Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Jerry Kroll, chief executive officer of Electra Meccanica Vehicles in Vancouver, which is a Vancouver-based electric vehicle manufacturing company with operations in Vancouver, New Westminster, and Victoria, with approximately 15 employees, the majority of whom are mechatronics engineers and staff. Since 1959 the company has been building hand-built sports cars of great note.
We are currently setting up for the mass production of our newest vehicle and first mass market vehicle, the Solo, which is an innovative, one-person electric commuter vehicle, similar in the environmental footprint to the Tesla, with zero emissions, but with the unique characteristic of being a one-person commuter car.
Our story is one of innovation and experience, using the 57 years of our history of manufacturing hand-built sports cars and turning it to the 21st century of avoiding fossil fuels in vehicles and creating a vehicle for the 83% of commuters who travel by themselves less than 30 kilometres each way currently in a fossil fuel vehicle with four to seven seats.
We are local. We are a Canadian company. All of our designs are house produced. All of our technology is Canadian technology, and we have over 50 years of experience among ourselves.
If you're looking at the slides, there's an image of the Solo. We are now nearing a production, which we can do at our existing facilities, of between 10 and 20 vehicles per month. This is good. It shows people the technology. They can experience it, but it's not going to make much of a difference in battling global climate destruction. For that we need to ramp up our production, ideally in Canada, with something similar to the clean industry development loan that was provided by the U.S. government to Tesla, resulting in a company, Tesla, with an over $30-billion market cap, employing over 10,000 people in clean business technology, and building arguably the best car in the history of the car.
We are either going to receive support in building our vehicles and assembling our vehicles in Canada for mass production, or we will have to go offshore to India and China to meet the kind of numbers, 100,000 plus per year, to make a difference.
EV sales in Canada were up by 32% in 2015. Our cars, although not even displayed yet, but rather just the images of them, have procured for us over 20,500 reservations. That's over $400 million of potential business that we can either manufacture in Canada and deliver from here, or manufacture offshore and deliver around the world without ever touching Canadian soil. As proud Canadians, we would rather have the jobs here in Canada than have the product we've designed manufactured offshore.
Our R and D department will, one way or the other, remain in Vancouver and remain in Canada. The opportunities and challenges looking forward is that while Canada remains a place for innovation, and a place where new ideas come forward, the manufacturing sector does not seem to be supported that much in Canada, resulting in products being manufactured offshore. A policy looking for Canadian innovation that addresses more than just manufacturing products, but manufactures clean energy products for tomorrow's economy, would make lots of sense.
Recapping the template we're seeking to emulate here in Canada, in 2010 Tesla received a milestone $465-million clean energy loan from the U.S. government. They have grown the company to in excess of a $30-billion market cap and have repaid their entire loan three years early with interest. It's a textbook example of support leading to jobs and industry in a country, in California, a place not known for automotive manufacturing.
Other countries, like Norway, have enormous support for electric vehicles but primarily targeted toward the consumer purchasing the vehicles with tax credits and having the allocation to drive in HOV lanes.
In Canada, we have tax credits in B.C. for the buyers, tax credits in Ontario, but for the actual manufacturing of electric vehicles in Canada, there is no support I'm aware of.
The proposed solution would be financial support following the template so successfully executed by Tesla in California, having fleet demonstrations in support of export of this fine product, and manufacturing support in the form of loan guarantees, low-interest loans for major purchases being done offshore, and then expert support for other areas, which could be targeted with a clean energy, small footprint commuter vehicle.
That's my presentation.