Ottawa, Ontario — In this weekly electric and autonomous vehicle report, Ford prepares to build battery materials in Becancour—which is basically Canada’s EV battery capital, at this point. Meanwhile, Canadian EV rebates hit record highs and self-driving cars make random stops in San Francisco traffic.
Ford’s new feature
Ford, EcoProBM, and SK On have announced a joint investment of C$1.2 billion to build a cathode manufacturing facility in Bécancour, Quebec.
The facility will produce cathode materials for Ford’s future electric vehicles and will have an annual capacity of up to 45,000 tonnes.
Construction has already begun, and production is expected to start in the first half of 2026.
With SK On’s aim to secure a stable supply of battery materials in North America, the investment aligns with its growth plans in the region. EcoProBM sees the investment as an opportunity to expand its presence in North America and contribute to the local economy.
The project has received support from both the federal and provincial governments in Canada.
Springtime spike
Canada marked a record in the number of EV rebates issued per quarter in Q2 2023, with more than 30,000 rebates delivered to EV purchasers.
That means that, between April and June, 10,000 EV rebates were claimed per month.
“It’s a huge jump,” said a spokesperson for a Clean Energy Canada project at Simon Fraser University in response to the news.
Statistics Canada says 30,533 battery-electric vehicles were registered in Q1 2023; it has not released numbers for Q2 2023. The best quarter for EV registrations, to date, was Q4 2022.
They still get stuck
How about a fun story: American media outlets are having a blast coming up with headlines after a self-driving vehicle found itself stuck in wet concrete last week.
The incident occurred on a construction site in San Francisco. A driverless car, operated by GM’s autonomous division Cruise, was found parked in a pool of freshly poured concrete. Officials and workers on site said it was unclear how the car got there.
“I thought it was funny. I was kind of pleased because it illustrated how creepy and weird the whole thing is to me,” Paul Harvey, a 74-year-old passerby, told the New York Times.
This was the second fiasco for self-driving cars in San Francisco this month; at least 10 driverless cars—also operated by Cruise—came to a sudden halt in the middle of a busy intersection earlier in August. The jam lasted about 20 minutes.
“One of them was stopped at the top of a hill for no apparent reason,” said one witness.
Cruise blamed a lack of bandwidth, largely due to a nearby music festival, for the sudden shutdown.
