Disconnected: Canada’s Road to EV Adoption Met With Obstacles

Listen to the story:

It’s 5:30 a.m., and Connie Blixhavn and her family are settling in for breakfast at their home in Killarney, Man. – a town 266 km southwest of Winnipeg, near the U.S. border. It’s grain hauling day for the family of farmers. Soon, Blixhavn, her husband, and her son Jeremy, will drive to their farm where Jeremy lives, 27 kilometres southwest.

The sun begins to creep across the prairie sky as the family arrives to the farm. It’s -30 C this morning in southwest Manitoba, but they drive into the fields to start their tractors with confidence. The tractors have been plugged into Jeremy’s F-150 Lightning – Ford’s first electric truck – all night.

Before the truck, the Blixhavns couldn’t charge their tractors overnight. Now, the machines start-up with no hesitation, and the family races to load grain from the bins and be first-in-line to unload.

“There’s a certain timeline to get the grain in, and they’ve got to get going,” said Blixhavn, talking about benefits of going electric. “So, that was another plus that they really hadn’t thought about.”

Blixhavn, age 68, is an advocate for electric vehicle (EV) owners in Manitoba, and a member of the Manitoba Electric Vehicle Association. She purchased the family’s first EV, a Ford Mustang Mach-E, more than three years ago.

One year later, her husband Bruce, 68, decided he wanted to go electric and ordered a brand-new Ford F-150 Lightning.

The day Bruce’s F-150 Lightning arrived at the dealership, their son Jeremy, 46, was in the midst of a 15-hour power-outage at the farm. Jeremy picked up the truck and brought it back to the farm.

Through the truck’s power outlets, Jeremy plugged in his fireplace, internet, coffee maker, fridge, and freezer. Blixhavn said Jeremy ran them until his power came back on. After seven or eight hours, the truck’s battery had only dropped 11 per cent.

“That kind of sold them,” she said. “They lose their hydro a fair bit out on the farm in the wintertime… so that was kind of the sealing deal for him.”

Jeremy’s first encounter with the truck inspired him to purchase an F-150 Lightning of his own. In August of 2024, he became the family’s third EV owner.

The Blixhavn family said they are happy they shifted to EVs, and that it has benefitted the way they farm. It’s also saved them money. Blixhavn said charging her husband’s truck overnight costs roughly $6 per day, a significant drop from the cost of re-fueling at the pump. Blixhavn said her son Jeremy calculated savings of roughly $4,000 in a year.

Southern Manitoba’s EV network continues to grow, and more communities have installed rapid charging stations. But north of Winnipeg’s Perimeter Highway, there aren’t enough charging stations to electrify EV dead zones. Canada has joined many countries across the world to increase EV sales and reduce carbon emissions, but there are obstacles along the road to Electric Avenue.

The global green race

The Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act was enshrined into law in 2021 as part of the Paris Agreement. Canada was one of 195 parties to sign-off on the agreement – a common goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Shortly after, in December of 2022, the federal government introduced the Electric Vehicle Availability Standard, which mandates that by 2035, all new light-duty vehicles must be EVs. This includes EV targets of 20 per cent on new car sales by 2026, and 60 per cent by 2030.

The mandate complements Canada’s 2050 targets. It puts pressure on vehicle manufacturers to prioritize EV production, while helping kickstart reductions in carbon-emissions across the country.

The global temperature has risen nearly 1.5 C since 1976, said a study by Our World in Data – a collaboration between researchers at the University of Oxford and the Global Change Data Lab. EVs have become a target for countries aiming to reduce emissions and lower the global temperature – a goal Canada aligns with.

But the mandates put pressure on Canadian people, businesses, governments, and energy providers. The country’s charging infrastructure does not currently meet the demands of rising EV sales. Meanwhile, electric grids across the country, like Manitoba’s, are working near capacity.

The mandates themselves may change or even be eliminated. But, new EV registrations continue to climb – reaching an all-time high of 18.9 per cent in Q4 of 2024, according to data from Electric Autonomy Canada, an independent media outlet reporting on the EV transition in Canada. As demand and popularity increase, work must be done to support EV ownership across Canada.

---

In Manitoba, zero-emissions vehicles account for only one per cent of new vehicles registered in the province since 2017. Manitoba accounts for 3.7 per cent of the zero-emissions vehicle market share in Canada according to a 2022 report from S&P Global, who provide comprehensive data on the automotive industry. The province’s EV market share ranked ninth among Canada’s 13 provinces and territories. Statistics Canada reported increased EV sales in Manitoba in 2024, rising from 460 registrations in Q1, to 889 in Q4. Still, the climb has been slow, thanks to a few key factors.

Range anxiety

Cold weather and limited access to public charging stations — especially outside of Winnipeg — factor into what EV owners and shoppers call range anxiety.

Most years, Manitoba’s temperature will plummet below -30 C for several weeks. In such conditions, owners say an EV’s drive range can be cut by as much as half, confirmed by a blog post from SaskPower. The battery spends extra energy heating the vehicle, and cold weather slows chemical reactions, making it less efficient.

None of this was enough to stop Dann Bjornson from purchasing his first EV.

“My wife and I had said for a long time our next vehicle we buy is going to be a full EV,” said Bjornson. He and his wife live in the Luxton area of Winnipeg’s North End. In 2022, the couple grew tired of rising gas rates, which pushed them to go electric.

Bjornson bought a pre-owned 2016 Nissan Leaf for roughly $21,000. The battery electric vehicle came with a portable level one charger.

A level one charger is a 110 or 120-volt 15-amp outlet, a three-pronged outlet you would use to plug in an extension cord. It would take Bjornson between 18 and 24 hours to charge his Nissan Leaf from empty. But Bjornson, currently a stay-at-home dad, only uses his EV for smaller commutes, comfortably charging his vehicle from half overnight.

Still, Bjornson said he has developed range anxiety as an EV owner and plans his routes strategically when he drives — especially in the winter.

“I’ll check on Google Maps how many kilometres it’s going to be round trip and then double it to make sure I’m going to have enough,” he said.

Bjornson said it’s not only cold temperatures, but highway driving that can quickly deplete the car’s driving range. Highway speeds demand more power from the battery. Most EVs also use regenerative braking, which restores energy to the battery during deceleration. On the highway, there is much less opportunity to give your battery a boost.

“I’m lucky to make it to Stonewall and back in the summer,” said Bjornson.

Bjornson and his wife own a second, gas-powered vehicle, which they still use for longer, out of town trips.

While range anxiety is more common among people in rural areas, in Killarney, Blixhavn isn’t too concerned about her drive range.

“It’s getting better, and a lot of the dealerships are putting [chargers] in,” she said. “So, that helps, you can always find a place to go.”

In the past few years, Killarney, Treherne, Winkler, Wawanesa, and other communities in Manitoba’s southwestern pocket have installed level three charging stations, making driving much more accessible for EV owners.

Level three charging stations can charge an EV from empty to full in as little as 25 minutes, according to Natural Resources Canada.

“If there’s places that you want to go and they don’t have a reliable charger, then that could be challenging,” Blixhavn said. “But the amount of charging stations that are there now, you can pretty much go anywhere like I said — except up north.”

Dead zones in northern Manitoba

Manitoba’s Provincial Trunk Highway 6 connects Winnipeg to northern Manitoba. While there are several level three charging stations along Provincial Trunk Highway 83 in western Manitoba, there are no level three chargers on Highway 6 beyond Winnipeg’s Perimeter Highway – which connects the city to Manitoba’s northernmost city of Thompson.

ChargeHub, a website and mobile app that connects EV owners to nearby charging stations, said the nearest level three charging station to Thompson is in The Pas, 387 kilometres away. At that distance, not even Blixhavn’s Ford F-150 Lightning would make it in the winter. The nearest charger to Thompson on Highway 6 is a level two charger in Ashern, Man., 578 kilometres away.

“Because of the large land mass that we have, that we call home, range anxiety is a real thing,” said Dany Robidoux, executive director at Eco-West Canada. “It’s a learning experience, and I’d say the majority of folks have not ever had that experience yet.”

Eco-West Canada was founded to assist bilingual municipalities in the province with economic development projects. The organization received $300,000 in federal funding from Natural Resources Canada in 2022 as part of the country’s Zero Emission Vehicle Awareness Initiative, as well as nearly $700,000 in provincial funding in 2023.

Speaking with leaders in Manitoba’s rural communities, Robidoux has noticed not every municipality approaches EVs the same way.

“We have to recognize that not necessarily all rural municipalities are open to the idea of EVs,” Robidoux said. “The electrification of transportation is still a very polarizing topic.”

Even when interested, not all municipalities can afford EV charging stations.

Robidoux said federal funding incentives are in place to help with EV initiatives – which have helped Eco-West to install EV charging stations in Manitoba and Saskatchewan – but federal funding comes with its own obstacles.

“The big challenge oftentimes with federal programs is they’re not necessarily designed for rural communities,” said Robidoux, noting the Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program.

He said to qualify for the program, an applicant needs to confirm they would install 20 level two charging stations, or two level three stations.

“When you start looking at a rural setting, which rural community is willing to install 20 charging stations?” Robidoux said.

Robidoux said they found ways around this by grouping willing municipalities together, dividing the number of EV stations among multiple communities to qualify for funding.

But it’s not just about getting municipalities on board. Eco-West Canada is currently working on a funding application with communities in southeastern Manitoba but only have an eight to ten-week window to apply.

In 2024, the federal program opened July 2, and closed Sept. 19.

“To have all your ducks in a row and ready to go, and all the votes at the council table in order to get approvals and whatnot, is sometimes just not doable right away,” he said.

“It’s very tough to move those yardsticks forward. We’re just now getting to that point that there are some municipalities that are actually doing this and finding cost savings.”

Hills to climb in the prairies

In November 2024, Manitoba Hydro began internal discussions for its own EV charging network as part of its Affordable Energy Plan. Robidoux thinks such an initiative could help expand the EV network into northern Manitoba, but the Crown corporation is fighting its own battle against a dwindling infrastructure and significant debt.

Manitoba Hydro is nearly $25 billion in debt, and said in a 2022 asset-management report it must increase spending by more than $200 million annually to upgrade dated power lines and infrastructure. CBC’s Bartley Kives reported in 2023 that Manitoba Hydro must double or triple its infrastructure to accommodate growing electric demands for a grid that took more than a century to build.

Riley McDonald, media relations specialist at Manitoba Hydro, said they are in the process of exploring an EV network in Manitoba, considering things like wind and solar generation to meet demands on their electric grid, but it’s too soon to say at this point.

“This type of change in demand will affect communities everywhere and we’ll need to take these steps across the province,” said McDonald.

Manitoba is one of Canada’s leaders in renewable energy – sources like wind, solar, and of course, hydroelectricity. However, some provinces still rely on fossil fuels and gas for power, which comes at the expense of reducing carbon emissions.

The Canadian government reports that coal and natural gas made up 81 per cent of power generation in Saskatchewan in 2023, and 82 per cent in Alberta.

A peer-reviewed study by Juan Ignacio Guzmán published Nov. 2022 in the Journal of Cleaner Production said charging an EV battery using fossil fuels does not reduce your carbon footprint.

“There is no real advantage on the electrification of transportation if the necessary commodities to fabricate the vehicles and the electricity to fuel them are not produced in a sustainable way,” the study said. “This confirms that not only can provinces with little renewable energy not significantly reduce carbon emissions, but that a mixed power grid will not give a [BEV] any advantage over an [ICEV].”

The study adds that battery electric vehicles generally demand more carbon than gas powered vehicles when they are not being charged by solar or wind energy.

A 2018 report from Statistics Canada confirms this research, listing various EVs as some of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

A reason these vehicles are listed as some of the most significant CO2 contributors is because of the production of EV batteries which, according to a report from McKinsey & Company, generally produce twice the carbon footprint of a battery for gas powered engines.

In fact, a report from The Harvard Gazette said “the typical non-luxury EV needs to log between 28,069 and 68,160 miles before netting any emissions benefits.” That means 45,000 to 110,000 kms – that numbers is even higher when using fossil fuels to charge your EV.

Takes green to make green

Canada’s commitment to EVs won’t come without some green up front.

To accommodate for the estimated growth in EV sales over the next decade, the federal government said it needs to revamp the country’s electric grid to meet EV charging infrastructure targets – a project they said will cost more than $400 billion.

So far, the Government of Canada has committed more than $60 billion toward the electricity sector to support clean electricity. That leaves more than $340 billion in spending to reach targets.

A report from Electric Autonomy Canada shows as of March 1, 2025, there are 33,767 EV charging ports in the country, a 24 per cent increase from March 2024. Still, roughly 40,000 public charging ports must be installed every year from 2025 through 2040 to meet the projected EV demand, a 2024 report from Natural Resources Canada said.

It’s a jarring stat for Gabriel Friedman, journalist for the Financial Post, who has frequently reported on Canada’s EV charging network.

“We need to do more than we’ve ever done in history in one year, and then do it again next year and the year after — that sounds absurd,” said Friedman. “At the same time, the EVs are selling, so there’s going to be demand for it,” 

 On Jan. 21, the federal government announced funding had run out for its EV rebate of up to $5,000, while some provinces have phased out provincial incentives. This, combined with U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats, has caused alarm for prospective EV shoppers.

Electric Autonomy Canada’s 2024 review said that due to these changes, battery electric vehicle sales dropped 48.3 per cent from Dec. 2024 to Jan. 2025.

Manitoba is one of seven provinces or territories that still offer EV rebates. More reason to buy local, said Dany Robidoux.

“Every time you fill up at the tank, your funds aren’t necessarily staying here, local, they’re going elsewhere,” Robidoux said. “Meanwhile, you’re charging your EV and you’re paying for that service, your funds are staying local.

“In this era of interesting times with our neighbours down south, and the talks of tariffs and whatnot, I think ‘how do we keep more money local?’ is going to become increasingly important.”

---

Members of the G-7, an intergovernmental political and economic forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, agreed to have periodic checkpoints leading up to the shared goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

The first checkpoint comes in 2030 where Canada’s goal is to reduce emissions by 40 per cent below 2005 levels.

In December, Canada’s Net-Zero Advisory Body published their second annual report detailing Canada’s progress.

The report predicts Canada will fall short of its 2030 target but could reduce emissions by 34 to 36 per cent from 2005 levels. As of now, not one G-7 country is expected to achieve their 2030 target.

The report references the Green Future Index, which ranks the progress of 76 nations and territories committed to a “sustainable, low-carbon future.” Canada ranked 6^th in commitments to climate policy, but ranked 45^th in energy transition progress, 51^st in clean innovation, and 57^th in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The 2024 Climate Change Performance Index said that among 63 countries and the European Union, Canada ranked 59^th in a score that factored greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, climate policy, and renewable energy.

The numbers reflect a country with grand ideas that have seen little action.

Still, a CAA survey from January 2025 said nearly nine out of 10 EV owners in Canada plan to buy another EV when the time comes. Among them are Dann Bjornson, who mentioned the safety of his Nissan Leaf when driving with his one-year-old daughter.

“It’s been a super nice vehicle for driving her around,” said Bjornson. “I feel super safe with her in it.”

Still, Bjornson graciously acknowledged not everyone has the means to adopt electric.

“I wish it was for everybody,” said Bjornson. “But it’s not quite there yet.”

EV demand continues to increase in Canada regardless of the country meeting it’s 2035 and 2050 targets. Still, challenges remain, and Canada must expand infrastructure and invest in rural communities to make EV ownership a reality for all Canadians.