Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday recapped the country’s progress in the electric vehicle (EV) market and supply chain during 2022 in a Twitter thread.
“Since January, we’ve secured several historic manufacturing deals for electric vehicles, hybrids, and batteries – deals that are going to create and secure good jobs, help keep our air clean, and make sure our auto sector can keep thriving,” Trudeau wrote.
Since January, we’ve secured several historic manufacturing deals for electric vehicles, hybrids, and batteries – deals that are going to create and secure good jobs, help keep our air clean, and make sure our auto sector can keep thriving. Let’s look back at some of them:
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) December 30, 2022
The Canadian PM went on to list several deals his government made this year that will boost local EV production and carve Canada a bigger slice of the global EV supply chain.
These deals included Canada’s first large-scale EV battery plant, partnerships with legacy automakers General Motors and Stellantis, and investments in the mining of critical EV battery minerals. In addition, Canada also saw its first full-scale commercial EV plant open this year.
“As you can see, we’ve been busy. We’re building an entire supply chain in Canada – from the development of critical minerals, to the production of batteries, to the manufacturing of electric vehicles – and in 2023, we’ll keep working to attract investment and support workers,” Trudeau concluded.
Just this month, the Canadian government proposed a new plan to completely ban new gas car sales by 2035. Canada is also reportedly being scouted as a factory location by Volkswagen, on top of earlier reports of Tesla lobbying for a factory in Ontario, Canada.
Back in August, Volkswagen and Mercedes signed a trade deal with Canada for raw materials used in EV batteries.
Canada’s local EV market showed impressive gains in 2022, with one study from Google indicating that Canadians surpassed a tipping point for EV adoption this year. While Tesla led passenger EV sales for much of 2022, Canadians saw several new players enter the scene as Lucid Motors, Rivian, and more kicked off deliveries in the country.
