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"Electric vehicle incentives"
Only cars.
E-bike/micromobility incentives would go WAY farther than anything for cars. The $5000 incentive for one car could outright buy 2-3 ebikes what would have a bigger impact. Alternatively, $500 per e-bike would be ~25% the cost and be able to subsidize 10 times the number of vehicles.
But bike lanes cause traffic congestion, do you really want to slow down all these drivers just so you can leisurely ride a bike?!??!? /s
Yes. I very much enjoy leisurely riding my bike to work instead of turning into an absolute cunt the second I touch a steering wheel.
This is priceless. Thanks for the laugh. 🤣
It's maddening to know that we have no e-bike/e-scooter incentives in Canada, but we'll gladly give people a $5000 rebate to buy an expensive car they don't need.
A car that will cost society far more than it will ever give back.
As of Jan. 10, 2024, $71,817,104 remained
Let's say that this rebate was for a free e-bike or e-scooter up to $2000 (this is expensive, but we'll go with that), $72 million would pay for 36,000 of them!!!!!!!!!!
Could you imagine the societal benefit of having 36,000 fewer cars/SUVs on the road?
Not to mention the hundreds of millions saved on infrastructure costs.
Just so goddamn infuriating to know that we have a better way to improve everyone's lives, but we have to give it up to car companies.
See, where this falls apart is in believing that someone buying a new SUV would buy a scooter instead, if only it was cheaper. Most of them do not want a scooter, or a bicycle, even if it propels itself.
You can't make someone buy asperagus if what they're looking for is chocolate chip cookies.
See, where this falls apart is in believing that someone buying a new SUV would buy a scooter instead, if only it was cheaper. Most of them do not want a scooter, or a bicycle, even if it propels itself.
I disagree, because nearly every cyclist I've ever met are also drivers, and they'd rather bike around the community for errands or to commute, than drive. We nearly all started as drivers first.
But still, e-mobility rebate programs are wildly popular when they are offered.
At the very least, e-mobility rebates make transportation more equitable and accessible, but at a fraction of the cost of subsidizing more cars.
But I do stand corrected. It seems that B.C and the Yukon have offered e-bike rebates in the past.
The one in the Yukon was really popular, and did get people to switch from cars to bikes.
e-Bikes and e-Scooters are already significantly cheaper than even the cheapest new car.
And yet people are still choosing to buy cars.
It’s not the price of a e-bike that is the problem; it’s that you can’t get an e-bike that can haul around a family of 4 and all their “stuff” to grandma’s two cities over in a reasonable amount of time.
You can haul a family of four around town on an e-bike (it's how I do the daycare run in the morning).
Intercity transit SHOULD be easily accessible by train, but we decided we don't do that here.
People also choose cars because of marketing, the built environment which provides them few protected spaces, societal pressures, and decision inertia.
Many multicar families could easily swap a car put with an e-bike.
And the fact that cars are the only viable way to get to grannies 2 cities over, it a terrible indicator that our infrastructure prioritizes cars/car infrastructure/car related profits, through a massive pay wallet that somewhere around 20% of the population over 16 can't even use no matter how much cash they have, and obviously the population under 16 can't use at all.
It isn't a fair choice when a province makes it illegal to build safe bike lanes.
I bet a lot less people would drive year round if it was illegal to have any windows or a roof on a car. A lot less people would drive if there wasn't a road to their destination. A lot less people would drive if we got rid of all modern safety equipment like airbags. Yet we can't encourage people to bike by making places where it is safe to do so without signifcant risk of an SUV running you over.
I put nearly 10 000 km on my e-bike back when I commuted to work; I’m very familiar with the issues around infrastructure, and am more than supportive of infrastructure improvements for cyclists.
But that still doesn’t negate the fact that people want cars. If they wanted an e-bike they’re already significantly cheaper than a car and they could just go out and buy one. Would more people ride them if we had better infrastructure? Maybe — but that’s an infrastructure problem, and not one of having an e-bike rebate.
My bike got stolen recently. I haven't bought another yet because there are no bike lanes to safely bike in my area and I'd otherwise use a bike for trails which i dont typically do in the winter. I have to commute along a 4 lane, 80km/h road with average speeds closer to 100km/h. There is a rough gravelly shoulder and it is a snow bank in the winter. An e bike would turn my 20 minute commte into 40, something i'd be willing to do if the ride was enjoyable and safe, which it is not.
People need somewhere to bike to justify investing in the ebike. Nobody would buy a tesla if it wasn't allowed to drive on the road. Nobdy wants to bike next to 100+km/h traffic injaling tire particles abd listening to a subaru redlining their engine through a needlessly loud exhaust.
Exactly — which is why I think any money that could be put towards an e-bike rebate would be better spent working on infrastructure. Offering a rebate without suitable infrastructure for riding is putting the cart before the horse.
And I’ll tell you — as a former e-bike rider^0, I’d much rather share the road with EVs than gas and diesel vehicles. EV rebates benefit cyclists and pedestrians too. California has seen a measurable drop in fine particulate matter and ozone pollution thanks to EVs. Noise pollution is also reduced. EVs running alongside good cycling infrastructure is a win for everyone.
[0] — e-biked 10km each way too and from work for about 3 years; stopped about 14 years ago because I’ve been 100% work-from-home since that time.
People know what they are getting when they buy a car, so there's no leap of faith getting one.
That's not true with ebikes or escooters when you've never used one before.
When e-mobility rebate programs come up (like in the states), the available rebates disappear faster than Taylor Swift concert tickets!
Cue my friends moaning about how the gov't wont give them thousands of dollars of free money to buy a tesla
Meanwhile, where's my free money for never contributing to gridlock, never causing potholes, never polluting the environment, etc.?
Automotive pollution causes thousands of excess deaths every year. It is also linked to a number of negative health outcomes, and has a correlation to autism in children.
Used EV parts have the possibility of really transforming our society — EV batteries that are no longer suitable for transportation can still hold enough charge to power a home for a day or two; couple that with used EV motors which can generate electricity, and each EV that can no longer be driven is effectively a cheap and ready power plant that can power a home or office, or can help provide grid-scale storage on the cheap.
Everyone is going to benefit from a (near) fully EV world.
Where's the federal ebike subsidy then?
E-bikes are already cheaper than even the cheapest new car. If people want an e-bike instead of a car it’s already affordable. Having a Federal Rebate isn’t going to move any more e-bikes, and isn’t going to convince more than a handful of people to stop driving and cycle instead.
The end result will simply be that we would still have too many gas-guzzlers on the road spewing CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere (right next to bike lanes, where cyclists have to breathe that crap in). The CO2 reductions for the cost would be significantly less than incentivizing EV sales. The current incentives are supposed to help reduce the cost of EVs so they are comparable in price to the gas guzzlers; e-bikes don’t need an incentive as they’re already pretty cheap.
Governments would do better by investing in better cycling infrastructure than providing a rebate for something most people won’t use anyway.
How exactly does an EV become a power plant? If EVs were power plants they wouldn't need charging stations or to be plugged in over night.
The motors in EVs are designed to also provide regenerative services — the charge you put into the battery gets extended by having all “breaking” re-generate power in the battery. So if you’re in a situation where you’re driving down a mountain, you can wind up in a situation where you’re can have more charge when you get to the bottom as you had at the top.
(This is a problem EVs actually have to design around — they’ll turn off the regenerative breaking if your battery is at 100% so you don’t risk overcharging it driving down a long, steep decline).
When removed from the car, you can use the motors like this in a permanent installation. Anything that provides rotational power can then be used to generate electricity — a wind turbine, a water wheel, steam, 2 thousand hamsters — whatever you have on hand. Use that power to turn the motor, and you get electricity out the other end.
These systems aren’t passive, so an EV sitting in a parking lot isn’t going to generate electricity. You need movement from an external source to turn the motors to get power out.
The motors in EVs are designed to also provide regenerative services
Just a point of...not really correction... additional detail?
Any electric motor is capable of generating electricity. It's about whether the motor is doing work, spinning through electrical input, or if it's being spun by an outside force. This is why you can repurpose an old washing machine into an actually useful hydroelectric generator. The only difference between an electric motor in a washing machine and an EV is power output in terms of torque and speed, there's been some efficiency gains (not really an amazing innovation as there just really wasn't much need in prior typical applications) and finally the fact that they're wired to also generate power while breaking (aka regenerative breaking).
Other than that bit of extra on top, very well explained. 👍
Thanks for adding that — yes, you can do this with any electric motor; EV motors have simply been optimized for this purpose, and can generate power in the kW range. They have the necessary wiring for handling high voltage, along with built-in cooling tubing/conduits.
They’re as close to a drop-in-and-spin electrical generator as you can get. And unlike gas engines they don’t really ever wear out — so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see these become highly available and pretty inexpensive as EV uptake continues to increase, and as we finally start seeing huge numbers of current EVs being taken off the roads due to age in 15 years or so.
Yes this was my understanding. I could see some DIY people making it work but I doubt we would see a massive scale industry around re using the motors. The amount of work and refurbishment coupled with relatively low power productions would make it hard to keep economically viable i think. People would worry the used motors would wear out prematurely when investing in their own power supply. Unlike something like solar, the motor needs rotational force, where as solar almost always makes at least some energy in the day even if cloudy.
Used EV cells are already starting to find use in industry. In Japan, Nissan resells pairs of used Leaf batteries that pass their testing inside an inverter pack that can provide emergency power or as a generator replacement. On top of that, they have repurposed 16 Leaf EV batteries to provide backup for and smooth out fluctuations from a solar power array in Japan. And Canada’s own Moment Energy specializes in building grid-scale storage from used EV batteries.
Work in this area is admittedly low right now — but mostly because in the 15 years since the first readily available commercial EVs started shipping, the vast bulk of them are still on the road today. So EV battery supply is pretty low right now (I’d imagine mostly being from EVs that have been in accidents which haven’t affected the battery itself). But with EV adoption increasing that supply will also increase, albeit with a 15 - 20 year lag.
And the motors don’t really ever wear out. I have no doubt some company out there will start using them for small-ish wind turbines once a reliable second hand supply is available. I agree for now that’s most likely to be in the domain of hobbies to, but if it becomes easy to source hundreds of EV motors cheaply that I don’t see why they wouldn’t be used to create small, and relatively inexpensive power stations for remote communities.
The possibilities are pretty huge here. On top of that, once these second-life uses for EV batteries and motors have finally exhausted their usefulness, they’re 95+% recyclable into new battery packs and motors, allowing the cycle to begin anew. It’s pretty exciting stuff — which is why I’m hopeful long term that the Canadian governments investments into both mineral mining and battery production pay off — EVs are just the tip of that iceberg.
As I alluded to in a comment just a moment ago, there's actually a really vibrant community/cottage industry world wide taking the motor and the internal drum from old washing machines and turning them into hydroelectric plants, capable of powering off grid homes quite effectively for as much of the year as the water is flowing in the area.
I could absolutely see what OP was theorising happening with only a little bit of government support. The motors and batteries could easily be sold on as part of a kit, and the rest of the car recycled where possible.
Yoink the motor out of an old otherwise-scrap EV and diy a wind turbine
Your free money is also in the Tesla.
"Tee hee, I guess if you want more funding you'll have to elect us again! Tee hee!"
Yeah, they announced Friday there was almost 72M left in the fund, so apparently they sold 16K cars this weekend and ran it dry. Except with the cancellation today, dealerships are being told that unless the car was delivered before the announcement, those people aren't getting the credit. Since you usually don't drive away in your car on the day you buy it, it sounds like lots of awkward calls are going out today. TC says they will dole out the remainder on a first come first serve basis, so some may get ot and others won't. I wonder what happens to the money for those who still go through with their weekend purchase without the bonus. Huge windfall for the dealers when they get the rebate and don't tell their customers?
Like all of the comments about much smaller emobility support.
A $300/ton carbon tax ($3/gallon gasoline), is the right amount. Cost of air capture of CO2 claims objectives below this. But there are far better options to reduce emissions instead, such as wind and solar. It is also enough to provide a $4000/year rebate to every Canadian just from average vehicle oil use.
The argument for dropping these incentives is that it has run out of budget. Carbon tax and dividend is a zero budget program. It is almost as much as the EV incentive, but you can support local transit/trains more, micromobility, and moving closer to work/travel destinations. Home energy is also a tax/dividend source, and dividend becomes large enough to invest in saving "taxes".
With a $4-5k carbon dividend, you can also replace budgets for welfare/homeless programs to boost dividend/UBI by another $3k and solve homelessness, and work disincentives for those on welfare. Much higher "total" UBI becomes much more affordable, and empowering to people to make incentivized climate decisions, live without crime and divisiveness promoting hate.
Already got one but ok. My wife wants one too.