Chinese EVs Will Soon Come To Canada. How Much Will They Cost?

Popular Chinese EVs expected to arrive in weeks.

CBC Canada discusses the questions How soon will they be here? How much will they cost?

Buckle up! The electric vehicle market in this country is about to take a sharp turn.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is reopening Canada to Chinese-made EVs, lowering a 100 per cent tariff on imports, imposed in 2024, back to six per cent.

There’s demand for more affordable and climate-conscious EVs, and for an average customer, having Chinese EVs in the market means “more choice” and “greater tech,” said Max Morris, sales manager at Shift Electric Vehicles in Burlington, Ont.

How many are coming to Canada?

Up to 49,000 EVs a year from China will be allowed into Canada, initially, which Carney says is less than three per cent of the overall car market.

That will increase to approximately 70,000 over five years.

How soon could they arrive?

Vehicles could arrive at Canadian ports in a matter of weeks, says Addisu Lashitew, an associate professor at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business.

“Chinese EV makers can ramp production and ship quickly, and BYD even operates its own cargo ships that could further shorten transit times,” he said in an email to CBC News. The hurdle, he says, will be regulatory clearance and other compliance steps.

Lashitew says he wouldn’t be surprised if new Chinese EVs arrived as early as March or April.

Will they be cheaper than other EVs?

It depends on the brand and the model, but Chinese EVs can cost $10,000 to $15,000 less than those of similar size and range that are already popular in Canada.

One of BYD’s top sellers, a compact car with a short range known as both the Seagull and the Dolphin Mini, can go for less than $30,000.

Who will sell them?

Right now, there aren’t any branded dealerships for EVs made by Chinese companies.

But with Canada rolling out the welcome mat, those companies could move fast.

BYD has opened dozens of dealerships around Australia since entering its market in mid-2022 — and had sold more than 52,000 vehicles there by the start of this year.

Canada Embraces Asia to Save Auto Heartland Squeezed by US Tariffs

Bloomberg reports Canada Embraces Asia to Save Auto Heartland Squeezed by US Tariffs

Canada’s long relationship with the Detroit automakers has turned fractious after the companies responded to President Donald Trump’s tariff policy by swiftly slashing jobs and production in Ontario. Industry Minister Melanie Joly has threatened to go after GM and Chrysler parent company Stellantis NV for money, accusing them of breaking past promises they made when they accepted government funding.

The companies sometimes called the Detroit Three — GM, Stellantis and Ford Motor Co. — used to dominate the Canadian automotive industry. But last year, they were responsible for just 23% of the cars and light trucks made in the country, according to an Ontario research group, down from 56% a decade ago. Two Japanese giants, Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., are now the firms that matter most.

And inside Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government, there’s a growing belief that if the big US automakers are slowly abandoning Canadian factories, there’s no longer any reason to do them favors.

So Carney and Joly have done two things that would have been unthinkable just 15 months ago, before Trump moved back into the White House and began to say, over and over again, that he no longer wanted the US to buy Canadian-made automobiles. They’ve gone to Beijing to court Chinese investment in the auto sector — opening up the future possibility of Canadian-made BYD or Chery vehicles roaming the streets of Toronto and Montreal. And earlier this month, they introduced a new automotive strategy with a proposed system of import credits.

Canada Adopts Trump’s Tactics

It’s complicated, but the aim is to send a message to automakers: if you want to sell in Canada without paying tariffs, you need to make cars here. That’s a warning shot for companies like General Motors, which has the largest market share, selling about 300,000 cars and trucks in Canada last year. GM brings in most of those models from the US — with the closing of Horne’s plant, it’s down to a single Canadian assembly plant making Chevrolet pickup trucks.

Trump’s willingness to toss out the rules of continental trade has sparked a sense of betrayal among auto workers. Canadian taxpayers shelled out billions to help bail out GM and Chrysler during the global financial crisis and to help fund the retooling and building of plants.

The China Card

When Trump first imposed automotive tariffs last year, Canada was one of the only countries to hit back with matching levies. Carney’s proposed new system would give automakers “import credits” when they make cars in Canada, which can be used to wipe out those tariffs or sold to competing companies. Honda and Toyota, as the two largest manufacturers in the country, stand to benefit the most.

The most controversial part of Canada’s new strategy is to chase investment from Chinese companies that make electric cars, which have been shut out of both Canada and the US by 100% tariffs put in place during the Biden administration. During his January trip to China, Carney also agreed to lower the tariff to around 6% on a small quota of EVs — 49,000 a year — as part of getting China to reduce agricultural tariffs.

The deal has rattled some in the Trump administration, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick warning Canada’s deal with China could jeopardize USMCA talks later this year. Automakers have also cautioned that allowing cheap Chinese EVs into the country could complicate the competitive landscape.

While Canada’s preference would be to maintain its historic partnership with the US in the auto industry, Patrick Brown, the mayor of Brampton, Ontario, said the US needs to realize that a permanent rupture in trading relations will force the country to forge partnerships in Asia instead.

“I have to assume that Chinese automakers, South Korean and Japanese automakers, are sipping champagne right now, watching the chaos that the Trump administration has created,” Brown said of the trade war. “And if those divorce papers actually happen, what other choice does Canada have?”

McMaster University’s Mordue said the tariff agreement with China is unlikely to lead to profound changes in the Canadian automotive landscape on its own. The 49,000 EVs allowed into Canada at a lower tariff rate are less than 3% of its new-vehicle market.

But if Canada wants to have a vibrant automotive sector, it will need an industrial policy that shakes up the status quo, he said. That includes making room for investment from China, which now makes more than 30 million vehicles a year, three times what the US makes. It has also emerged as a global leader in electric vehicle production, building EVs at a much lower cost than its competitors.

“If we keep our horse hitched to the US automakers, our industry will suffer. It’ll suffer because of tariffs and it will suffer because of the increasing irrelevance of the US automakers,” Mordue said. “People don’t want to hear that, but that’s where this is ultimately going over the medium- to longer-term, in the absence of more courageous action.”

Meanwhile Back in the US

Steel tariffs, Aluminum tariffs, and high labor costs make the US the high cost producer.

And EVs are nowhere to be found other than Tesla, and aging dinosaur of a car.

The real tragedy is Trump wanting to rein in China but asinine tariff policy has pushed Canada and the EU closer to China.

Plenty of millennials and zoomers would like a cheap EV. But Trump wants them to buy a truck.

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