Toronto, Ontario — A new report from AutoTrader shows that Canadian interest in electric vehicles (EVs) is declining; however, Statistics Canada says zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) registrations have continued to surge in the third quarter.
On December 11, AutoTrader.ca published its top Canadian search data for 2023 which showed a rise in the popularity of trucks and a declining interest in EVs from one year prior.
Notably, in 2022, data showed that 68 percent of those surveyed by AutoTrader who did not own an EV indicated an intent to buy one, but this response has fallen to 56 percent in 2023.
AutoTrader revealed that while interest in alternative fuel types is 15 percent higher than last year, EV searches only account for less than 3 percent of overall searches.
Of the Canadians who said they had no plans to buy an EV or a declining overall interest, 40 percent said it was because of the prices of these vehicles, while 23 percent said it was because of the country’s inflation rates.
However, despite this registered consumer decline, Statistics Canada has instead revealed that ZEV registrations reached 12.1 percent or a 33 percent increase from 2022. This jump marks the single biggest quarterly leap in Canada for EV adoption.
After a slow first half of the year that saw ZEV market penetration hold at 8.6 percent—down from a previous quarterly high of 9.6 percent in Q4 2022—ZEV registration in the latest quarter surged by 3.5 percent.
According to Statistics Canada, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) constituted 76 percent of all new ZEV registrations in the third quarter of this year, while plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) made up the remaining 24 percent.
The total number of all vehicles registered in the Q3 period across Canada was 457,836 with 42,260 of this total representing BEVs specifically.
These statistics exist in contrast to AutoTrader’s latest report demonstrating that more work will need to be done economically and culturally within Canada if electric vehicles are to be adopted entirely by the 2030s.
