Getting Charged Up About Electric Cars

SAMSUNG

by Jonathan Buckstein

“Cars, trucks, trains, buses, and planes, they all have to be powered by something, and we’re slowly realizing fossil fuels isn’t the way forward. And maybe electricity may be the answer.”  says Ron Groves, the director of Education and Outreach at Plug’n Drive.

Plug’n Drive is a non-profit organization in Toronto, that commits to accelerating the adoption of Electric Vehicles (EV) to maximize their benefits, both economic and environmental. It is the first of its kind worldwide.

“It’s been a short seven years,” Groves says, in regards to the growth of EVs across the country. But this took a hit earlier this week with the GM shakeup. As well as the Oshawa plant shutdown, GM officially announced it will no longer produce the Chevy Volt, Chevrolet’s best selling car in their electric line.

Groves still sees a future in the electric car for the major automakers, “GM is definitely committed to a future of electrification and we’re just now beginning to see the processes in place. It’s hard to turn a big ship, and GM is a huge ship.”

Groves mentioned that GM just bought a huge plot of land in Toronto, and haven’t said anything about what it plans to do there.

Groves also brings up what could be done with the potentially, soon to be barren GM plant in Oshawa. “Telsa bought a plant in California, for around $35 million, and turned it into a main distribution centre. Maybe we will see electric companies coming to Canada, doing the same thing, maybe even car companies from overseas. The space is there.”

“One of the biggest issues with EVs is based on ignorance, rather uneducated, of the EVs. People think they’re slow, they are not.”

There are close to 50,000 Ev’s on the roads in Canada according to electrek.com, up 68% from 2017, this report is from February, so that number has grown since. The Bolt, another of Chevy’s electric cars saw sales in 2016 of three total cars sold that year to 2107 sold in 2017. From 2013 to 2016, Quebec led the way in Canada for EV’s on the road, until Ontario took over in 2017 with nearly 7,500 electric cars on the road.

Benefits to going electric, with over 40 models to choose from, can include, up to $2000 in savings of fuel and maintenance, up to $8000 in government incentives. Driving electric or hybrid can also help save up to 90% Greenhouse gas emissions. Price ranges on all models from $29,000 all the way to $156,000. Notably, Tesla and its three different cars currently available in are priced from $64,000 to $115,000.

 

 

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