When Matt Pointer, founder and president of the Saskatchewan Electric Vehicle Association, started organizing meet-ups for current and potential EV owners a few years ago, one of the early gathering places was a Canadian Tire parking lot in Regina.

In a province where EVs are still in the early stages of adoption, Canadian Tire—which boomed in the 20th century along with the automobile, catering to car enthusiasts and automotive DIYers—has been notable in its apparent embrace of the technology. “They were early to the table with a lot of electric-vehicle charging infrastructure,” said Pointer, noting the retailer hosted the first Tesla Supercharger in the capital. “They’re one of the charging hubs of the city.” 

The electrification of the auto industry is a once-in-a-century change that analysts expect will affect nearly every aspect of Canadian Tire’s business. It could usher in a new customer base for the nearly century-old company, people who see its shops as pleasant places to spend time while their EVs charge, who look to Canadian Tire to find service technicians and licensed auto parts for EV brands. 

The EV chargers outside the Regina store, and dozens of other locations across the country, are one sign that while the retailer still stocks nearly 300 types of combustion-engine additives, it is looking toward a future where petrolheads may no longer be its core customers. But as Canada aims to make the majority of new-car sales zero emissions by 2030, analysts say there is a long road ahead for Canadian Tire.

“Make no mistake, you’re still just seeing an idea from the marketing department, not store operations. But at the same time, 2030 is approaching,” said Jim Danahy, the Saint John, N.B.-based founder and CEO of the retail consultancy CustomerLab. 

Canadian Tire’s gas bars are crucial to its bottom line. In the third-quarter of 2022, the company’s petroleum business accounted for nearly $615 million of its $3.87 billion in revenue.

In September, the retailer said in a job posting its electric-vehicle deployment team was seeking a business analyst that would look into expansion and investments for its EV strategy to better serve gas-bar customers. The goal, the ad said, is to “be in front of a complex and vastly changing retail industry.” (Canadian Tire did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

The pace of that change has overtaken the retailer’s initial EV plans. When Canadian Tire announced in 2020 that it would add nearly 300 Flo, Electrify Canada and Tesla EV chargers to 90 stores, it was slated to be one of the largest retail networks in the country, building on a 28-charger project in 2016. The company’s substantial real-estate footprint and automotive-industry heritage would help it “evolve” in the EV industry, it said at the time. 

Since then, however, other companies have pledged to build hundreds of chargers of their own. As of its 2021 sustainability report, Canadian Tire had installed almost all 300 of the promised charging stations across 83 locations. As Danahy points out, that’s still a tiny percentage of its 1,710 stores and gas bars.

While some businesses do add fees to EV chargers, many Canadian Tire EV chargers are priced the same as the memberships of the vendors, like Electrify Canada, plus some additional fees for drivers that loiter at the chargepoints. The retailer does not break out any EV-charging revenues in its financial reports.

Another big financial focus for the company at the moment—one that’s also likely to be impacted as the 2035 ZEV sales mandate approaches—is auto parts. 

A note from Desrosiers Automotive Consultants in December found that auto-parts and tire stores saw sales rise 10.8 per cent. BMO Capital Markets analysts upgraded Canadian Tire’s stock to an “outperform” rating on Jan. 31—along with auto-parts makers Magna and Linamar—writing that Canadian Tire has historically traded similarly to auto-parts stocks.

CEO Greg Hicks also emphasized the importance of Canadian Tire’s auto-parts business in a November earnings call.

“We’ve been analyzing our business performance in depth given the intensifying narrative of a looming recession,” he said. “Consumer demand is shifting to our essential-product categories such as tires, automotive parts, plumbing and pet.” 

EVs need less maintenance overall, said Pedro Pacheco, who focuses on the global automotive industry, smart mobility, manufacturing and retail sectors as vice-president of research at Gartner. There is also a long-term trend toward vehicles becoming more computerized, making it harder for DIY-ers and even for independent garages and dealerships to cope with less servicing revenue, he said.

“And if the official dealerships feel a reduction, then the independent aftermarket, no matter who it is going to be—say they’re going to be big-box stores, or some mom-and-pop repair shop, whatever—they’re also going to feel it. No other way around it,” Pacheco said.

He suggests Canadian Tire’s auto-parts retail business will eventually have to focus more on parts that can be DIYed on electric vehicles, like air filters, windshield wipers and so on. Becoming an authorized retailer or technician for a big electric auto brand could also be a good way forward for Canadian Tire, he said. Some parts, like tires, take more wear and tear on EVs, so it could make sense to focus its technicians and parts businesses on those regular maintenance tasks. However, the retailer faces several years of catering to both the larger existing base of users with combustion-engine vehicles and the growing segment of EV owners, he said, so will need to find common denominators.

As it seeks to chart a path forward and draw in sustainability-focused consumers, Pacheco said that Canadian Tire could look to other discount store brands that have aligned their retail operations with EVs: Aldi, which has plans to build 1,500 charging stations in Germany with solar power; or Ikea, which said it will deploy 1,000 chargers in Sweden and has worked with Lion Electric and Bolt Logistics to electrify its Canadian supply chain. Fellow gas-bar chain Couche-Tard already sells at-home charging kits in Europe.

The retailer is trying to show environmentally savvy shoppers it’s thinking green. It’s piloting a hydrogen truck, and in 2021 said it had transitioned almost 20 per cent of its PartSource fleet to plug-in hybrids. It is working to improve its supply-chain efficiency with the Canadian autonomous-trucking company NuPort Robotics, whose CEO Raghavender Sahdev said their project isn’t currently electrified but it does have plans to add fuel-efficiency considerations. Harsh braking and acceleration can drain fuel quicker, but Sahdev said his technology learns the idiosyncrasies of each route to shorten driving time and avoid sudden stops. 

There are other signs that Canadian Tire knows what’s ahead. On the east end of Toronto, the retailer is preparing to remodel one of its stores and put it within a condo building, with an auto-servicing centre in the building’s garage. The plan calls for at least one in every four parking spaces to have EV infrastructure.

Erika McLean, an EV driver on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast, has had positive experiences with Canadian Tire chargers on road trips. She sees an opportunity for an innovative company in Canada—maybe Canadian Tire—to step up and really improve the EV charging experience, with modifcations like vacuums, improved wheelchair accessibility, safe lighting, adaptors, and meters to prevent parking in charging stalls.

McLean’s comments point to a future where simply having a charger available won’t be enough. Many of the chargers Canadian Tire has installed so far have been in communities where there are few other options as Canada struggles to build out its infrastructure. For the likes of Pointer in Regina, those chargers have been a lifeline. Others want the company to do more.

Saskatoon-based Alan Wallace, a Tesla driver and regular Canadian Tire shopper, said his location seems to have less of a commitment to EVs than he’d like. Its two chargers are off to the side near the service areas. He would like to see them placed more visibly at gas bars, so that drivers begin to see they have the “option to fill up with electrons rather than gasoline.” 

Canadian Tire makes “money, obviously, off of repairing internal-combustion cars. I don’t think they’re excited about moving to EVs. … I know that they are putting in the chargers, it just doesn’t look like a very honest or concerted effort,” he said.

“It’s the same old: a reliable store,” he said.  “It’s pretty standard. It hasn’t really changed much in the last 10,15 years—it doesn’t appear that way, anyway.” 

However, Danahy notes that Canadian Tire has made it through a century of changes in the auto industry already.

“They have been evolving with do-it-yourselfers for more than a generation of computerized automobiles,” said Danahy. “EVs are the latest and most dramatic iteration.” 

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Jim Danahy’s name.