By James R. Coggins

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Opinion: Have you ever tried to pull a camper with an electric truck? Back to video

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When the Trudeau government announced its electric vehicle mandate in 2021, it left no room for equivocation: “By 2035, all new cars and passenger trucks that are sold must be zero-emission.” It repeated this claim late last year when the necessary regulations were finally released by Ottawa: “At least 20 per cent of new vehicles sold in Canada will be zero emission by 2026, at least 60 per cent by 2030, and 100 per cent by 2035.”

Despite all the certainty, however, it’s simply not true. All new passenger vehicles sold in Canada will not be zero emission by 2035. And that’s because electric trucks are terrible at doing the sorts of things people expect trucks to do.

The legal details of Canada’s planned switch to electric vehicles (EVs) were released on New Year’s Eve (not a date typically associated with government announcements) and include a cost/benefit analysis. Total consumer costs are estimated at $24.4 billion between 2026 and 2050 due to the higher price of EVs over gas-powered cars and trucks, plus necessary home chargers. On the other side of the ledger, Ottawa predicts switching to EVs will save Canadians $33.9 billion in energy costs as well as an estimated $19.2 billion in health benefits. This yields a supposed net benefit to Canadians of $28.6 billion.

However, many significant costs are excluded from this analysis. It does not include, for example, the billions of dollars in government subsidies already spent and which taxpayers will have to pay, the installation costs faced by homeowners who must now buy home chargers, business expenses arising from the switch or the monumental cost of the extra generating capacity that will be required. Also ignored is the fact electric trucks aren’t very useful at towing or hauling.

The ample torque and horsepower of electric sports cars like the Tesla may make them wonders of acceleration and handling. But people buy pickup trucks for their ability to pull and carry, not zip around in Insane Mode. And relying on battery power is a serious impediment to these core functions.

Last year Car and Driver reviewed the towing capacity of three high-end light-duty electric trucks — GMC Hummer EV, Rivian R1T and Ford F-150 Lightning. “The range for all three trucks when towing was less than half as far as when cruising lightly loaded,” the report concluded. The Ford’s range shrank from 480 km to a mere 160 km when pulling a 29-foot, 6,100-pound camper around the magazine’s test track.

An equivalent problem arises with payload: the amount a truck can carry in its bed. According to Kelley Blue Book, the Ford F-150 Lightning Extended Range model has a maximum payload of just 1,800 pounds due to the enormous weight of its batteries. A gasoline-powered F-150 can carry 3,325 pounds.

Any truck owner who wants to pull a trailer or haul a heavy load thus faces the daunting twin challenges of reduced range and reduced payload when forced to go electric. Taking your boat to the cottage could mean stopping every hour or two for a half-hour recharge — if you can get a spot at the recharging station during cottage season. Putting a dollar value on electric trucks’ flaccid towing abilities would lead to a staggering $66 billion in extra costs and flip the federal cost/benefit analysis from net positive to net negative.

Taken at face value, the federal government’s claim that every passenger car and truck sold in Canada must be zero-emission by 2035 would mean the practical end to trailering in Canada, and quite possibly an uprising among Canadian truck owners and rural drivers.

To solve this massive problem, the Liberals have quietly fiddled with their own definition of “zero-emission.” According to the new regulations, truck owners will now be allowed to buy plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV). PHEVs have an internal combustion engine in tandem with a battery-powered motor; this substantially reduces range concerns, although it increases price and does little for payload capacity. Most significantly, given the Liberals’ penchant for virtue signaling, PHEVs are definitely not zero-emission. With this compromise, Ottawa is admitting there are some things battery-powered vehicles simply can’t do.

But even this cop-out is not a total solution. Under Ottawa’s new rules, PHEV sales are capped at 20 per cent of all vehicle sales from 2028 on. As these will be the only trucks with any reasonable towing capability, demand will likely be high. And this will presumably push their cost up even further. As a result, recreational drivers who simply want to pull a camping trailer a few times a year are likely to find themselves priced out of the market as they compete with contractors, tradespeople, landscaping companies and anyone else who requires a functional truck for their livelihood.

The Liberals’ EV revolution is about to put an end to the ability of Canadians to haul their troubles away.

James R. Coggins is a writer, editor and historian based in Chilliwack, B.C. A longer version of this story first appeared in C2CJournal.ca.