Raymond Leury on the State of Worldwide Electric Vehicle Adoption and Canada’s EV Mandate

Raymond Leury several years spent studying pure sciences, focused on chemistry, at the University level. After obtaining a BCom in Management Information Systems and an MBA from U Ottawa, Raymond’s career was focused on strategic consulting and implementing change in the Information Technology space both as an internal specialist and as an external consultant. The combination of a technical and business backgrounds allows Raymond to analyze situations based on factors that run the spectrum from technical feasibility to user acceptance.

Technical feasibility and business feasibility had to be aligned for any project to succeed. Every customer engagement included projects to implement technical changes that in many cases had significant impacts on the stakeholders and their day-to-day jobs. Technology implementations are straightforward. Getting organizations to embrace change is much more challenging.

Raymond retired six years ago from an Information Technology career. Taking Al Gore’s Climate Reality Corps training in 2017 has reignited Raymond passions for the environment and addressing climate change in particular. As President of the Electric Vehicle Council of Ottawa (EVCO), with his team he has spearheaded a number of initiatives including the successful campaign to get OC Transpo to transition to a fully electric bus fleet. Raymond has spent much of his time researching and advocating for EVs of all sizes from light duty to medium and heavy-duty vehicles. Questions about energy and materials required for the electric transition led Raymond to study if and how it would be possible to develop and implement the necessary technology within the confines of the limited resources that we have on our one and only planet.

Since retirement, leveraging skills developed during his career, Raymond has focused on reducing GHGs by driving change in the areas of electrification including the transition to electric transportation.

With the wide availability of inexpensive high energy lithium-ion batteries, the transportation sector has been transitioning away from gas (petrol) and diesel towards electric vehicles. As battery prices have continued to drop, the trend has accelerated driven by favourable economics.

In this presentation, he showed how progress has been uneven because of factors such variability in regulatory regimes, introduction and removal of subsidies as well as misinformation and political forces. He reviewed the state of electrification in various countries as well as the factors driving adoption. He concluded by explaining why the federal sales mandate is critical to driving adoption and make additional recommendations that would further accelerate electric vehicle adoption.