If we want to advance our economy, we need to embrace EV adoption. We already invested heavily into EV supply chains.
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The tariffs on Chinese EVs are meant to prop up the godawful American car manufacturers. They’ve spent decades lobbying against better fuel mileage standards, and developing their own EV technologies. And now they know they’re losing the fight and need to keep an uneven playing field to survive.
Remove the tariffs and let the fuckers rot. They fought for this. They did it to themselves.
You may be right, but ostensibly, tariffs and other barriers are an attempt to make trade more fair, as the business conditions in China are significantly different and give various unfair advantages over jurisdictions that have higher labour standards, safety standards, environmental standards, and fewer subsidies.
So in that sense, we don’t want to subsidize the oppression of workers who give up a decent living to save us some money, etc…
I realize that things like safety standards can change much faster than legislation.
China is already selling their EVs literally around the world. Their cars are significantly more cost effective and more technologically advanced than literally any competition. Theyre all over the world. For good reason. They’re also building factories in other countries, around the world, to bring the same cars and technology there. Canada is missing out categorically.
Canada also isnt holding out over workers rights motives. Its because of our close ties with America and the American auto industry.
Yes, I generally think that is the case too.
We should simply allow European safety standards as equivalent to american ones, allowing every model approved i the EU to be sold in Canada without costly changes and re-certification.
If a car is good enough for German highways and Norwegian mountain roads, then they should be good enough for Canada.
I know one of the problems is the clips we use for attaching car seats for small children. Since they don’t match what we use, we’d probably have to switch to European car seats too. No idea which is safer or why we have the differences, but I’d bet there are lots of little safety things that don’t line up between countries. I’m not sure I’m willing to give up our autonomy in this regard just so we can have more products. While I think Europe would probably have better standards than the US, I don’t like the idea of relying on any other countries to determine what is safe enough for Canadians to use.
We are currently more or less relying on the US on car safety standards…
Yeah, we’re pretty close. Put a stronger front bumper and a DRL module on an American car, and it’s about the same. But we also aren’t that different from Europe either. Build a Canadian car with a weaker roof, rear bumper, and child seat anchors, while beefing up the side impact ratings, and adding ESC, AEB, ACC features as standard and you have a European car. Maybe we can agree to take the best of all standards and agree to make them that way. Seems the best way to open things up without just arbitrarily agreeing to adopt another country’s standards wholesale in an attempt to get some market share. We have enough problems with that as is.
Most (maybe all) car seats have two methods of attachment - LATCH/LUAS system and just using the seatbelt.
A quick Google search shows me that they use it in Europe too, but call it ISOFIX. As far as I can tell it’s just three different names for the same system.
The seat belt method should work regardless of whether the car was made for North America or EU.
Plus, safety standards change all the time. This is just one new standard for them to follow (if it is even different at all).
All BMW sold in North America use ISOFIX.
Yeah, I looked them up out of curiosity after posting. They look pretty similar. In CanUS, most LATCH seats use a lap belt with clips on either end to connect to the anchors. This lets you slip it between the upper and lower parts of the seat more easily. Looks like ISOFIX is designed so the seat latches right to the anchors, and there is a removable part of the seat that exposes the anchors. The top tether in Europe usually goes to a roof while it is usually on the bottom of the rear part of the seat in CanUS. I think the Euro implementation would likely minimize installation issues, which was the whole point of both standards. To get the lap belt tight enough is a real pain, so they get installed wrong a lot over here. Apparently there are LATCH car seats that also connect directly to the seat anchors, but I have never seen one. Seema like it would be rougher on the interior given how we hide the anchors over here, but it would probably result in fewer bad installs.
exception: blinding headlights
Eh, I could deal with bright headlights a lot easier if they weren’t literally shoulder height to me on new trucks and SUVs.
No, invest in public transportation.
We were led to believe more lanes will ease traffic congestion. Now we run out of room to build more lanes, Doug Ford wants to build tunnels! 😂
It’s scientifically proven more lanes will not help with congestion. Public transportation, biking and walking infrastructure will. It will also reduce the amount of accidents and fatalities. EV’s are extra heavy so increase the chance of fatalities during accidents. Next to that their extra weight increases wear and tear on roads, increasing maintenance costs. Sidewalks, cycling lanes, trains, metro’s, trams, busses are the solution.
While I agree with your sentiments about EV’s. Like oil, we live in a world where there will still be people that want to drive - electric or ICE engines. We might as well benefit on these resources we have an abundance of.
we live in a world where there will still be people that want to drive
We also live in a world where there will always be a practical need for non-mass transit vehicles. Contractors, delivery vehicles, and people in rural areas are some of the more obvious examples.
We don’t have an abundance of rare earth metals, which we need loads of for EV’s. It’s also something which gives China loads of power as they are the world’s biggest supplier.
Somebody needs to buy Premier Ford a copy of Cities Skylines 2
I’m in support of reducing or eliminating tariffs on EVs, with one exception…
You know the one.
You misspelled electric trains. ;)
We need EV’s as well, but they are for the rich and the rural. Electric trains need to be mass deployed across Canada. Everything from neighbourhood stop-on-every-block trams, to subways to zip across town to regional rail for dense urban centres and bullet trains to compete with regional airlines in dense population corridors.
But on transit i might have to sit next to someone with stinky fingers and an itchy bum, gross.
My mother always told me: there is one weirdo on every bus.
I couldn’t find them.
;)
Manufacturing prowess needs to be boosted so come on in and create joint ventures with Magna or such. Minimum content / value added thresholds to be met. US will continue to be held to our existing agreements which is getting in our way atm.
