Latest news with #AutomotivePartsManufacturersAssociation
National Post
10 hours ago
- Automotive
- National Post
Pressure building on Liberals to rethink electric vehicle mandate
OTTAWA — As Canada approaches a critical starting point for its electric vehicle goals, pressure is building on Prime Minister Mark Carney's government to rethink its plan. Article content Starting next year, the Liberal plan to get more electric vehicles on the road will enter its first phase: mandating sales targets for car companies, which could purchase credits, including by spending on charging infrastructure, or face penalties for not complying. Article content Article content Article content The government has set a target of 20 per cent of new passenger vehicles sold in 2026 must be either battery-powered or hybrid, which increases to 60 per cent by 2030 and reaches 100 per cent by 2035. Article content Article content The goal is to reduce the country's emissions, taking direct aim at the transportation sector, which is among the top emitters. Article content But with plummeting electric car sales and Canada's auto sector under duress from a trade war with the U.S, which has abandoned its electrification goals under President Donald Trump, Carney's government must now decide whether to forge ahead or reconsider a core climate policy. 'They're going to have to make adjustments,' said Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association. 'I think they know that, the industry knows that. It's really a negotiation on where those adjustments land. Is this a time for stretch goals or is this a time for reality. What's the mix?' Article content He added that he had spoken to 'several ministers' this week. Article content Article content Brian Kingston, the president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, which represents Ford, General Motors and Stellantis and has long opposed the sales mandate, says the policy heaps on added costs at a time when keeping production in Canada has been made more difficult by U.S. tariffs Article content Article content 'At a time where companies are already facing tariff pressure, they are now going to face challenges selling vehicles in the Canadian market. Very difficult to make the case for Canada with this policy in place.' Article content Ford Canada CEO Bev Goodman was among the latest to call for the mandate to be scrapped, pointing to falling customer interest. Article content Statistics Canada bears that out, with the agency reporting a 45-per-cent drop in new zero-emission vehicles sold in March from the same month the year before. It said these new vehicles accounted for around seven per cent of vehicles sold in March 2025 — a figure critics point to as fuel to argue a 20 per cent sales target is unrealistic.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Canada's EV mandate must be repealed, Ford Canada CEO says
Ford Canada CEO Bev Goodman said June 10 that Canada's zero-emission vehicle mandate must be repealed as the consumer appetite for electric vehicles falls dramatically short of government requirements. 'The targets on full battery-electric vehicles need to be aligned with what customers want, and customers have spoken,' she said at the Canada Automotive Summit, hosted in Vaughan, Ont., by the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association. Goodman said the automaker's EV sales dropped 'like a stone' to start 2025 after the $5,000 federal EV incentive program ran out of cash in mid-January. Sign up for Automotive News Canada Breaking Alerts and be the first to know when big news breaks in the Canadian auto industry. Ford Canada does not release monthly or quarterly sales results, but nationwide figures show ZEV sales in February and March slid to 20,878 vehicles. That's down 44.2 per cent compared with the same two months a year earlier, according to the latest data available from Statistics Canada. ZEV sales for February and March represented 6.6 per cent of total vehicle sales in Canada, far short of government adoption requirements. The legislated federal targets require ZEVs to account for 20 per cent of automaker sales in model year 2026, 60 per cent in 2030 and 100 per cent in 2035. Goodman said without the incentives and other enablers that will allow Canadians to go electric such as charging infrastructure, Ottawa is not positioned to deliver on its 'very aggressive' targets. The same applies to the provincial EV mandates on the books in Quebec and British Columbia, she said. 'Ultimately, it will have a negative impact, if these mandates stick, on the industry. It will have downward pressure on vehicle sales, it will have upward pressure on pricing, and those are real concerns for consumers and the industry as a whole.' Goodman said Ford and other automakers that build vehicles in Canada are engaging with Ottawa on getting the legislation repealed. Environment and Climate Change Canada, the lead federal department on the mandate, known officially as the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard, did not immediately respond to request for comment.
CTV News
22-05-2025
- Automotive
- CTV News
Automaker Stellantis pauses some production at Windsor factory due to Trump's tariffs
Watch Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacture's Association, says the changes are impacting the Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge Chrysler production.
National Observer
09-05-2025
- Automotive
- National Observer
Arrow reborn: an all-Canadian EV aims to revolutionize industry
Turns out $20 million could be a good price for a new EV. If that car is the Project Arrow prototype — an all-Canadian electric vehicle dreamt up by an auto industry body that has already drummed up $500 million in contracts for the companies which contributed their technologies, that is. The EV concept, named after the avant-garde but controversial Canadian-built Avro Arrow supersonic fighter jet cancelled in 1959, has been logging thousands of air miles of its own since its launch in 2020. The distinctive gun-metal grey design was on display at Canada's pavillion at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, UAE, and has been in the spotlight at industry exhibitions around the world. International interest in the eye-catching EV model has already translated into half a billion dollars in deals for the 25 home-grown startups that delivered technologies for the prototype, ranging from an innovative electric drive-train through a 3D-printed chassis to a state-of-the-art navigation system. For Flavio Volpe, who as head of Canada's Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association (APMA) spearheaded development of the project, the enthusiasm and deal-making are a vindication of the 'true value for money' of the EV concept, which raised $12 million from the Canadian auto sector and received $8 million in government backing to build the prototype. 'This is not about prototyping a design for mass production. These are designed to be a platform and showcase,' he stated, speaking with Canada's National Observer. 'So $20 million is a lot for a car, but not when you think about it in terms of what it can generate for the Canadian auto sector, for the Canadian economy.' 'Things are changing very rapidly. This is an occasion for a big rethink of the auto sector canon. We can't continue to think conventionally." APMA's Flavio Volpe 'With Project Arrow, Canada shows it has the technology and the people to do an 'all-Canadian' car,' said Volpe. An industrial net-zero call-to-arms The spark of conception for the Arrow came five years ago during the federal throne speech, which included a government call-to-arms to all in industry to imagine what their sectors 'could look like in a net-zero future.' Volpe took the question to representatives from APMA's 400-plus parts-supplier members with the challenge of designing and building a new EV. The car that took shape had 'innovation' as its watchword. The Arrow design came from a team at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ont., and 'every last part' came from one of more than 60 Canadian suppliers. This included power train engineers Narmco, software developers Ettractive and YQG Technologies, injection moulding specialist Papp Plastics, and cybersecurity outfit Vehiqilla. The prototype was assembled by Ontario Tech University, in Oshawa, Ont. 'We are saying: 'If a [car-maker] is interested in the Arrow's navigation system or the power-train — or the steering wheel, seats or door handles, here are the companies to buy from,'' said Volpe, who also sits on the Prime Minister's Council on Canada-US Relations. Progress on the project was given a major boost last November when APMA secured a further $11 million to build the first dozen 'Arrow 2.0s,' demonstrator models that could be used as virtual kit-cars by any automaker looking to start manufacturing an all-Canadian EV. 'Through Project Arrow [the Canadian auto sector] will prove that we can land on the moon. But it is not for APMA to colonize it,' said Volpe, noting he has had many requests to launch a car company off the back of the prototype. Still, the idea is tempting. Particularly given that Canada's vaunted $100 billion EV ecosystem strategy has been misfiring in the last year due to a slow-down in electric car and truck demand growth and the impact of the 'uncertainty shock' to the auto sector from the imposition of US tariffs. An EV designed and built in Canada with exclusively Canadian parts and technology will have a domestic market eventually, Volpe said, whatever US President Donald Trump's 'ambitions' or the industrial vagaries of the transition from internal combustion engines to electric drive-trains. Statista, a data provider, forecast Canada's EV market to reach over $11.5 billion in 2025 and grow almost 10 per cent a year to $17 billion by 2029, by which time almost 250,000 EVs will be on Canadian roads. 'The technologies being delivered by our member companies are going to drive down the cost of vehicles. If we are going to compete with the Chinese, we have to invest in these product innovations and also in the process and technologies to manufacture these EVs,' he added. 'Things are changing very rapidly. This is an occasion for a big rethink of the auto sector canon. We can't continue to think conventionally,' Volpe said of the transition to EVs, adding: 'If I launched a car today, it wouldn't combust anything. It would be electric.' On the road 'for $35,000' By APMA figuring, a compact SUV model Arrow could roll off a Canadian assembly line by 2029 with a sticker price of $35,000, he added, ready to be one of the two million cars sold each year in Canada. Development of the next-generation Arrow is going to test the design for ultra-harsh Canadian winter conditions, with Ontario Tech set to put the car through its paces in the university's climatic aerodynamic wind tunnel, which can simulate Arctic blizzards and 'extreme weather events.' Like the prototype, the Arrow 2.0 is retaining its identity as a 'lighthouse for the sector but a showcase for our suppliers' technologies,' said Volpe. But he feels the spirit of the project needs to continue reflecting its namesake, the Avro Arrow, developed in response to the 'existential threat' of Russian bombers flying over the Arctic Circle to attack Canada and the US. 'We built a Canadian jet from a 'clean sheet' that could fly twice as fast and fly twice as high as anything out there in the '50s. We couldn't think conventionally to do this.' The American economic attack on Canada with tariffs could be seen as comparable, Volpe said, given the damage that might be done to our national security and sovereignty, and provides government and industry with the opportunity to reposition the auto sector 'to play to our existing strengths.' 'We have a world-class auto manufacturing cluster in southwestern Ontario, we have a strong advanced technology cluster — software and hardware — we have steel and aluminum, and we have critical minerals for energy-dense EV batteries. And then there is AI and machine learning, which Canadians pioneered.' Through Project Arrow, Canada now also has its own EV prototype. And Volpe adds APMA is happy to hand over the 'five years of homework done for this project to anybody who wants to take a shot at it.'
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
What Sky correspondents make of Trump's tariff announcement
Donald Trump has announced new tariffs which he is slapping on countries around the world on what he declared as "Liberation Day". The president said at the White House that there would be a 10% baseline tax on imports from all nations and higher rates on goods from dozens of countries that run trade surpluses with the US. Mr Trump held up a chart in the Rose Garden, showing the US would charge a 34% tax on imports from China, a 20% tax on imports from the EU, 25% on South Korea, 24% on Japan, and 32% on Taiwan. The UK seemed to get off more tightly, with a 10% tariff. Latest updates on Trump tariffs So what do Sky's correspondents think of the president's tariff announcement? :: David Blevins, Sky correspondent, in Washington DC Donald Trump has left little ground for negotiation. By declaring a national emergency due to national security and economic concerns arising from the trade deficit, the president has given himself the power to regulate imports. He is regulating them by imposing a 10% baseline tariff on all countries exporting goods to the United States, and country-specific tariffs on the 60 "worst offenders". The UK has escaped that worst offenders list with a 10% tariff, but the EU has not - a tax of 20% now imposed on its products. But Trump stressed that those specific reciprocal tariffs are half what those "worst offending" countries charge the United States. The combination of declaring a national emergency and framing the president as "lenient" and "kind" limits the ability of those on the receiving end to negotiate. One senior White House source said: "This is not a negotiation. It's a national emergency. "And any country that thinks that they can simply make an announcement promising to lower some tariffs is ignoring the big, central problem of their massive non-tariff barriers and the institutionalisation in their trade model." :: Dan Whitehead, Sky correspondent, in Ontario, Canada For Canada - this is all about cars. Confirmation from President Trump that from Thursday, vehicles imported into the US will, as feared, be subject to a 25% tariff. It is a bitter blow to the car makers - mainly in Ontario - but such is the integration of the auto industry in North America that it is bad news too for the industry in the US. "He will single-handedly shut down the American auto industry," claims Flavio Volpe, head of Canada's Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association. He told Sky News this tariff will lead to mass job losses among the 500,000 car workers in Canada within "one week". More than a million vehicles are exported from Canada to the US each year - an industry worth tens of billions of dollars. Even though there's not yet a specific tariff on auto parts, companies in Canada are already cutting staff and losing business; fewer car orders, fewer parts needed. Canada may not have been on the billboard of highest tariff countries, but they are left in limbo that things could get worse if it doesn't address what Trump sees as a "massive" amount of fentanyl coming across the border. Such is the turmoil between Canada and the US, that the new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called a snap election for 28 April. The US-Canada relationship is "no longer" reliable, he says - just how these North American neighbours fix it will be front and centre when Canadians head to the polls. :: Adam Parsons, Europe correspondent, in Brussels There will be a response from the European Union - the question is how soon, and how tough. A symbolic reprisal is one choice - putting tariffs on classic American products such as Harley-Davidson motorbikes or bottles of bourbon. That won't damage the European economy, but it won't make much of a difference, either. There's a reluctance to slap wide-ranging, indiscriminate tariffs simply because that would increase costs for many European manufacturers. So something more targeted may look appealing and that could mean going after the tech giants - Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon, for example. Companies who have already had rows with EU regulators and are seen as being, to varying extents, close to the White House. If Europe could specifically target Tesla, it probably would. There are also those suggesting the EU should hold fire for the moment, confident that Trump's tariffs will backfire and keen that the effects are visible. One fear is that some of the cheap goods that were destined for US markets will now be diverted to Europe, flooding its market. Another fear is how the Windsor Framework will be affected, now that there are different US tariffs on either side of the Irish border. And finally there is that insult from the president, who called the European Union "pathetic". A few minutes later, a senior EU diplomat sent me a message saying "the US is Brexiting the world, but you can't stop the march of folly". Transatlantic relations are getting even icier.
