Canada’s electric-vehicle industry has hosted its share of household name talent, from Elon Musk and leading battery expert and Dalhousie University professor Jeff Dahn, to vocal industry advocates like Flavio Volpe, or first-movers like commercial EV manufacturer Lion Electric. 

But the industry—at home and abroad—has never seen anything like the past 18 months: from the construction of Canada’s first gigafactory, to launching the country’s first all-EV plant, to critical mineral investments from major automakers including Ford, Tesla and General Motors.

The rapid changes are minting a new batch of leaders who have seen their stardom rise with the automotive tech industry’s increasing prominence. 

Here’s a look at some of the key players shaping the future of autos in Canada.

The leaders deciding 19,690 autoworkers’ futures

Lana Payne (Unifor), Bev Goodman (Ford)

Ford’s new three-year contract with Unifor, ratified earlier this autumn, will chart Canada’s EV future. At the centre of the deal’s negotiations were Lana Payne, who became Unifor national president in August 2022, and Bev Goodman, who was elevated to president and CEO of Ford Canada in February 2021. 

“I do have a different leadership style, there’s no doubt about that,” Payne told The Logic at the beginning of the year.

The agreement between Ford and Unifor set the pattern for negotiations with GM and Stellantis, where workers recently ratified new agreements.

It’s too early to tell how those deals—which included “the highest wage increases in the history of Canadian auto bargaining,” raising hourly wages nearly 20 per cent for production workers and 25 per cent for trades workers for three years—will compare to U.S. negotiations. There, it required a hard-fought 46-day strike to agree to wage increases of 25 per cent over 4.5 years. The U.S. agreement on compensation also accounts for different issues like employer-based health insurance plans, and more details of the contract won’t be made public until workers ratify it. 

In Canada, the Unifor deal includes protections for workers at plants that will someday be remodelled to make EVs. It determines workers’ fortunes for the next three years, but will ripple through the supply chain—likely prompting non-union automakers to match union wages. Unifor has said it’s also eyeing union drives at battery-material plants in Becancour, Que.

“No matter where you work today, you are coping with a number of economic factors that are completely different today than they were… five years ago, or 10 years ago,” Payne told The Logic in September. “We need to be able to have collective agreements that reflect the moment that we’re in.” 

The up-and-coming battery bosses

Canada and its provinces have budgeted over $30 billion in combined government subsidies to attract battery makers like LG, Volkswagen and Northvolt to build gigafactories. Now, the country needs the talent and supply chain to support them. 

Dan Blondal (Nano One)

B.C.-based Nano One has built out its expertise in lithium-iron-phosphate batteries under CEO Blondal, who led a key acquisition in Quebec last year: Johnson Matthey Battery Materials, the only existing North American lithium-iron-phosphate facility. The company’s unique know-how in iron-based batteries could become more sought after as the battery supply chain expands. Ford, Tesla and at least five other automakers have announced plans to incorporate more iron-based batteries in the future. 

Since 2022, Nano One has raised $10 million from federal cleantech-funding agency Sustainable Development Technology Canada, US$10 million from Rio Tinto and $16.9 million from miner Sumitomo. It’s also moved into a plant that can accommodate 100-times larger batches of battery materials and struck a deal with a (thus far) undisclosed automaker.

“We can own a much more significant part of the upper part of the supply chain,” Blondal told The Logic earlier this year after attending a reception for U.S. President Joe Biden in Ottawa, noting the “generational opportunity” to build the battery supply chain. “Our mandate, as a company, is really to drive that in Canada as much as we can.” 

Ajay Kochhar (Li-Cycle)

Toronto-headquartered battery recycler Li-Cycle has also mounted a rapid expansion in recent years, announcing it will build plants in Norway, France, Italy, Ohio, Arizona, Alabama and New York. The company also clinched a $200-million investment from Glencore and $50 million from LG. But that growth may be facing its first big hurdle as the company tries to rein in escalating construction costs at its key New York hub.

CEO Kochhar will need to lead the company through that transition—a manoeuvre that’s being closely watched by cleantech leaders, as those in the White House and on Parliament Hill seek to encourage domestic battery recycling. 

The critical mineral mavens

Chief Sharleen Gale and Niilo Edwards (First Nations Major Projects Coalition)

When the federal government unveiled its critical-minerals strategy last year, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in a speech he particularly wanted to thank Gale, board chair of the First Nations Major Projects Coalition, for being an “enormously important partner for the government of Canada over the past number of years.” In Gale’s speech that followed, she commended the strategy but pushed the government to “go even further” to ensure that battery-mineral infrastructure proponents approach Indigenous nations at the earliest stages of projects. 

“We know that this energy transition needs an increased supply of critical battery minerals to make it possible. And in Canada, which is a signatory of the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People, that means every new mine and every new battery mineral-processing facility must include meaningful partnerships with impacted Indigenous nations,” Gale said. 

As the emphasis on mining critical minerals for EV batteries has grown, so too has the FNMPC. RBC senior vice-president John Stackhouse described the group as “Canada’s best startup story” at a Canadian Club event this autumn. 

Its portfolio of projects has a total capital cost of over $40 billion, and it has hosted two roundtables on critical minerals to guide government and industry on the issues Indigenous nations face. 

“Our members are also looking for support on producing lithium projects in Ontario, looking at First Nation-led transmission lines to electrify pit gold and silver mines, and ore processing facilities,” Gale told The Logic in an interview, alongside FNMPC CEO Edwards. “They don’t want people coming in and doing it for them. They want to have meaningful participation.” 

The AI auto expert

Raquel Urtasun (Waabi)

Volvo Autonomous Solutions president Nils Jaeger recently said in an interview that Toronto autonomous-vehicle startup Waabi is currently “the shining star” in the self-driving truck technology space. 

Since launching in 2021, CEO Urtasun has nabbed investments from Volvo Group, AI godfather ​​Geoffrey Hinton, and venture capital firms like Khosla Ventures. This fall, the startup announced a deal with Uber Freight to help ship the US$18-billion-worth of freight it manages, and became the first AV company to join the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics’s Supply Chain Exchange.

Urtasun’s resume has helped put the company on the map worldwide. She’s the former chief scientist and head of R&D at Uber’s self-driving car unit, the Advanced Technologies Group, and co-founded the Vector Institute, the Toronto-based research hub that helps facilitate Canada’s commercialization of AI. 

With generative AI gaining greater interest and recognition in the business world, Urtasun is at the forefront of applying it to the automotive industry to better train self-driving vehicles using simulations.

“What you will see in the industry is typically the companies have multiple simulators, not just one canonical big simulator,” she told The Logic last year. “It’s not able to really have the ability to replace real-world driving, because it doesn’t scale. You don’t see how your reactions, how your driving affects everything. You need the whole thing in order to really mimic how the world works.” 

The investor 

Ted Graham (GM Ventures) 

Graham, GM’s head of open innovation who is based at GM’s Canadian Technical Centre, announced last year he would become a principal of the automaker’s venture arm. 

Other big automakers, like BMW i Ventures, are also investing venture capital into Canadian startups. Graham, in particular, has made a string of recent Canadian deals and has a strong presence in the local tech scene.

The author of The Uber of Everything is also an angel investor, mentor at the Toronto-based global science startup program Creative Destruction Lab, and is a board member of Atlantic Canada’s virtual accelerator, Propel. (Graham was also a world-ranked rock-paper-scissors player).

GM Ventures had already backed Montreal computer-vision startup Algolux, which raised an $18.4-million Series B in 2021 before being acquired by Torc Robotics this year. The venture arm has since invested an undisclosed amount in Montreal battery recycler Lithion, and backed Toronto chip company Untether AI. Graham has said he’s on the lookout for more investments, and that the automaker wants to “support advanced technology development right here in Canada.” 

The charger CEO

Louis Tremblay (Flo)

Quebec City-based Flo has been in the EV-charging game for nearly 15 years. It’s grown from about 170 employees at the start of the pandemic, to nearly 600 today—and its extensive network of chargers may be a key piece of infrastructure in Canada’s race to increase EV adoption. 

CEO Tremblay told The Logic the company’s strategy to expand across the U.S. and Canada is to offer small, low-pressure test runs. He credits that strategy to landing big accounts in cities like New York, where the city was impressed with the company’s ability to keep the chargers operational and avoid downtime during 99.9 per cent of the pilot period. 

Flo expanded its manufacturing footprint to the U.S. last year as it prepares to build up to 40,000 chargers for GM. It also recently announced a $235-million investment from Canada Infrastructure Bank to build nearly 1,900 chargers in Canada that will be owned by the company. 

Over the next year or so, Flo is working to expand its business model. Tremblay said he’s prepared to focus more on higher-tech chargers, such as ultra-fast charging. It is also working with WiTricity, a Massachusetts-based startup backed by Toyota and Intel, to test wireless EV charging options. 

“We’re reaching an inflection point on EV adoption,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that Flo has been testing wireless EV charging options.