Unfortunately Peugeot and Citroen are not names I’ve ever seen for cars sold here.

I have, of course, heard of both mentioned at some point, but here in Canada, neither seem to be brands we can buy. I’m not sure why that is, I have never felt the need to look into it.

Our major players are GM, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, BMW, Mercedes, VW, Kia, and all their subsidiaries (off the top of my head). Not sure if I missed any major ones there… There is of course some more niche companies but they’re not really on my radar, so to speak… I’ve also omitted Tesla on purpose for obvious reasons.

Hyundai only has hybrid sedans, some plug in hybrid, which is better than most, beyond that we’re stuck with mostly SUVs and light trucks as EVs, or whatever designer-looking monstrosity someone wants to release… The story seems to be the same across all major players, to the point where I just kind of gave up the search a few years back, for the most part. Anything I’ve looked up or looked at since seems to follow the same trends.

My only real personal problems with EVs, have nothing to do with them being electric.

Early EVs all looked like science experiments… I’ll give some examples. The Nissan leaf. The BMW i3. And a more recent example is the VW ID.Buzz mini bus thing.

I want a car, not a statement piece, and until recently, Tesla seemed to be the only ones selling EVs that didn’t look dramatically different than other cars on the road. I just want a car. I want it to use volts instead of gasoline.

The second issue I have has more to do with the automobile market than EVs… Everyone seems to have a sport crossover or SUV converted to EV, but very few have just plain sedans, and those that do, a nontrivial number of them violate the first complaint.

I like EVs, I want to drive an EV, but I don’t want it to look like it’s straight out of someone’s LSD trip. That’s just not groovy man … I’m not a fan of SUVs, I just want a small sedan or coupe that’s normal except it uses batteries instead of Jurassic remains.

With Tesla burning right now (sometimes literally), I’m concerned for the future of EVs.

There are other EV-only makers, most notably in my mind, rivian, but not many others come to mind.

Most other manufacturers have either stopped making EVs entirely, or switched to hybrid, or hybrid adjacent technologies. Honda is a good example of this backpedaling. They dipped their collective toes into EVs with proper hybrid vehicles during the pre-pandemic years. Between 2015 and 2020 (ish) they had a PHEV, the clarity. It was discontinued in 2020. I forget if the last model year was 2019 or 2020. Either way, I still kind of want one… Regardless, they took everything they learned and put it into their fancy new e-CVT, which essentially, at most speeds, turns the gasoline motor of the vehicle into a generator, powering an electric motor that drives the wheels.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s still more efficient than burning the Jurassic forests to drive motion, but it’s not as efficient as running the drive motor from batteries that were charged from green sources.

Most other manufacturers have done something similar in abandoning BEVs for HEVs or whatever Honda is doing. There’s a few stand out exceptions, like the F150 lightening. Good on you Ford… But the list is pretty short, especially compared to the fuel based alternatives.

It’s a good time for other companies to pick up the ball that Tesla dropped here, and I’m hoping they do. … I mean, they won’t because they’re too busy buying yachts with all that fossil fuel bribe money they get, but I can dream.