Is Canada ready for an EV future?

This week on the podcast we talk about the future of transportation.

It’s a timely conversation given recent government commitments to a ‘greener future’, including by our own government—mostly in response to much larger federal commitments by our neighbours down such.

If the US government is looking to get EVs to 50 percent of new vehicle purchases by 2030, it might have some impact on Canada due to the tight integration between both countries’ automotive sectors.

“So this is the big pitch, right? There are all of these problems in the transport system; we are going to invent these new technologies that will solve it.”
– Paris Marx

Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association, certainly thinks so. He’s behind the recently unveiled Project Arrow, which is less a concept car (or even a car to be sold), and more a prototype to showcase that Canada has all the components to build an electric vehicle from top to bottom. It’s essentially an impressively-conceived, forward-thinking, government-funded sales job to the world that Canada’s natural resources and automotive branch plants are already ready for an EV future.

Is that the future we want, though?

Also joining us on the podcast this week is Paris Marx, who is not only the host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, but the author of the book Road to Nowhere, which argues that Big Tech’s bets on transit haven’t worked because they fundamentally misunderstand the future of transportation. In a heavily condensed interview (seriously, we’ll have Paris back on at some point in a future episode), we talk about that, why replacing 20th-century automobiles with EVs might not bring about the cleantech future we’re all hoping for, but also the important social components often left out of that future conversation.

At a time in which we have a new showcase of Canadian innovation in auto manufacturing, it’s worthwhile to have the conversation as to whether not the future of transportation is electric vehicles.

Let’s dig in.

The BetaKit Podcast is sponsored by Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt LLP.
Osler, the leading law firm for startups, high-growth companies and investors in Canada, has released its second annual study of 353 anonymized Canadian venture capital and growth equity financings. Read the Deal Points Report: Venture Capital Financings.