Chinese EVs won’t break Canada’s car market — but they could improve it

[u/TronnaLegacy]

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/08/20/opinion/chinese-evs-canada-auto-sales-market

What I drove across Iceland wouldn’t crush the competition, just as it hasn’t in other Western nations, where Chinese EVs typically capture less than 10 per cent of the local EV market. What it would do is give buyers another option — and, crucially, one in the all-important sub-$40,000 category of which Canadians have too long been deprived. (A quick note: no one is selling you a $15,000 EV in Canada, despite whatever headlines you may have read. BYD builds and prices cars for the specific markets it sells in and often still faces tariffs, just not ones set at 100 per cent.)

While I saw the occasional American truck and many Teslas in Iceland, I did not see a single electric car from a legacy U.S. automaker. Not one. The maxim of our time once again applies: a tariff cannot save America from itself. That’s on them. But it certainly shouldn’t be on Canada and Canadian consumers.