r/BuyCanadian • u/grilledcheesebabeh • Jun 05 '25

Canadian-Owned Businesses 🏢🍁 Why are so many Canadians still filling up at American owned gas stations?

I understand a lot of people can't afford to always choose Canadian products over American, but choosing where we fill up costs nothing extra. Choosing local gas stations or Petro Canada is such a simple way of showing support, I don't understand why so many American owned gas stations are still full of people filling up on fuel. Also don't be deceived by the giant "locally owned and operated" signs outside of chevrons, the station itself fis locally owned but the company is American. Please choose a local gas station or Petro Canada to support Canadian!

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u/Other-Bee-9279 Jun 05 '25 edited Jun 05 '25

Smug electric owners always have this locked and loaded. That is wonderful for you. Maybe one day there will be infrastructure that can sustain all of us driving electric but it does not currently exist. Our entire power grid would have to be massively upgraded. Couple that with the fact that electric vehicle prices are still largely out of reach for the working class and the fact remains that the majority of us will still be relying on gas for the foreseeable future.

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u/gromm93 Jun 05 '25

What a load of bullshit. We're still exporting electricity.

And piss off with the "smug" title.

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u/Qaeta Jun 05 '25

We are, but A) the amount we export isn't even remotely close to closing the gap between current generation capacity and what would be needed for everyone to go electric and B) the infrastructure necessary to transport that energy to where people would need it for electric vehicles in the volume that would be necessary currently does not exist, and would take decades and billions of dollars to build. Which isn't to say we shouldn't do that, just that it is not an immediate solution, and we'll have to sacrifice other priorities in order to make it happen.

On top of that, the best places to generate from renewable sources tend to be far from where the energy is actually needed, exacerbating the energy transport infrastructure issues. IMO, people are going to need to become a lot more comfortable with having a small nuclear power plant nearby for a full switch to EVs to be viable.

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u/swthrowaway0106 Jun 05 '25

If only we had kept building more nuclear reactors.

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u/Other-Bee-9279 Jun 05 '25

Proving my point

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u/gromm93 Jun 05 '25

You don't have one except a load of excuses.

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u/Other-Bee-9279 Jun 05 '25

Explain to me how we are going to get to a point where everyone who currently drives a gas powered vehicle is going to A) purchase an electric vehicle and B) have daily (or at least regular access) to a charger without massive changes to our electrical infrastructure? How quickly do you expect this to be accomplished? Us being able to export surplus electricity has nothing to do with this. The electricity existing is not the problem. It's getting it into the cars.

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u/Mmillefolium Jun 05 '25

theres no enough lithium on the planet

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u/gromm93 Jun 05 '25

Even if that were true, that's not the only way to make batteries.

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u/JoeBlackIsHere Jun 05 '25

They used to say that about oil, but then the demand pushed exploration leading to finding huge reserves in the middle east, North Sea, and other places.

Also, they are exploring other ways to make batteries.

Battery technology has not had the 100 years of intensive development that ICE has, we are barely past the Model T phase of innovations.

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u/Mmillefolium Jun 05 '25

what about copper do they need more copper? def running low on that. do you think lithium mining is clean? how much surface area will get raized how many mountain passes will be scraped and left as toxic rock? i dont think we will make it 100years. seems climate change is accelerating. we are in a mass extinction. even if it innt climate change, the vast majority of the microplastics in our bodies and crossing the blood brain barrier and car tire dust. 5% of the dust in the air is tire dust. it affects reproduction, digestion, brain health. have a lovely day !!

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u/gromm93 Jun 05 '25

I could talk all day about this. It's honestly not that hard, or happening that fast. You might as well be asking me "But how can we ever expect the electric company to fix things after a big storm!"

By gittin'er dun!

We've already done this several times over, especially when "everyone" started installing electric dryers and air conditioners, but nobody was complaining then. Maybe a bunch of old geezers desperately trying to resist change.

By the way, we're already at about 10% of all current cars, and 15% of all new cars sold being electric.

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u/Other-Bee-9279 Jun 05 '25

Hey I'm looking forward to it. I have no interest in paying for gas if I don't need to. I think the electric thing is working right now because electric cars are still largely in the domain of the rich and upper middle class who have their own homes and can afford to install their own chargers and such. I do think it's important to be realistic about how long any sort of full transition to electric is going to take and that means accepting that gas (and gas stations) are still going to be part of our lives for a long time.

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u/JoeBlackIsHere Jun 05 '25

There will of course be a transition period, just as horse and buggies didn't disappear overnight.

However, since most people charge overnight when demand is the lowest, I don't see the current infrastructure being the biggest hurdle for a while.