A 2022 Toyota RAV4 Prime.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
It’s about time to replace my wife’s vehicle, a 2009 Toyota RAV4 that has 260,000 kilometres on it. She likes RAV4s, and she likes the power of the V6 engine in her older model, so we decided to try out the new RAV4 Prime plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), which offers 302 horsepower and an electric range of about 70 kilometres. She rarely drives more than that on any weekday, so she’d use hardly any fuel during the week. And on extended weekend drives, we could just fill up at a gas station. She quickly agreed that it was the vehicle for her.
However, despite Toyota’s claims of national sales, the RAV4 Prime is basically unavailable in Ontario and has been since its introduction in 2020. Our local dealership couldn’t help us.
“We get maybe one or two a year,” the salesperson said. “If I still kept a waiting list, it would be at least four years from now until you might – might – get one.”
I asked Toyota about the availability of the press fleet model I drove and was told there are 20 Toyota employees already on the waiting list for it. Nineteen of those employees will be out of luck.
Part of the problem is that, unlike the conventional RAV4 and its traditional (non-plug-in) hybrid sibling, which are assembled in Ontario, the Prime is assembled in Japan, where it is then distributed around the world. Every country puts in an order for however many vehicles it thinks it can sell and then employees in Japan try to build enough cars. Until recently, the system worked well, but the supply shortages of semiconductors slowed the assembly line and Toyota can only meet a fraction of the international demand. Frankly, it’s not much better for the locally built SUVs, though they require fewer chips. Demand is far outweighing supply.
The next part of the problem is that some regions now impose penalties against automakers that don’t sell enough electric cars as a percentage of their entire fleet. In Quebec, for example, an automaker must sell about 10 per cent of its fleet this year as full battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) and PHEVs, and if it falls short, it must pay a substantial penalty. The proportion rises by 2 per cent each year. Mazda and Subaru, for example, which have arrived late to the EV party, have already paid tens of millions of dollars in fines. It’s a similar story in British Columbia, California and nine other U.S. states.
Consequently, Toyota sends a significant number of the PHEV vehicles it sells in Canada to Quebec and B.C., to ensure it doesn’t have to pay penalties. It’s good business sense. And it’s even better business sense to send more than are needed, because the surplus will earn credits that can be sold to other automakers that fall short: Tesla, which has a 100-per-cent BEV fleet, has already earned billions of dollars from selling credits in the United States.
So why does Toyota even publicize EVs in the rest of Canada? When its new fully electric BZ4X crossover arrives in Canada any day now, do you think any will be sold outside of Quebec and B.C. in the first year?
I wrote to Toyota and asked why the RAV4 Prime was being marketed across Canada when its availability is so limited outside of Quebec and British Columbia? I also asked for a breakdown of sales this year, to show how many RAV4 Primes have been sold in each Canadian region.
Toyota Canada’s manager of product public relations Romaric Lartilleux replied to say, in entirety, “Hi Mark, we don’t have anything to add on this topic at this time. Thank you and have a good weekend.”
I would read from that response that it’s not looking good for any Canadians outside of those two penalizing provinces to be able to buy a Toyota BEV or PHEV within the next year at least, whatever the manufacturer claims. It’s probably not looking good for buyers of electrified Hondas, Mazdas, Subarus or Volkswagens, either. Makers with more experience, such as Tesla, Nissan and Chevrolet, and premium makers that charge higher prices, should have shorter waiting lists, and Hyundai and Kia say they’re supplying EVs more quickly, but if you have your heart set on a particular model, the best thing is to check online forums for the actual experiences of buyers before committing to any purchase.
Don’t just take the word of the salespeople, who want to remain optimistic but are as frustrated as everyone else.
While you’re at it, if you live outside those two provinces, you might lobby your provincial government to begin imposing penalties on automakers who don’t sell enough electric vehicles, to even the field across the country. That should get the attention of the people abroad who decide Canada’s national allocation.
After all, the electric revolution is here. It’s time we all have a fair share at getting one.
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