On Dec. 1, 2022, the Volkswagen Group came tantalizingly close to naming Canada as home to the automaker’s first North American battery cell plant.
If Ottawa can close out the deal, it would likely be the Canadian auto industry’s biggest coup since the arrival of Honda and Toyota in the 1980s. In fact, Thomas Schmall, VW’s technology chief, named “adequate quantities of energy from renewable sources and competitive financial conditions” as among the key inputs that PowerCo is considering. On these metrics, Quebec holds an edge. Its electricity grid runs almost entirely hydroelectric. For large customers, that power is also the cheapest of any major market in Canada or the United States — $5.33 cents per kilowatt-hour in the Montreal area as of April, according to a HydroQuebec report.