Wednesday’s report from the financial news site Nikkei Asia that Honda has suspended its plan to build a $15-billion electric vehicle plant in Ontario indefinitely comes as no surprise — particularly not to the federal government, which was told in January, sources say.
The big picture is that Canada’s ambitious gamble to be the locus for North American electric vehicle production has flopped and the battle now is to conserve the assembly plants that are already here.
OTTAWA — Conservatives are blaming the federal government’s electric vehicle strategy after reports that Honda is indefinitely suspending plans for a $15 billion electric vehicle project in Ontario.
Prime Minister Mark Carney acknowledged Wednesday that Canada’s auto sector is facing pressure from U.S. tariffs, though he did not directly address the Honda reports.
Honda is abandoning plans to build a $15-billion EV plant in Ontario because of slumping demand, according to a report by Nikkei, Japan’s leading business publication.
Honda neither confirmed nor denied the report.
“The content of the article was not released by Honda, and we have nothing to report at this time,” the company said in a written statement.
More … The EV Bust Claims Five More Victims… and They Aren’t Even EVs?
Honda’s failed bet on electric vehicles means the Japanese auto giant will have to stretch the lifecycles of five top-selling vehicles “in some cases to more than a decade,” according to a supplier memo seen by Automotive News.
Former Vice President Al Gore is still making climate doom predictions, 20 years after his warnings from An Inconvenient Truth proved false — this time invoking the science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow for a rapt Hollywood audience.
The European Union’s energy policy has reached a level of ideological self-harm that even its harshest critics could scarcely have imagined.
The global economy continues to run overwhelmingly on fossil fuels. Transportation, electricity generation, heavy industry, heating, and plastics production all depend on them.
After decades spent pursuing net zero dreams at great cost to their economies, many of the world’s industrialized nations are waking up. War, geopolitical instability, and the threat of disrupted oil and natural gas supplies have refocused attention on energy security. More and more governments are adjusting accordingly.
Federal departments spent millions installing electric vehicle charging stations across government properties, but usage data shows many of the chargers are rarely used, with some sitting idle and others averaging fewer than one vehicle per day.
Blacklock’s Reporter says records tabled in the House of Commons show Natural Resources Canada could not provide a full breakdown of total spending per charger by location, despite overseeing a large portion of the rollout.
After almost four decades of climate alarmism the so-called “fight” against climate change has failed.
In 1990, the base year for the now long-forgotten Kyoto climate accord that was supposed to be the first step in saving the planet from catastrophic global warming, fossil fuels – oil, coal, natural gas – provided 87.38% of the world’s energy.
“It’s like having a curfew,” says Rose Lelliott, 23. Outside her flat, on a quiet road in Exeter – the sort of place you’d imagine your mother would encourage you to live, were you a young woman moving away from home for the first time – the street lights that once guided her way to the local train station are all either broken, working at half-power, or permanently snuffed out.
Lelliott commutes to London once a week, where she works as a researcher at the House of Commons. To make the train for her 9am start, she has to be out the door by 5.15am, but the streetlamps along her road are turned off between 12.30pm and 5.30am. After 9.30pm, they’re dimmed to just 40 per cent of their usual power.
While there has been little impact on the planet, the United Nations (UN) Earth Summit in 1992 has dramatically impacted the world — carbon dioxide demonized, emission reductions favoured over economic growth, subsidies by Western governments and eroded balance sheets, and individual freedom lost to officious rules.
The increasingly desperate desire of the UN to unilaterally expand its role towards global governance rules is obvious. The “climate crisis” is its chosen pathway to more power.
CERAWeek may not be widely known outside the energy sector, but it should be. Now in its 44th year, this premier global gathering in Houston, Texas, brought together more than 10,000 participants from nearly 90 countries. The conference brought together the most influential figures in industry, policy, technology, finance and government.
When Prime Minister Mark Carney announced he would reduce the Liberal government’s consumer carbon tax to zero, he also promised to introduce a “carbon border adjustment mechanism.”
He described the CBAM as a new government measure to “promote fair competition and improve environmental outcomes” while “supporting Canadian jobs in … energy-intensive, trade-exposed sectors, such as steel, chemicals, cement, and aluminum.”
Cut taxes and cut waste to bring down the cost of gas. That’s the message from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and it’s really too bad his proposal will fall on Mark Carney’s deaf ears.
As gas prices reach for the stars, this is one of Poilievre’s policies that the prime minister should be stealing.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on the government to temporarily pause federal taxes on gas and diesel for the remainder of the year.
Poilievre held a news conference at an Ottawa gas station on Thursday to outline his suggestion, which would temporarily lift the GST and excise tax on diesel and gasoline.
GM supplier Magna is stuck with a plant built to churn out parts for battery-powered pickups; ‘the magnitude of uncertainty is unparalleled’
ST. CLAIR, Mich.—At first, North America’s biggest auto-parts supplier was thrilled to snag the job of making enclosures for the batteries in General Motors’ new electric pickup. The contract was so big—and promised to be for years to come—that Magna International built a new factory in a Michigan cornfield.
Five years later, that million-square-foot plant is mostly empty and losing money, a casualty of America’s messy breakup with electric vehicles. It is one of dozens of now desolate or sparsely used EV parts plants across the country.
Now the war in Iran has driven gas prices up so sharply that EV enthusiasts are daring to wonder whether U.S. car buyers are willing to give the vehicles another look. But Magna and its big Detroit customers are forging ahead with plans to roll back EV investments.
