Evidence of meeting #7 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vehicles.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
We'll go to the five-minute round now starting with Mr. Jeneroux.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being with us here today.
My first questions are for Ms. Goldberg and Mr. Charron on the cost of residential and commercial charging stations.
Do you have the average cost of what it would be for both a household and a commercial building?
4:55 p.m.
Director of Public Policy, Canada, ChargePoint
On the installation side, the average cost to install in a home is between $300 to $500. For commercial and multi-family, it could be between $5,000 and $7,000. That's just the installation. The charging station itself at home is about $1,000. On the commercial side you're ranging about $5,000 per plug.
The cost to install varies depending on the complexity of the site, for instance, how far is it from the power source. Then costs come down when we look at how many charging stations we're installing at once.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
An average home in Edmonton, where I am, would be about $1,000 to install.
5 p.m.
Director of Public Policy, Canada, ChargePoint
It would be about $300 to $500 to install, and then the station itself would cost $1,000. That's for the smart connected charging stations that help utilities manage the grid and help reduce costs in terms of managing that additional load, especially at the local distribution level.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Would I pay my monthly electrical bill on top of that?
5 p.m.
Director of Public Policy, Canada, ChargePoint
That's correct.
NRCan has estimated that it's 2¢ or 3¢ per kilometre to fuel with electric.
5 p.m.
Conservative
5 p.m.
President, LeadingAhead Energy
Most of it, yes, depending on the type of.... If you have a single-family house and there's enough power—there's already a bigger panel—in the house, you can get away with what we call in the industry a “dumb charger”. Those chargers can vary between $600 to $1,000, and the smart chargers, as Ms. Goldberg mentioned, would be around $1,000 to $1,200 for the charging station alone.
Should there not be enough power in the home, then you might need a bit of an electrical upgrade. There are low management devices that exist for about $1,000 extra to avoid an expensive new service in the home, but that's for a single-family home.
If we're getting into condos and multi-family dwellings, that is a very different ball game. If you need a new service altogether.... Typically if you start with the visitor stalls, you can get away with about $8,000 for two stalls for dual-port stations, plus whatever installation fees, depending on where the electrical room is located in the building.
We've talked a lot about garage orphans. Right now, 80% of charging is done at home. That is true currently because the first takers of ZEVs were wealthier. We're seeing a lot of people, such as in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, parking on the street or having older buildings. It's not really economically sound to do a retrofit on those older buildings, which is why it's also important to provide public charging stations, whether they are fast chargers or level twos.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Great.
Could I ask both of you to provide—I'm trying to do the math on the fly here—a bit of an overview of what that would look like, in terms of what it would cost the average family, and perhaps get that back to the committee if you could?
I want to shift gears a little bit. I'm hoping, Mr. Smith, that you might be able to assist on some of this. I'm trying to identify who the individuals are that this incentive is essentially going to support.
In my community, I'm hoping it's going to the average family that is looking for that cost-efficient vehicle and that maybe this helps them out. However, we had documents submitted today, and we realize that the majority—and by majority, I mean a lot more—of the money is going to Tesla Model 3s, as opposed to the more average family car. By “a lot”, that's $70,000 versus $30,000 in what the incentive is broken down to.
I'm hoping you can shed some light on how exactly you think adding more money into the incentive program would help assist that family in my community.
5 p.m.
Analyst, The Pembina Institute
Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for the question.
The first thing I'd note is that, at least when we're talking about the ISED program, there are manufacturers' suggested retail price ceilings, which is generally about $45,000 to $55,000 per vehicle. We would say that this compares pretty favourably with the price of the average light-duty vehicle that was sold in Canada in 2019, which cost just a bit over $40,000.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
We're 15 seconds over time. That's a very interesting point, and maybe it can be completed in a few minutes.
We'll go to Mr. Saini, for five minutes, please.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, everyone, for coming this afternoon. It's been a great discussion so far.
The first question I have is for Ms. Goldberg.
We talked about charging stations and infrastructure. One of the things we've seen in studies is that most people do most of the charging at night in their homes.
What kind of method do you think we could employ for those people who don't own a home, live in a multi-use residential building or live in some other type of dwelling that they don't own? How could we also incentivize them or get them to be thinking about buying a ZEV?
5:05 p.m.
Director of Public Policy, Canada, ChargePoint
Thank you for that question. You make a very good point in terms of the critical importance of having access to reliable charging and that most charging happens at home.
If there is not reliable access at home—and it's difficult, as you said, if you live in a multi-family building or an older building—there are several mechanisms you can use. One is looking at building codes, so that at any time we're looking at new construction for new multi-family buildings, we're putting that basic electrical infrastructure in place. The second is that workplaces have been identified in the literature as a really critical alternative to home charging. It's ensuring that we're encouraging workplaces to install electric vehicle charging, and also ensuring that building requirements, especially new developments, make provisions for the basic electrical infrastructure.
The third is working with municipalities to provide charging infrastructure in communities where we know access to home charging will be limited. These are fast-charging hubs and level two charging in those communities, where vehicles can park overnight. It's also looking at schools and other community amenities where charging might be idle in the evening and individuals can use them overnight.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
A lot of this charging infrastructure is being led by the private sector, but different connector types and different chargers can only be used for certain vehicles. Is there any way we should be standardizing this to make it easier? If you have to drive someplace and you have to look for a charging station that doesn't fit your car type, you don't know where that will be.
Would it be better to standardize it in some way, if possible?
5:05 p.m.
Director of Public Policy, Canada, ChargePoint
There's one standard on the level two side. All vehicles can use that, and Tesla has an adaptor. On the fast charging side, you're right, there are three main standards. One that is proprietary to Tesla, and two that are used by different vehicle manufacturers. Our stations typically have both charging ports on them. It's important that government funding programs include and continue to include requirements that both of those ports be available. Ideally, it would be great if we worked towards one standard, but right now, we're working with those two. It's important that both ports are available at any publicly funded fast charging stations.
November 23rd, 2020 / 5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you for that.
Mr. Smith, I wanted to ask you a question about ZEV standards because Mr. DiCaro had mentioned that briefly in one of his responses. I look at what's happening right now in China, where you have a $300-billion investment coming from 10 to 12 companies where they forced.... I shouldn't say forced, but they put standards in place, as you know, where a certain amount of vehicle production must be a ZEV vehicle. The European Union is looking at this also. They haven't made it mandatory, but they're looking at how they can incentivize companies.
Do you think we should be looking at a ZEV standard here in Canada?
5:05 p.m.
Analyst, The Pembina Institute
Absolutely. This is one of the main things we're recommending at the Pembina Institute when it comes to the uptake of zero-emission vehicles.
One thing we have noticed in our research is that Canada has a pretty significant supply issue when it comes to zero-emission vehicles. Across Canada, only about a third of dealers have offered at least one plug-in electric vehicle. Outside the main provinces of Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario, it drops down to less than one in five. We see a ZEV standard as something that could be useful on the supply side of the zero-emission vehicle equation.
An interesting stat we noted from Quebec is that it's increased the availability of models from about 66% to 92% of what's available in California.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Mr. Kazi, could you give me a yes or no answer?
I've been doing some reading about some testing they're doing on inductive charging in either South Korea or Israel. How practical do you think that is?
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Siemens Canada Limited
It is practical. We see also that with mobiles it will be practical, but more research and development needs to go into that.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
That's great. Thank you.
Ms. Pauzé, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Monique Pauzé Bloc Repentigny, QC
Thank you.
My questions are for Mr. DiCaro.
Mr. DiCaro, like me, you come from a union background. This means that we talk a lot. However, I have only two and a half minutes of speaking time and I have several questions for you. Please answer as directly as possible.
In your document, you spoke about the synchronization of measures and coherent and effective strategies. In your opinion, what role could the development of a multi-level collaborative industrial strategy between Quebec and the other provinces play, given the expertise and experience already acquired in Quebec?
5:10 p.m.
Director of Research, Unifor
I appreciate your comment about how we like to speak a lot, so I was laughing as you said that. That's very good, but you are 100% right.
One of the pieces in the landscape of the auto industry in Canada is that people think this is a southern Ontario proposition and it's restricted to what's happening down in the Windsor to Oshawa corridor. That's not the case. Ten years ago, we were building cars in Sainte-Thérèse, Quebec. Quebec has a long history in auto assembly. They are still a site for auto parts manufacturers. I've seen many presentations from groups in Quebec who are already drawing this supply chain connection between lithium mining in the northern parts of the province to battery engineering to manufacturing. I would even argue that by way of provinces, they are further in thinking through this. A really comprehensive strategy incorporating the production end of things as well as incorporating the supply end of things....
