Province of Ontario - Electric Vehicle Rebates & Charger Program

[mdrejhon]

Thanks for this. Curious - does the car have software to show the history of your charging? I'm thinking in the context of resale value when buying a used car - obviously as you noted, a 5 yr old car could last another 2-10 years on it's batteries, but unless you know how the owner treated/managed the batteries, how would you have confidence in purchasing that vehicle.

Also, is 8K-10K the correct price range when replacing batteries?

Price ballpark is roughly accurate.

It definitely should be amortized as per-kilometer operating cost (just as you should with a gasoline car, too...). But typically it's just one battery pack for a typical car ownership's lifetime (~10 years). Depending on how much you baby it, just like as you would baby a gasoline car, just different babying techniques. You can make a good EV battery last roughly as long as the time it takes to need a rebuild of a transmission/engine (biggie cost too), give or take a hundred thousand kilometers or thereabouts -- that territory.

Hybrid cars with batteries (e.g. Prius plug-in Hybrid) already employs the principle of shallow-cycling to prolong service-lifetime of their batteries. During a long drive, it tries to keep the battery's state of charge roughly around the middle, rather than too empty or too full.

Battery history download: It depends on the car.

There are cars (hybrids, plug-in hybrids, full EV) that let you download complete charge histories (battery cycling graphs), as an enhanced form of OBD2 diagnostics. Manufacturers use them for analysis and battery warranty verification to make sure you didn't abuse the charge cycle with shenanigans like racetrack use. In fact, many of them even download data from specific sections from its battery pack, so one can determine if most of the pack is good and some of it has some bad cells. In due time, we'll probably have kick-ass apps for our tablets, that can tell us if a used EV's battery pack is still fairly good, and display a bunch of lovely battery health statistics. I can totally imagine the EV economy will bring a big boom of these spinoff tools at the critical mass point where many are buying used EVs.

In the interim, a simple gauge is possible for a quick approximate judgement: Maximum predicted range meter display after a full charge. Tesla displays this on its dashboard -- and you want to avoid a used Tesla whose fully-charged range is now less than half its original.

Pragmatically there are carbon lifecycle issues with EV vehicles that we need to work to gradually solve (...aka: don't use coal power to charge cars, etc...) but I just look at Oil history (as much as I'd like to support Canadian Oil), look at Paris Summit (whether you're for or against), and we really need to include EV in the discussion multi-generational transition dragged kicking and screaming to a cleaner economy, incrementally in a 20, 50 or 100 years long march.

 

[kEiThZ]

Included in the revised program is a limit on the amount of rebate you get if you buy a car over, I think, $75k. I think now it is limited to $3k!

Ah, Canada....where you can be deemed too rich to get a child care benefit but you can never be too rich to get help buying one of these!

They capped the rebate. No more than $3k if the EV costs over $75k.

 

[TOareaFan]

They capped the rebate. No more than $3k if the EV costs over $75k.

I think I said that...no? You have to wonder why anyone buying a $75k - $150k car needs any government assistance at all.

 

[junior43]

I think I said that...no? You have to wonder why anyone buying a $75k - $150k car needs any government assistance at all.

Although I do agree with you that rich people don't need the help. That article you posted had a pretty good point about that. Bigger rebates for buying leafs, or other e-vehicles at the low end, means you're replacing a corolla (or other small gas car with very good mileage) with an e-vehicle, but if you don't equally subsidize the luxury vehicle, they may choose to go for the massive SUV or other larger gas consuming vehicle (relative to the corolla) So there could be some environmental justification in equal rebates regardless of price. I'd still disagree (if you can afford a 150K vehicle, you don't need a rebate - and you'll probably buy exactly what you want either way)

 

[TOareaFan]

Although I do agree with you that rich people don't need the help. That article you posted had a pretty good point about that. Bigger rebates for buying leafs, or other e-vehicles at the low end, means you're replacing a corolla (or other small gas car with very good mileage) with an e-vehicle, but if you don't equally subsidize the luxury vehicle, they may choose to go for the massive SUV or other larger gas consuming vehicle (relative to the corolla) So there could be some environmental justification in equal rebates regardless of price. I'd still disagree (if you can afford a 150K vehicle, you don't need a rebate - and you'll probably buy exactly what you want either way)

The article was (and you do to) making the case that, if anything, that logic suggests the rebates should be higher at the higher end of the scale...not that they be equal.

There is no logic to pick an arbitrary number like $3k....either there should be no subsidy on the basis of "they're rich, they don't need it" or there should be (based on the logic you and the writer of the article present) an increasing subsidy based on the increasing value of the vehicle.

That said, the main point of the article is that this is flawed, and failed, program....with the killer line being:

Just think: if all that extra money has the desired effect, the number of electric cars on the road could soon leap to maybe one tenth of one percent or more. In a hundred million years or so, that could have a real impact on the environment.

 

[crs1026]

What prevents car dealers from just upping the price to absorb the greater subsidy? Is there any evidence that this will actually sell more cars?

- Paul

 

[kEiThZ]

What prevents car dealers from just upping the price to absorb the greater subsidy? Is there any evidence that this will actually sell more cars?

- Paul

Quotas for emissions standards on the types of vehicles they sell.

 

[Megaton327]

What prevents car dealers from just upping the price to absorb the greater subsidy? Is there any evidence that this will actually sell more cars?

- Paul

Firstly, dealerships have no way to claim the subsidy on behalf of the purchaser unless explicitly authorized to do so - for instance, a Nissan dealership cannot charge $42000 for a $32000 LEAF and claim $10K back from the Province without the purchaser's explicit permission (and then, that normally takes the form of "we'll sell you the vehicle for $9.5K less, and claim the $10K rebate, saving you the trouble of filing for it").

And secondly, most Canadian provinces do not have these rebates, so if the nationwide MSRP listed online were to differ by $10000 vs the dealership prices in Ontario, people would probably just not buy any of these vehicles when they notice that blatant gouging is occurring, a massive waste of money for the dealerships/automakers having produced that inventory.

Finally, EVs are already difficult enough to sell to customers even at current prices+with rebates applied, widespread $10K price hikes would likely have the result of reducing the annual province-wide sales of all sub-$75K EVs to the double digits at most.

 

[David Brake]

There's more news on the charging network - will write something up about it: https://news.ontario.ca/mto/en/2016/04/ontario-building-more-electric-vehicle-charging-stations.html

 

[mdrejhon]

Thoughts:

Given the surprising massive boom of Tesla Model 3 preorders -- and the scaleup of Gigafactory battery production, lowering the cost of lithium-ion car batteries.
....It may mean far cheaper battery replacements in 10 years.

And if you're willing to buy a replacement battery off the used market (80% capacity), it often goes half the price of new batteries even today and can last you five more years on, say, a 10-to-15-year-old EV. If the manufacturer allows you, of course.

I remember the days when lithium laptop batteries used to cost $250 and up.

 

[David Brake]

BTW more than half (300) of the new charging points are level 2 not level 3 (250) - so fast, but not ultrafast.

 

[Megaton327]

BTW more than half (300) of the new charging points are level 2 not level 3 (250) - so fast, but not ultrafast.

True, but aside from Tesla Superchargers, there are currently a whopping 5 level 3 chargers in the entire province - all of them in the GTA.

2 of them are practically next to one another, off the 401, on the southeast side of Pearson, at the Nissan and Mitsubishi Canadian Headquarters - both are CHAdeMO-only. One is on the 400 a bit north of the 407, at PowerStream Headquarters, with both CHAdeMO and CCS. Another one is on the 404 a bit north of the 407, at BMW Canada Headquarters, with CCS only. The last one is in Markham just northeast of the 404/407 interchange, at a civic centre, with both CHAdeMO and CCS.

So 5 in Ontario, all 5 being in the GTA, 2 CHAdeMO-only, 1 CCS-only, 2 CHAdeMO/CCS; 4 of them are free (though Nissan and BMW, from what I know, restrict theirs to only vehicles of their brand), with the Markham one costing $10/hour and needing an AddEnergie account. From what I understand, the new ones are spread out quite a bit more than that, they must all have both CHAdeMO and CCS, and if I'm not mistaken while they can charge a small hourly or per-session fee (illegal to resell electricity in Ontario, so no per-kWh) they must not require membership to a proprietary service, i.e. they must all take tap-to-pay debit/credit cards.

This will take us from 5 level 3 chargers in the province up to 254

 

[David Brake]

True, but aside from Tesla Superchargers, there are currently a whopping 5 level 3 chargers in the entire province - all of them in the GTA.

I'm currently checking on numbers to make sure you haven't missed any - if I learn about more I will let you know where they are! If you can let me know your source of information on, for example, the terms of service - privately if you like - I would appreciate it.

 

[Megaton327]

I'm currently checking on numbers to make sure you haven't missed any - if I learn about more I will let you know where they are! If you can let me know your source of information on, for example, the terms of service - privately if you like - I would appreciate it.

Simply by checking plugshare.com, their listings are pretty comprehensive. Reviews and edits from members keep the status of chargers and terms of service up-to-date.

 

[David Brake]

Seems we are both right - there are 56 level 3 chargers but the remainder are all Tesla ones, so this makes a huge difference to non-Tesla owners. Thanks for your input - it's changed the focus of my story!