How are we doing? – The Transportation rEVolution status report

One year into our Transportation rEVolution, it’s time to pop the hood and see how we’re doing. We’ve done the research and crunched the numbers. Now we’re ready to unveil our inaugural status update on WWF’s campaign to see 600,000 electric vehicles on Canadian roads by 2020.
The big news? Charging infrastructure.

Hydro Quebec’s Electric Circuit program has partnered with businesses to install more than 200 charging stations across the province. The B.C. government also stepped up to the plate in a major way, installing 475 in under a year. Even private companies are getting in on the game: last year, Sun Country Highway installed more than 200 new charging stations across the country.
With more than 1,000 public charging stations now available, Canadians can charge up at the shopping mall, hardware store or highway rest stop. It also puts our ratio of EVs to public charging stations on par with green transportation leaders like Norway.
But where Norway continues to beat us hands down is in hard numbers. Compare the total number of electric vehicles between our two countries. Here at home, we have over 4,000 EVs on our roads. That’s a 148 per cent increase over last year, but it’s still just a tiny fraction of all vehicles.
Meanwhile, the population of Norway is one-seventh the size of ours, yet it has more than triple the number of EVs zipping around their streets and highways (14,462 to be exact).

Price continues to be a big barrier for Canadians. So it’s no surprise the vast majority of EV sales in Canada come from Ontario, B.C. and Quebec—all of which have introduced significant purchase incentives. We need these programs to continue and expand to other provinces.
And considering only seven per cent of Canadians have seen, driven or ridden in an electric vehicle, a LOT of work needs to be done to increase public awareness and experience.
Canada’s numbers of EVs are improving, but they’re still well shy of where we think we could be. So if we’re going to achieve our 600,000 EV goal, we need to shift into high gear and put the pedal to the metal.
Check out our status update infographic to get informed about Canada’s progress and our recommendations going forward.
Download the full report.