Methodology

Where these numbers come from.

Every number on EV Index is sourced from public open data. This page lays out who publishes what, how often, and how we stitch it together.

Adoption data sources

The open datasets behind the maps and city pages.

Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO)EV registrations

Quarterly "Electric Vehicles in Ontario by FSA" dataset published on data.ontario.ca. Counts of battery EVs (BEV) and plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEV) registered to each Forward Sortation Area. New quarter typically lands within a few weeks of quarter close. We backfill historical quarters going back to Q1 2022.

Statistics Canada: 2021 Census ProfileDemographics

Population, household count, median household income, and dwelling-type breakdown. Sourced at the Census Subdivision level (CSD = municipality) for the city-page tiles, and at the FSA level for the postal-area choropleth and scatter analyses.

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)Charging stations

Active public charging stations across Ontario, with per-station install date. 99.9% of Ontario stations have an install date on file, which powers the charger growth chart.

Calculator data sources

What the savings calculator pulls in.

NRCan Fuel Consumption RatingsFuel economy

Fuel economy comes from the NRCan Fuel Consumption Ratings (Open Government Portal). Combined city + highway L/100 km (ICE) and kWh/100 km (EV), per-class means calculated across the most recent three model years.

Ontario Energy Board (OEB)Home electricity rates

Regulated Price Plan schedules for time-of-use, Ultra-Low Overnight, and Tiered. Set annually by the OEB on November 1. The calculator surfaces the off-peak rate for TOU, the overnight rate for ULO, and the Tier-2 rate for Tiered (the rate the marginal kWh of overnight EV charging will hit).

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)Public charging rates

The same NRCan public charger registry that backs the adoption-side charger counts also carries per-station price strings for some Ontario stations. We aggregate the per-kWh figures into a representative rate for each charging level (Level 2 and DC fast).

Statistics Canada table 18-10-0001Gas prices

Monthly retail prices for regular unleaded at self-service, by Canadian census metropolitan area. We average the three most recent monthly readings across Ontario CMAs to get a 3-CMA mean, refreshed within a week of each StatCan release.

Argonne National Laboratory AFLEET 2024Maintenance cost

Year-1 base $/mi by MOVES vehicle class × fuel type, plus AFLEET's year-N cost curve (cost roughly doubles by year 5) and a 2.3% annual inflation adjustment. Values are converted from USD/mi to CAD ¢/km at a fixed 1.37 USD→CAD rate.

Toronto Atmospheric Fund · 2024 GTHA Carbon Emissions InventoryGrid emissions

Ontario's 2024 grid carbon intensity of 73.8 gCO2eq/kWh, citing the IESO 2025 Annual Planning Outlook. Combined with a 2.31 kg CO2/L gasoline factor (Environment and Climate Change Canada's National Inventory Report) to compute tailpipe-equivalent CO2 avoided.

Calculations

What the numbers mean.

Adoption %

EVs registered in an area divided by the 2021 census household count for that area. Households is the denominator everywhere on the site, never population, because EV registrations track to a residential address rather than a person.

EVs per station

Active EVs in the area divided by the count of active public charging stations. A capacity measure: lower means more breathing room per driver.

BEV share

Battery-only EVs (BEV) divided by all EVs (BEV + PHEV). A signal of how committed an area is to fully electric over plug-in hybrid.

Year over year

Latest-quarter EV count minus the same quarter one year prior, divided by the prior year value. Quarters align by month (e.g. Q1 2026 vs Q1 2025).

Doubling time

How long the cumulative EV count took to most recently double, ending at the latest quarter. Computed by finding the most recent quarter where the count was at or below half of today's value, then linearly interpolating between that quarter and the next to estimate the exact crossing point. A measure of current growth velocity that doesn't get anchored to the start of the data series.

Ontario rank

The area's position in a descending sort of all postal-area EV counts in Ontario. Quoted as a percentile bucket (e.g. "top 13%") and as an absolute rank (#70 of 594).

Geography

How postal areas map to cities.

MTO publishes EV data at the Forward Sortation Area (FSA) level, but most users think in cities. We compute the spatial overlap between every FSA and every city polygon using PostGIS. FSAs that fall entirely inside a city are credited fully; FSAs that straddle multiple cities are area-weighted (e.g. an FSA that's 40% inside Toronto contributes 40% of its EVs to Toronto totals on the FSA-level statistics).

Note that the city-level demographic numbers (households, median income, population) come directly from StatsCan at the CSD (city) level, so they're not affected by the spatial overlay above.

Rural FSAs (codes starting K0, L0, N0 or P0) cover wide dispersed territories and may be missing from some quarters of the MTO release.

Suppression rules

What we hide and why.

Postal areas with fewer than 100 households (PO boxes, airports, industrial zones such as L5T at Pearson Airport or M7A for federal government) are excluded from adoption-rate calculations. A handful of corporate registrations would push their ratios into the thousands of percent and overwhelm the residential signal we're trying to surface.

City rankings exclude small cities (under ~10,000 population) where a single EV swings the percentage too much to be meaningful.

Refresh cadence

When the data updates.

EV counts refresh quarterly. New quarters typically appear within a few weeks of quarter-close. Charging stations refresh on demand (NRCan publishes continuously). Census data is updated once every five years, with the next update expected in 2027.

Glossary of terms

EV Index is an independent publication that turns Ontario’s quarterly EV registration data into interactive maps, city reports, trends, a savings calculator, and side-by-side comparisons.

Snapshot

Ontario at a glance.

Where the province sits today: total registrations, household adoption, the BEV vs plug-in hybrid split, and the public charging network.

Trends

How EV adoption has changed.

Top 5 Cities

The cities leading Ontario in EV adoption.

Ranked by adoption rate: share of households with at least one EV registered. Each card opens the full city report.