue the next year,” says Léo Viger-Bernard of Recharge Véhicule Électrique (RVE). Recently, the Quebec government confirmed this program will run until 2027.

RVE consults with condo corporations, operates an online platform (murby.com) with resources for building owners, and sells a demand charge controller (DCC), which is an electric vehicle energy management system. The DCC allows an electrician to plug the EV charger directly into the electrical infrastructure of a single condo or apartment unit. Not only does this reduce extra wiring, but it also monitors the electrical consumption in each unit, only powering the charging station when there’s available electricity. Billing is assigned to the actual unit’s electricity bill.

Currently there are about 12,000 DCC units installed in retrofitted buildings across Canada, some that are 40 or 50 years old. “It’s not a question of age; it’s more the location of the electric meters,” Mr. Viger-Bernard says. The DCC can be installed either on the roof or on different floors.

According to Michael Wilk, president of Montreal-based Wilkar Property Management Inc., the biggest barrier is getting condo owners to understand the necessity of doing a retrofit now, as opposed to waiting. He uses price increases to try to convince them.

“Right now, the cost of doing a retrofit is 35 per cent more than it was two years ago,” he says. “If you wait another two years, we can only anticipate it’s going to be 35 per cent higher because of the rising cost of labour, parts and equipment.”

In Nova Scotia, Marc MacDonald of Spark Power Corp. installed an EV charger with a DCC unit at a condo near Halifax about a year ago. “They only had space in their electrical room to add a device for up to 10 EV chargers,” he says. The condo board was hesitant, demanding a great deal of information. “They were concerned about everyone wanting an EV charger.”

Now that Nova Scotia has introduced a program for rebates and incentives to install EV chargers in condos, on-street sites and more, Mr. MacDonald anticipates demand will increase, though Atlantic EV adoption still lags the national average. “But they’ll have to settle with reality. Not everyone can have an EV charger if the building can’t accommodate it.”

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Canada EV demand surge is driven by record gas prices, zero-emission policies, and tight dealer inventory, while microchip shortages, ZEV mandates abroad, and lithium supply concerns extend wait times for new and used models.

Key Points

Canada EV demand surge is rising interest in zero-emission cars due to high gas prices and limited EV supply.

✅ Gas at $2/litre spurs zero-emission interest

✅ Dealer inventory scarce; waits up to 3 years

✅ Microchip and lithium constraints limit output

Price shock at the pump is driving  Canadians toward buying an ev. But manufacturers are having trouble keeping up with consumer demand, even as the U.S. auto sector pivots to EVs across North America.

In parts of the country, gas prices exceeded $2 per litre last month amid strong global demand for oil combined with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Halifax-based electric vehicle salesperson Jeremie Bernardin said he's noticed an explosion of interest in zero-emission vehicles since the price of fuel started to take off.

"I think there's a lot of people that were considering electric vehicles for a very long time, and they needed that extra little push," Bernardin, who is also the president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Atlantic Canada, where Atlantic EV demand has lagged the national average, told CTVNews.ca over the phone on Wednesday.

With so few electric vehicles on dealership lots, Canadians looking to buy a brand-new zero-emission car will have to put down a deposit and get onto a waiting list. Bernardin said the wait times can be as long as three years, depending on the manufacturer and the dealership.

Tesla, which makes Canada's best-selling electric car according to the automotive publication Motor Illustrated, says delivery times for its vehicles range between three months to one year, depending on the model. But some manufacturers like Nissan have already completely sold out of their electric vehicle inventory for the 2022 model year, though recent EV assembly deals in Canada aim to expand capacity over time.

Shortages of electric vehicles have been around long before the recent spike in gas prices. In March 2021, a report commissioned by Transport Canada found that more than half of Canadian dealerships had no electric vehicles in stock. The report also found that wait times exceeded six months at 31 per cent of dealerships that had no zero-emission cars in their inventory.

Interest in used electric vehicles has also surged amid the high gas prices. Used car marketplace AutoTrader.ca says searches for electric cars in March 2022 increased 89 per cent compared to the previous year, while the number of inquiries sent to electric vehicle sellers through its platform jumped 567 per cent.

"It's understandable that when the gas prices are expensive, consumers are looking to buy and get into electric vehicles, though upfront cost remains a major barrier for many buyers today," Baris Akyurek, AutoTrader.ca's director of marketing intelligence, told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Wednesday.

SUPPLY CHAIN ISSUES PERSIST
The surging interest in electric vehicles also comes at a time when pandemic-induced shortages of microchips have been affecting the automotive industry at large since late 2020. Modern automobiles can have hundreds of microchips that control everything from the air conditioning to the power steering system, and a shortage of these crucial components have resulted in fewer vehicles being manufactured.

"Electric vehicles are subject to supply chain issues, just like anything else. Right now, the COVID pandemic has disrupted global supply chains. The auto industry specifically is seeing a microchip shortage that it's been struggling with for the past year or two. So those things are at play," said Joanna Kyriazis, senior policy advisor with Simon Fraser University’s Clean Energy Canada, in a phone interview with CTVNews.ca on Tuesday.

On top of that, Kyriazis says more than 80 per cent of the world's supply of electric vehicles are shipped to consumers in China and the European Union.

China has a strict zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate that requires automakers to ensure that a certain minimum percentage of their vehicles are electric or hydrogen-powered. In Europe, automakers are also forced to sell more electric vehicles there in order to meet the EU's stringent fleetwide emissions standards, and in Canada, Ottawa is preparing EV sales regulations to guide adoption in the coming years.

"We don't have the same aggressive regulations in place yet to really force automakers to prioritize the Canadian market when they're deciding where to allocate their EV inventory and where to sell EVs," said Kyriazis, though Ottawa's 2035 EV mandate remains debated by some industry observers today.

Kyriazis also said she believes it's possible that a shortage of lithium and other minerals required for battery production could be a potential issue within the next five years.

"But my understanding is that the global market is not hitting a supply crunch just yet," she said. "There could be a near-term supply issue. But we're not there yet."

In order to ensure adequate supply of minerals for battery production, the federal government in its most recent budget committed to providing up to $3.8 billion over eight years to create "Canada's first critical minerals strategy." The strategy is aimed at boosting extraction and production of Canadian nickel, lithium and other minerals used as components in electric vehicles and their batteries, and it aligns with opportunities for Canada-U.S. collaboration as companies electrify.

"Canada has a lot of natural resources and a lot of experience with natural resource extraction. We really can stand to be a leader in battery production," said Harry Constatine, president of the Vancouver Electric Vehicles Association, in an interview with CTVNews.ca over the phone on Monday.

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