Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) could arrive in Canada as early as this year. Members of Ontario Tech’s EV Racing Team are skeptical about what difference they could make on the market and the environment.
Last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney struck a deal to allow up to 49,000 Chinese-made EVs a year into Canada to encourage people to switch from internal combustion (IC) vehicles.
Alvin Hyunh, a PhD student and electrical advisor for Ontario Tech’s EV racing team, said Canada’s infrastructure to support EV vehicles is not up to standard yet in terms of charging stations.
“You can think of the situation where everyone wants to charge their vehicle right after they work, which is a reasonable amount of time,” he said. “But that means everybody wants to do that at the exact same time.”
Hyunh said storing energy in auxiliary batteries during the night could be a solution but it comes with a cost to the environment.
“But still having a lot of new EVs come in all at once is going to put a significant strain on it,” said Hyunh. “CO2-wise, there’s going to be definitely a slight increase in cost, but it depends on the lifespan of the vehicle.”
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (USG), battery electric cars “make up for higher manufacturing emissions within 18 months of driving, and shorter range models can offset an extra emissions within 6 months and continue to outperform gasoline cars until the end of their lives.”
Jasartap Goomer, a third-year Computer Science student at Ontario Tech and embedded system lead on the racing team, drives a Tesla Model Y.
He said he has had good experiences but he is concerned about the battery life.
“It is really good in driving. The only hard part is the battery life going a lot down during the winters,” said Goomer.
He said Tesla is the best in the market for its charging network, but Canada does not have enough fast chargers to support other EVs.
“There’s a lot of companies that are equally competent and have good cars,” he says. “But Tesla works the best because of their charging networks and because of their charging speeds. You can charge a car from 0 to a max capacity within max 45 (minutes) to an hour.”
There was an 60 per cent increase in total vehicle registrations in ZEVs in Canada in 2024, according to the Canada Energy Regulator. One in seven new vehicles sold that year were ZEVs.