The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has not been kind to any industry – the automotive market included. CTVNews reports a significant downtrend in electric vehicle sales in Canada, with its instigators being the global lull caused by the pandemic and, more importantly, stunted supply of EVs in the region.
Want to buy an electric vehicle? In some parts of Canada, you may have to wait up to a year https://t.co/pEIFgwkhwa
— CTV News (@CTVNews) September 20, 2020
Green energy is the future, and the world knows it. Demand for everything from electric vehicles to green batteries was at record highs during Q1 2020. Come Q2, however, lockdowns forced dealerships to cease operations and production to slow down.
Now that lockdowns have been lifted and consumer interest in electric vehicles has started to burgeon once more, demand for EVs has increased. However, supply remains lacking.
Of the 3,453 EVs available at dealerships in Canada (a 21% recession from December 2018 in a time with relatively higher demand) back in February 2020, 91.8% of the supply was available in Quebec, British Columbia, and Ontario due to financial incentives for EV sales and inventory storage in these regions. Supply outside these provinces was nothing short of abysmal, with only 280 electric vehicles available in the rest of Canada.
Dealerships are forced to put customers on waiting lists spanning months and even over a year, deterring potential EV converts and demotivating salespeople due to delayed commissions. In addition, many manufacturers are prioritizing shipping vehicles to regions like northern Europe and China that are a lot more hospitable to EVs and EV sales, further adding to the problem.
Almost all EV manufacturers – from BMW to Toyota – are currently seeing a bottleneck in supply. If there’s a manufacturer that is somewhat unfazed by this entire ordeal, though, it’s Tesla, which is not even mentioned once in the CTV News report.
Tesla’s Model 3 is listed as available in 1-2 weeks from the carmaker’s Canadian website. The Model Y is listed as available in 5-9 weeks.
In fact, Tesla is gearing up to make Q3 the company’s best quarter yet by fulfilling a record-breaking number of vehicle deliveries.
Tesla seems to be operating in a market of its own all over the world, and Canada is no different. After all, having a facility capable of producing 500,000 vehicles a year at maximum capacity definitely helps bridge the gap between supply and demand. In addition, Tesla is currently working on massive projects like Giga Berlin to further supplement its supply of both finished vehicles and EV batteries.
