A new automaker has entered Canada’s electric vehicle market giving some consumers looking to purchase a new vehicle more options.
Lotus, owned by the Chinese Geely Group, recently shipped its first Eletre EVs to Canada under a Canada-China deal signed in January. The premium SUV, made in Wuhan, is the first Chinese-owned and Chinese-built EV available for sale in Canada. The high-end vehicle starts at $119,000, while the fully loaded model sells for $159,000.
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Chinese companies BYD and Chery are also expected to enter the Canadian market in the coming months. [managing director & publisher of Automotive News Canada Tim] Dimopoulos says those companies will likely begin by importing high-end luxury models that offer dealers higher profit margins and appeal to a niche market.
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Buy at your own risk
Intelligence and cybersecurity experts have repeatedly raised concerns with the Chinese-made vehicles citing significant national security and privacy concerns. Experts consider the EVs smartphones on wheels. The experts say their concerns stem from laws in China that require Chinese companies, especially those with some degree of state ownership, to hand over data if requested.
Jody Thomas, Canada’s former National Security and Intelligence Advisor to prime minister Justin Trudeau, said that by law the Chinese state has access to any data gathered by the EVs.
“It doesn’t mean they will access the data, but it means they can, should they choose to,” she said. “The risk at this point is more a plausible risk.”
Thomas says data like routes, cell phone contacts, driving patterns, phone conversations, and recordings from your car’s camera, all provide information about a driver.
“At sort of the base level, it’s a privacy issue, but broader than that, it becomes a potential for espionage when you aggregate the data, when you look at it as more than just the individual driver.”
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Thomas says consumers need to consider these potential risks when purchasing a Chinese made EV and potentially mitigate the risk by choosing to avoid connecting a work device to their vehicle.
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Why not issue the same warning against anything and everything USA?
Meta, Google, Apple, all capable and willing to hand over all the same data to the US gov’t.
Probably the only difference is that the Chinese companies don’t share their data (as readily or at all) with the Canadian government.
Yeah, but at least the Chinese cars are cheaper, right? Right?
The low-end Chinese vehicles are cheaper. These are not them, and I don’t expect we’ll be seeing them this year. So what?
And the Chinese data is probably better protected from everyone except the Chinese government than the American data is. So I’d bet that the Chinese government has the data collected by American cars too, if they’ve decided they want it—they just aren’t the only people who’ve got it.
The american companies tend to sell a lot of the data on the open markets via sketchy “data brokers” so China can just buy it.
Don’t get this. I see them not handing it over as a good thing.
Chinese cars are cheaper. Cope harder.
What’s the price of a American or European luxury brand EV? You lead with price because you know that’d the actual argument provide no comparison.
Sinophobia
Yeah, but if you hand it to the Chinese instead, then Canada doesn’t get access to it via 5-eyes.
Buy at your own risk
At $100k+, that’s not going to be an issue for me.
The financial risk is greater than the data risk
What a bunch of bullshit. All this feet mongering abbot data collection. But it is no different hen america and no theory about it. Microsoft has said if the US asks for data from another region they have to comply no matter what the law of the other region says. But everybody skips over that cause america good i guess.
…that’s also a privacy nightmare. You’re comment is just whataboutism that doesn’t actually engage with the critique.
That doesn’t make them wrong though, it seems kind of glaring.
These vehicles seem completely out of reach for most Canadians, meanwhile cars that are in reach are already doing all the same data collection, and just sending it to American companies. Most important they are already here and being used.
It’s like saying hey these things have this possible issue while ignoring the issue being endemic.
mmmm feet mongering 🤤
Not familiar with hen america though, only know north and south america. And yes, Abbott does collect data.
I really wish these people would care about these same things when Americans do it.
Are we surprised that a Lotus (a luxury brand sports car on par with a Ferrari) is selling for a high amount of money?
For comparison, estimates of a BYD range from 25k - 33k.
CP24 and Scotty really bringing out the sinophobia and hoping the audience is stupid enough not to get into the details.
It’s not sinophobic, if the goal is cheaper EVs and there is a limit on the amount brought in then why are we wasting import slots on luxury vehicles?
I think it’s best if we clear some things up and expand a bit on what the actual agreement says. Because CP24 is a rage bait agenda driven circus.
The primary goal of the agreement is not about cheaper EVs unfortunately. If it was, then there wouldn’t be a limit to begin with. The average EV from China just happens to be cheaper than other EVs. But this is Carney’s agreement and he doesn’t do things for the poors. He does things for the corporations and politics.
Yes, there’s a limit, but the details of the agreement matter:
Under the deal announced last Friday, Canada will allow up to 49,000 vehicles to be imported annually from China with a tariff of 6.1 per cent on most-favoured nation terms.
under one clause in the agreement, half of the quota will be reserved for vehicles under $35,000. Tesla model prices are all above that number.
So 24.5k imported are priced below 35,000 CAD.
24.5k imported are above that.
(You can already see how this deal’s primary goal is not about cheaper EVs).
Teslas shipped from Shanghai have eaten into the majority of the quota that come above that price point.
From the article in OPs post here:
The CEO of Lotus Cars Americas, Max Trantini, says orders for the SUV…have been high.
He says the first shipment of nearly 20 [Lotus] cars has already arrived, with more imports expected as the cars hit dealership showrooms and city roads.
US companies (Tesla and Lotus US) are shipping their China-produced EVs to Canada.
So CP24 is trying to make flashy headlines about 20 luxury EV cars and their prices while admitting in their article that there is demand for them? Not to mention that it’s Lotus US that already has existing dealerships in Canada, not a new entrant.
And then fear monger about data-privacy issues, when ignoring pretty much every other car manufacturers existing and glaring data-privacy issues AND ignoring the security flaws of all current vehicles - but it wasn’t a concern before, but it is now because “China”.
From hands-free systems to tire-pressure data, a new field known as CARINT turns vehicles into powerful intelligence tools
Israeli companies have developed and are selling advanced cyber tools that can hack into the tech of your car
Mozilla’s latest edition of *Privacy Not Included reveals how 25 major car brands collect and share deeply personal data, including sexual activity, facial expressions, and genetic and health information
https://cybernews.com/privacy/mozilla-cars-track-sexual-activity-sell-data/
Edited: grammar
It’s totally sinophobic (all new cars are spying cars, being afraid of Chinese spying cars without pointing out the other spying cars ig ores the facts). Agree on your second point though
Where is all that ‘let-Chinese-cars-in-because-they-are-cheap’ hype going? Wasn’t price the reason for the propaganda machine in Canada? Doesn’t Canada need affordable cars anymore?
See my other response:
Intelligence and cybersecurity experts have repeatedly raised concerns with the Chinese-made vehicles citing significant national security and privacy concerns. Experts consider the EVs smartphones on wheels.
That’s amusing because >90% of us are walking around with smartphones made in China. And definitely a bunch of us are running TikTok on it… so, just one more Chinese item in our lives.
I just want an EV that’s not a potato shaped SUV. Imagine buying a Lotus and getting one of those.
For comparison: The new vehicle average transaction price (ATP) in Canada in May was $49,220, down slightly from April and up 1.2% year-on-year.
What’s the average price of every market segment? You really are a propagandist.
You can look it up yourself. The average ATP is well below 100k in each market segment.
The Chinese EVs that were celebrated as ‘cheap’ are now filling the luxury market. The almost ironic bit here is that this was known and intended, particularly by the Chinese side of the Canada-China deal.
In addition, we must note that most of the China-made cars in Canada now are Tesla, from the company’s factory in Shanghai. And it will be Tesla that crabs the majority of the first batch of 24,500 cars coming to Canada from China. That’s half of the entire deal.
Btw, China-made Teslas in Canada have a price of slightly more than 40,000.
All this so-called deal is a joke, but propagandists like you will continue to celebrate cheap Chinese cars.
The average ATP is well below 100k in each market segment.
The Chinese EVs that were celebrated as ‘cheap’ are now filling the luxury market.
We’re not getting the cheap models, only the luxury models.
What’s the ATP of the market segment the luxury chinese models are selling into?
In addition, we must note that most of the China-made cars in Canada now are Tesla
All this so-called deal is a joke, but propagandists like you will continue to celebrate cheap Chinese cars.
Can you show the MSRP of BYD cars in Brazil, and ASEAN countries as being above $100k?
