OTTAWA — Pickup-truck-loving farmers with rumbling engines, take heed: Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has announced the end of the road for your favourite mode of transportation more than a decade from now. Well, not quite. Some new gasoline- and diesel-powered pickup trucks will continue to be sold, so long as they are heavy and long enough to be classified as work trucks, under the Trudeau regime’s headline-making electric vehicle (EV) mandate.
The new EV mandate — officially dubbed an “availability standard” — aims to make conventional cars and light trucks decidedly unavailable for sale starting in 2035.
However, the regulation doesn’t apply to half-ton pickup trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 8,500 to 10,000 pounds where the bed is longer than 6 feet, and “likely” doesn’t apply at all to pickups heavier than that weight (three-quarter ton trucks), a spokesperson from Guilbeault’s department, Samuel Lafontaine, told Farmers Forum in an email.
The new Canadian mandate requires manufacturers to incrementally ramp up EV sales and back off conventional vehicle sales. In 2026, EVs are supposed to comprise 20 % of light-vehicle sales, rising to 60 % in 2030 and 100 % in 2035.
However, the regulation counts plug-in hybrid vehicles as EVs if they have an electric range of more than 80 km. These machines still have an engine, a gas tank and a tail pipe, and none of the range anxiety dogging fully electric vehicles. Planning for the continued existence of hybrids also suggests that even the Trudeau government sees a long-term future for gas stations. That’s good news for conventional pickup truck owners, notwithstanding the ever-increasing carbon tax. Voters will ultimately decide how far Canada goes down this road.
Source : Farmersforum