In an exclusive video interview, APMA CTO Colin Singh Dhillon explains how the all-Canadian concept EV project is unfolding — with three finalists selected — as a proving ground for Canada’s domestic battery and EV supply chain

Canada is sitting on a veritable gold mine of opportunity in the electric vehicle supply chain space, says Colin Singh Dhillon, chief technical officer for the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association — with Project Arrow poised to help bring that potential to life.

In a feature interview with Electric Autonomy Canada about Project Arrow, Dhillon links its goals to the findings in a draft report titled From Mines to Mobility: Seizing Opportunities for Canada in the Global Battery Value Chain. Produced by the Canadian government in consultation with industry, this report states that Canada has all of the minerals and metals required to produce advanced batteries within its borders and that attracting EV assembly operations to Canada is key to fuelling the growth of a domestic battery industry.

“[The report] really highlights how Canada has always been positioned to offer a complete supply chain when it comes to electric vehicles, whether we’re talking hydrogen fuel cell or whether we’re talking lithium-ion battery technology,” Dhillon says. “We, from a core minerals standpoint, are probably even better suited than a place like China, who have already hundreds of brand-new start-up OEMs.”

Connecting government, academia and industry

Highlighting the scope of these opportunities is the reason the APMA launched Project Arrow in January. The four-phase initiative aims to connect all corners of Canadian government, academia and industry to accelerate development of Canada’s supply chain infrastructure by developing a zero-emission concept vehicle built entirely in Canada.

“It’s answering the call from the Prime Minister to have Canada work towards a zero-emissions footprint by 2040,” Dhillon says. “We feel that Canada, [which] has a history of over 115 years of building some of the best automotive vehicles here on our land, and also over the past decade or so this great new movement for technology … we see an auto and a tech overlap, which creates the right environment for zero-emission vehicles. Project Arrow will be a lightning point for that.”

Phase 1, a design competition and selection, concludes this fall, followed by the release of engineering specifications and a supplier RFP for Phase 2.

This week, the APMA announced the three design finalists. The concept names and their creators are as follows:

Sea to Sky Electric’s E-Nova: Proposal submitted by Marie-Pier Alary and Bailee van Rikxoort, Wilson School of Design at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Richmond, B.C.
Archer: Proposal submitted by Stephen Bykowy, Humber College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning in Toronto
Traction: Proposal submitted by Kaj Hallgrimsson, Jun-Won Kim, Mina Morcos and Matthew Schuetz at Carleton University in Ottawa

To watch the interview in its entirety, use the embedded viewer above.