Doug Ford can't have it both ways on EVs |
The bromance, it seems, is over. After Prime Minister Mark Carney’s official visit to China yielded a much-anticipated deal on electric vehicle and agriculture exports, Ontario Premier Doug Ford came out swinging.
“The federal government is inviting a flood of cheap made-in-China electric vehicles without any real guarantee of equal or immediate investments in Canada’s economy, auto sector or supply chain,” Ford said in a statement.
Inviting cheaper electric vehicles into the country is a win for Canadian consumers, who have been denied those options so far by domestic automakers. The deal only covers 49,000 vehicles, or approximately three per cent of the Canadian market, and they have to cost $33,000 or less — a price point no North American automaker has yet reached for their EV models. “This doesn't compete head-to-head with any Canadian production, especially in the EV end of the market," University of Windsor automotive engineering professor Peter Frise told CBC Windsor.
The deal is also an acknowledgment — unwelcome in some circles — that China is clearly winning a race that multiple North American automakers have described as central to their survival. “We are in a global competition with China,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said last year. “And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.”
That future has been repeatedly undermined by US President Donald Trump’s ham-fisted attempts to make American auto manufacturing great again, which........