Thank you very much.
In a small town, I meet with my customers day in and day out. They sit with me and they tell me that they don't have the capital to buy these things.
When I invested in my facility, I did it out of the fear that I might lose my franchise. I didn't do it because I thought it would be profitable. At the end of the day, I am a for-profit businesses, so I looked at it and said that if I have to do this, then I will. If it can increase my marginal sales, then great.
However, the reality is that when General Motors made cost and invoice the same, because they were losing so much money, there was no advantage in coming to my store as opposed to another store. I paid the same price that I sold the vehicle to you for. If I was a good gentleman and met all of my compliances, they would send me a token amount of profit at the end of the day, which wasn't enough to sustain me. The interest that I had to pay on these units to have them sit here on my lot for six or eight or nine months far exceeded the potential profit that I could ever make on them.
The capital investment for my store—the power changes, the transformer changes, digging up my lot to put transformers in—was large. For big-city stores, it's massive. I didn't have to buy a gas station to sell gas-powered vehicles. Why did I have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to put in charging?
I did not put in my chargers as forward-facing. I did not want the traffic to come here, because there's not any profit in selling the power and electricity. That's why the free market has not put these things everywhere.
In my town, there's a FLO charger. It's been disabled and now abandoned after being broken for a year or two, but it still shows on the map. Everybody came with their EVs and tried to charge there, but it was broken. There was no gas station attendant. Who do you call? There was nobody. They don't care.
There are so many realities that we're not facing. I appreciate all the other panellists, and yes, we can say all these great platitudinal things, but when it boils down to rubber meeting the road, do customers want them? Not yet, but maybe, so let's keep pursuing it. I'm not saying abandon it, but don't force it. Don't try to make something happen that the free market is not willing to see happen. The free market goes on profit, and if there isn't profit and it's not reliable—and it's not—then the free market is not going to run with it.
We'll get there slowly. Keep pushing. Keep going. Maybe electricity isn't the right choice. Maybe it will be hydrogen or maybe wind power. I'm game for that. I want to see advancements. I want to see our industry lead, but I do not want to be forced, bullied or coerced into selling something that my consumers do not want to buy. They can't, because if they drive 300 or 400 kilometres on a cold day on a gravel road with winter tires in a pickup truck, they're not getting home. If they go to the hospital in High River, there's no charger there.
There's no charger in the neighbouring town. It shows that there's one on the map, but it's been abandoned. It's no longer there. The map shows my charger there, but you can't use my charger, because I didn't make it forward-facing, and there are reasons for that. I can share why: My neighbouring colleague did, and somebody drove away with his vehicle plugged in. It cost him $6,000 to replace that charging cord on a quick charger, rather than the $200 cost if you drive away from the pump when it's still in your gas-powered vehicle. I can't absorb that. I can't recoup that.
It's nice to speak in platitudes. It's nice to think green and go there. I get it and I'm with you, but you can't force it. You're trying to go way too fast, because the free market is not getting there and they're not ready to get there yet.