Thank you for that question. It's a good question.
Governments shouldn't pick technologies. They've never shown a track record of actually making the right decisions in that regard. The reality is that you will need all these technologies, because when you really look at how they are used, both in different jurisdictions of the world, which have energy biases....
For example, some jurisdictions have significant amounts of natural gas. The U.S. has actually been able to unlock significant amounts. Other areas that don't have that availability may have biases to other fuels, such as biofuels, potentially. As a global manufacturer, I need the complete portfolio to satisfy the broad range, both within jurisdictions and across the world.
What you'll also need to understand, too, is that these technologies, the different ones that I spoke of—advanced gasoline, biofuels, CNG, LPG, electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles—all have pros and cons, and are more or less applicable to certain types of vehicles and how they use them. Let me give you an example.
For an urban vehicle, where 80% of consumers travel less than 65 kilometres on their daily route, a Chevrolet Volt allows them to complete that trek on pure electricity at one fifth the fuel cost of a gasoline vehicle. We are now the leaders of plug-in vehicle sales in Canada. The “con” of an electric vehicle is range. That's why we put an extended-range engine in the Volt, so that it can actually generate its own electricity if you need a longer drive. They're very well suited to smaller vehicles, because as I increase the vehicle mass, I need more and more battery to propel it. So it has very good application in an urban setting.
Natural gas is an example. It's a very cheap fuel now, which is increasing the interest in that area, but I need significant volume to store the natural gas on that vehicle to travel at a distance comparable to the gasoline vehicle. So there's the tankage that I have to do it at.
As an example, we sell trucks and vans that are capable of running on natural gas in Canada. You have to store the natural gas at 7,000 pounds per square inch and have twice the volumetric size of a tank to carry the same amount of energy to travel as a gasoline or diesel vehicle. That's very expensive. These tanks are carbon-fibre tanks, and cost tens of thousands of dollars.
As well, I need the room. If I have a compact vehicle, trying to squeeze these natural gas tanks into the vehicle is a compromising situation. They're more suited to larger vehicles, such as heavy-duty trucks, etc. They have ample volume in the vehicle to actually store that energy.
Secondly, the vehicle technology to run that gas is not as easy as some people think. In the past, there have been garage-type conversions, let's say, converting a gasoline vehicle to natural gas. That is no longer the case today. These vehicles are actually quite expensive. So you need to have a duty cycle that drives a lot of mileage to regain....
You have a price difference, that is, it's cheaper fuel, but the vehicle-cost technology is so much more that you need to be dropping $40,000 instead of $20,000.