Canada Proposes EV Plan for New Gas Car Sales Ban by 2035

A new proposal in Canada could oversee the country mandating electric vehicle (EV) sales as soon as 2025, following suit with some countries and U.S. states who have placed future bands on gas car sales.

Canadian Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault proposed new gas car sales regulations on Wednesday, which could ban the sale of gas cars by 2035, according to a report from Automotive News Canada.

If passed, the proposal would require a fifth of passenger cars, SUVs and trucks sold by 2025 to be electric, moving up to 60 percent of all cars in 2030. Finally, the plan would culminate with a regulation mandating that 100 percent of cars being sold from 2035 on be EVs.

Still, Canada would need to do a lot to reach its first goal in 2025, as its EVs and plugin hybrid sales market share only amounted to 7.2 percent of the overall auto industry in the first half of 2022. In 2021, EV market share for fully-electric and plugin hybrids was only 5.2 percent.

The mandate would also include tracking sales using emissions credits for automaker vehicle sales, and assigning larger credits to fully-electric vehicles than to plugin hybrids.

In November, a Google executive said that Canada’s EV adoption surpassed a crucial tipping point on its way to gaining mainstream appeal.