Analyzing the driving factors for Electric Vehicle (EV) adoption in Municipal Cities: lessons learned from the world, for application in City of Toronto

In 2021, the City of Toronto updated its climate action plan called TransformTO, in line with its 2040 net-zero goal, that prioritized emissions reductions from four sectors - buildings, energy, transportation and waste. Emission reduction targets were set for each of these. One of the interim targets for the transportation sector is that 30% of the registered vehicles in the city of Toronto should be electric by 2030.  To achieve this target, the city has an Electric Vehicle (EV) strategy but the EV adoption rate in Toronto is not as high as other cities around the world with similar targets. Therefore, for this research paper, an evaluation framework was developed to assess Toronto’s EV strategy based on the factors driving EV adoption among consumers as well the success factors observed in four cities with high EV adoption rate- Shanghai, San Francisco, London and Oslo. The evaluation framework was developed using EV driving factors that were determined from the reviewed literature and a relative level of importance was assigned to these factors in alignment with the interpretation of the literature. Based on the evaluation conducted, the areas for improvement were determined and corresponding recommendations were developed for the City of Toronto in alignment with what was seen as best practices in the Cities that were reviewed.