Tesla is asking Canada’s government to subsidize the pricey infrastructure needed to charge electric trucks, and even to buy land to build charging hubs in areas where real estate is expensive. 

The Texas-based auto company, maker of Canada’s best-selling EV, made the requests in a letter to Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland ahead of the drafting of the 2023 federal budget. Audrey Dépault, Tesla Canada’s senior advisor of public policy and business development, is listed as the author of the letter, which Tesla also sent to the House of Commons finance committee for its pre-budget consultations. “Canada has taken effective action on generating demand and investing in infrastructure but still needs to improve on its supply policy,” Dépault wrote, arguing that Tesla’s suggestions could help the country attract a greater supply of global EV brands and long-range vehicles.

It is the first entry from Tesla in over a decade’s worth of pre-budget consultation submissions archived online. It comes as the federal government faces pressure to match the electric-vehicle sales and manufacturing incentives the U.S. is offering via the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, and as it works toward a goal of having only zero-emissions new passenger vehicles sold in Canada by 2035. Tesla is among the companies the government has courted in its push to create a domestic EV ecosystem, with Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne visiting Tesla’s California facilities in September.

Neither Tesla nor Dépault responded to The Logic’s request for comment. Both Natural Resources Canada and the Finance Department referred questions about the government’s discussions with Tesla to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, which said it had nothing new “on the Tesla front” since Champagne’s California visit.

In the document, Tesla split its recommendations on how it wants the government to support EV charging into two categories—one covering charging infrastructure in big parking lots and garages, and one covering charging infrastructure for short- and long-haul electric trucks. 

Experts said the two types of charging require more expensive electrical upgrades that are hard to muster under Canada’s existing incentives, which could limit the country’s EV ambitions.   

Moe Kabbara, director of electrification at the Transition Accelerator, a non-profit that works with industry and researchers on reaching net zero, said Tesla raises a key issue: how to help Canadian firms that today struggle to make the business case to install EV chargers. 

“In terms of the spirit of the submission, it’s really trying to make sure that we have the right mechanisms to elevate the business case for charging infrastructure, which can be challenging,” Kabbara told The Logic in an interview. 

“If you look at a grocery store and they want to put a charger on their lot, that—right now, given the adoption rates, given the demand charges on the electricity side—presents quite a big challenge for the business case,” he said. “It’s this inherent question, ‘Can these chargers ever be profitable?’ Because we want to balance their vacancy so that people can actually use them and not have to wait 20 minutes to use one.” 

Tesla accounted for 716 of the 8,176 chargers nationwide at Natural Resources Canada’s last tally in June. The federal government expects the country will need to build anywhere from 499,000 to nearly 2.2 million charging ports in multi-residential buildings, and between 442,000 and 469,000 public ports, despite “challenging business models.” To help meet that goal, the fall economic statement promised a 30 per cent tax credit on eligible EV chargers.

Dépault wrote that when it comes to installing chargers at workplaces, “a fixed credit value (rather than, for example, a 30 per cent tax credit) will encourage additional price competition in the market and will likely lead to more charging posts being installed at lower cost to government” and said the flat rate, which it proposed at $850 per stall, be refundable, “given the current economic situation.” 

She said the government should “focus public dollars—including through the Canada Infrastructure Bank’s recently announced $500-million Charging and Hydrogen Refuelling Infrastructure initiative—where the EV charging market is most nascent: in apartments and condominium settings,” proposing a grant that would cover up to 75 per cent of the cost of, for example, installing buildings’ electrical sub-panels rather than funding the charger installations themselves.

“Right now, the majority of EV charging happens at home in a garage. And there are actually millions of Canadians who don’t live in single-unit homes, or they live without garages,” said Ekta Bibra, senior policy advisor for clean transportation at Simon Fraser University’s Clean Energy Canada program.

“This could be a step in the direction of making more equitable access to charging infrastructure and making it more widely available to the public, particularly for those really dense population centres.” 

Tesla’s submission also said high real estate costs are limiting the expansion of fast-chargers in Canada’s biggest cities. Its submission suggested the government buy “two or three parcels of land in each of Canada’s highest-cost real estate markets” to install and operate hubs of 30 to 50 parking stalls. “At the end of the 10-year period, the government would continue to own a significant and well-serviced parcel of land that could be maintained as a charging hub or sold,” the company said. The hubs should be “welcoming to all EV drivers and vehicle brands,” argued the company, which recently said it is “actively working with relevant standards bodies to codify Tesla’s charging connector as a public standard.” 

Adam Thorn, transportation program director of the Pembina Institute, an energy-research group, said it’s one of the more novel requests in Tesla’s submission, but is a model that has been tried out in Europe.

Kabbara said there is growing interest in the EV industry in “mega-chargers” that are fast enough to recharge batteries for larger trucks. However, such chargers require a lot of energy and can be expensive to build, especially out on long stretches of highway, often requiring power substations, he said. 

“It’s not going to be just money that needs to be spent on the [refuelling or recharging] site itself. Sometimes the additional costs from a utility perspective can be quite expensive, and they can impact the business case quite a bit,” Kabbara said.

Tesla isn’t the only company pushing for changes to Canada’s EV charging policies. 

The Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, which represents Stellantis, Ford and General Motors, warned in its pre-budget submission that “Canada will fail to achieve its sales targets if it does not urgently address the well-documented ZEV charging gap,” recommending that “charging stations that trigger the need for a transmission upgrade (transformer) should not be charged to the consumer or business.” The Canadian EV charging startup Flo also made detailed submissions, although it argued that the government should prioritize light-duty EVs rather than heavy-duty, since charging tech for the former is more readily available. 

One thing Tesla didn’t push for—but which Clean Energy Canada and the Pembina Institute said would better support Canada’s EV ambitions—is more robust sales mandates on automakers ahead of 2035. 

Still, said Thorn, Tesla’s requests seem “well organized.” 

“A lot of these recommendations are things that we have seen before,” he said. “They hit on some of the major challenges that we’re seeing across the sector.” 

With files from Murad Hemmadi in Ottawa

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that Tesla’s letter was both addressed to Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and submitted to the House of Commons finance committee.