(Quebec) The price of electric vehicles will “probably” drop thanks to the gradual end of the subsidy program for the purchase of electric vehicles.
This is what the Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, predicted on Wednesday, to justify the abandonment of the Roulez vert program by his government – a program which cost 400 million from last April to January.
He thus suggests that manufacturers could have inflated prices and have “room for maneuver” to reduce them.
In his budget presented the day before, the Minister of Finance, Eric Girard, announced the gradual reduction in the assistance granted, which will go from $7,000 to $4,000 per new electric vehicle, starting on 1er next January, then at $2000 on the 1ster January 2026, until zero in 2027.
“It could have an impact on the price of the model,” argued Mr. Charette during a press scrum in a corridor of parliament, before going to the council of ministers meeting.
“Manufacturers have room to maneuver. As we can see, there are certain manufacturers who, in recent months, have made fairly significant reductions in the price of their vehicles. So this will probably encourage them to continue the declines. »
PHOTO JACQUES BOISSINOT, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Benoit Charette
Like his colleague Mr. Girard the day before, he affirmed that the cost price of the program for each tonne of greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction was “excessively high”.
But he assured that the Roulez vert program was nevertheless a “very, very big success”.
He pledged to invest the money in a program “with more convincing results”.