Yahoo Finance Canadian quarterly EV sales set records, defying global trends
Canadian sales of new battery electric and other low-emission vehicles set records in the second quarter of this year, defying global trends for electric vehicles, the latest Statistics Canada data show.
Battery electric (BEV) and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) vehicles reached their highest-ever quarterly registration totals and took their highest-ever share of the market in a quarter where overall new motor vehicle registrations rose to their highest total since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall low-emission vehicle registrations (including non-plug-in hybrids) took a record 20.9 per cent of that total and surpassed 100,000 registrations in one quarter for the first time.
The global EV market has experienced setbacks recently, with manufacturers slowing production, changing plans and delaying some projects amid decreasing demand. But the latest Canadian numbers are not following that narrative.
“I was expecting it to look a lot more like the US, where we'd see flattish numbers for battery electric vehicles,” said Erik Johnson, a senior economist at BMO. “And we saw the exact opposite of that, where Canada hit the highest number of units they've ever had in the quarter, over 48,000.”
Total new vehicle registrations reached 511,173 in the second quarter, almost 25 per cent more than the previous quarter and an eight per cent increase over last year.
Johnson says the increase is likely due in part to a wider and more diverse supply becoming available. “For the past two-and-a-half years, from a volume point of view, it's been very hard to find a new vehicle,” he said. “And so, people have been turning to the used market, or they've been postponing buying anything whatsoever. And it's really since the end of last fall that we really saw this switch turn where inventory levels started to come up.”
BEV registrations reached 48,489 units, a 42 per cent increase from last quarter and 36 per cent rise year-over-year. Meanwhile, PHEV registrations hit 17,244, a 43 per cent year-over-year increase.
BEVs and PHEVs made up 9.49 per cent and 3.37 per cent of total registrations, respectively. Quebec led sales of low-emission vehicles — more than half the BEV registrations were in that province — with B.C. second.
Johnson notes that conventional hybrids have had a relatively flat quarter, in contrast to the U.S., where the vehicles are “probably having their best year ever.” He says the difference may be that cheap electricity in Quebec and B.C. means that “maybe the math for plugins just is that much stronger.”
The fact that low-emission registrations rose even as overall vehicle numbers returned to pre-pandemic levels is remarkable, Johnson says. “I think it stands out that even in a higher-volume market, these are still products consumers are looking to buy.”
Where the market goes from here will depend on continued subsidies to some extent, Johnson adds, and sales will need a big boost in Ontario, where they trail Quebec substantially in spite of Ontario's larger population. And Johnson says a factor of growing importance will be whether more models are becoming available.
“I think the big challenge for the North American market now that we've walled off the market a little bit further to cheaper Chinese EVs is — are there going to be producers coming to market with more mass marketed, smaller, globally competitive EVs that are going to step into that missing frame in the market?”
John MacFarlane is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jmacf.
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