Canada's newly appointed Prime Minister Mark Carney is facing an early test of leadership from the country's automotive old guard. Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis have joined forces to ask their government to repeal Canada's zero-emission vehicle mandate, citing poverty and technological impossibility. Obviously, after just a century of automotive innovation, these giants have forgotten how to build cars unless they are allowed to keep emitting indefinitely. Their preferred business model involves Canada subsidizing nostalgia indefinitely, rather than seizing the obvious electric future.
Let's be clear. The global auto market is rapidly electrifying, not slowly. Electric passenger car sales in Norway have already approached 100%. Half of China's electric vehicles are electric. Nepal—Nepal! Nepalese Sherpas and Mount Everest!—now has 70% of new cars as fully electric. Europe, China, and the rest of the world have decided that electricity is not optional but inevitable.
The three subsidiaries in Canada seem to be the last ones desperately clinging to internal combustion engines. Their demands for Prime Minister Carney are transparently regressive, like Kodak asking the government to ban digital photography or Blockbuster asking for protection against streaming.
Ironically, these automakers insist on operating as usual, which exactly threatens what they claim to want: a thriving Canadian auto industry. Instead of facing their stagnation, they choose to hold Canada hostage. The message is clear: give us special exemptions, let us go bankrupt, or our factories will fall silent, perhaps completely withdraw. At least it's an honest threat, although it has astonishing leverage.
Meanwhile, the world's leading electric vehicle power, China, is quietly expanding into global markets with exactly the vehicles Canada needs. Chinese companies like BYD and Yutong do not promise future electric vehicle models; they are shipping millions of models today. BYD alone now produces more electric vehicles in one year than the Big Three could possibly achieve in five years. The company has factories all over the world, surprisingly even in Pakistan.
Yes, Pakistan, until recently known for having a large automotive industry, now proudly has a BYD assembly plant that will produce cutting-edge electric vehicles starting in early 2026. How can it be imagined that a country with a century-long tradition of automobile manufacturing, Canada, has yet to establish a major Chinese electric vehicle factory?
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7523017073916690994/
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