The IT Nerd

Over the weekend I had the chance to drive an electric vehicle. I’ll talk about the specific electric vehicle later this week. But today I want to talk about the charging experience. Now my condo doesn’t have a charger of any sort. Which meant that I had to rely on public chargers anywhere that I found them. In advance of this, I downloaded the Flo app onto my iPhone and loaded it with some cash. That way I could access and pay and charge whenever I needed to.

I picked up the EV on Friday at noon in Mississauga. The EV had 100% in the battery or 350 KM of range. I then shuttled my wife to an appointment that was about 20 minutes away. And from there, I went to see a client in midtown Toronto. And then I took my wife to dinner in west end Toronto and then home. The next day I drove from my home in west end Toronto to the northern part of Toronto to see a client. By that point, I was at 66% of range and my wife suggested that we charge it as we were planning on going to the Elora Christmas Market the next day in order to test out one of the key features of this specific EV. So after I was finished with the client, I went home to pick my wife up and then drove to Sherway Gardens as that shopping mall had a number of charging stations including a DC fast charger. And at the same time we could have dinner and do some shopping while the EV charged. But that didn’t work out so well because the DC fast charger was in use, and though there were four level 2 chargers at Sherway Gardens, one was in use by a Tesla who was using it because the Tesla Supercharger station was full with a line up, there was no way I could get the EV into any of the available chargers without hitting a car or a pillar. What also didn’t help is that Apple Maps indicated that there was a second Flo facility at Sherway Gardens. But when we drove to it, it didn’t exist. So we ended up changing our plans and going to a Flo charging station about a kilometre away at a Canadian Tire as that had the only other DC fast charger in the area. It was completely empty so we were able to drive in, plug in, and then walk 120 meters to a Boston Pizza to have dinner and wait for the EV to charge. Now I have nothing against Boston Pizza, but that was not the dinner that my wife and I had in mind.

After stretching out dinner for as long as we could to give the EV a chance to get to 100%, this is what it cost us:

That doesn’t factor in $65 for dinner for what it’s worth. But at least we were able to drive home which was about 5KM away with 100% charge in the EV.I should also mention that this DC fast charger promised 50 kWh of charging speed, but I never saw anything above 40 kWh.

The next day we went to the Elora Christmas Market which was a 110 KM drive from our place. To save as much battery as possible, we put the car into its power saving mode which would use more regenerative braking. Thus topping off the battery whenever I hit the brakes by maybe 1% at most. In hindsight I shouldn’t have bothered. The majority of the drive was on highway 401, which meant there was no braking. Thus this move while well intentioned was likely irrelevant. In any case, the drive took us from 100% down to 68% by the time we arrived. Now we had used the Flo app to figure out where the charging stations were in Elora, and the town had about 12 of them. But they were all level 2 chargers which meant that they would charge the EV slowly. To give you some perspective, a 10% to 80% charge with a level 2 charger would take about 8 to 9 hours. But we were going to be there for a few hours so it didn’t really matter as we had a significant about of range left in the vehicle. After walking around the market for a few hours and having a couple bites to eat, this is what we ended up with in terms of the cost of charging the EV:

So spending $5.20 got us from 68% to 88% over three hours. Not fast, but at least it was cheap. As an aside, if you have a level 2 charger at home, you’ll likely get the same speed but pay less as you could schedule charging for non peak hours for example to keep costs down and accelerate your ROI.

We then drove home and at that point I had to go out and find another DC fast charger as I was expected to return the EV the next day with a full charge. At the time, I was at a charge level of 65%. So I drove a few kilometres away to Bloor West Village in Toronto where a city parking lot had an available DC fast charger as I could see if it was in use from the Flo app. And while it charged, I had to find something to do. So I ended up walking around Bloor West Village for over 90 minutes and came back to the EV when it was 100% charged. This is what it cost me:

Two notes on this charging experience. First, it was faster as the charger claimed to do 62 kWh and I actually saw it doing that speed. Second, it was cheaper than the Flo DC fast charger that I went to on Saturday even though the charger was run by ChargePoint which is a Flo partner. That I found interesting. I then drove home and the next day returned the EV with 95% of a charge.

So, what did I learn from this experience? Well, a number of things:

• If you don’t have a charger at home, don’t bother buying an EV: I say that because every time I needed to charge, I needed to drive out, find a charger, and then find something to do while the EV charged. That is going to get frustrating very quickly. Thus if you’re going to get an EV, you need to get a level 2 charger at home and charge overnight or any time the EV is not in use. The only scenario where I can see someone who doesn’t have a charger at home deciding to buy an EV is if their workplace has a charger, or they had easy access to one. But unless that’s free or cheap, it’s not worth doing in my opinion.
• DC fast charging is useful but expensive: The two times that I used a DC fast charger, the cost was more of less the same as half a tank of gas for my daily driver which is a gas powered SUV. That means that any cost savings that could potentially come from having an EV would disappear. That means that DC fast charging is for convenience or necessity.

What the above means is that for a lot of people, such as people who live in apartments and condos, an EV is not a realistic option unless said apartment or condo makes provisions for EVs. By that I mean installing level 2 chargers. While some are doing that, it’s a capital cost that I don’t see the majority of apartments and condos doing unless there’s a critical mass of EVs out there. That’s going to be a problem as EVs maybe make up 10% of the market, which isn’t anything close to critical mass country.

The only way to address that barrier to entry is to make EV chargers, specifically DC fast chargers more widely available. If I were to look at where DC fast chargers were located relative to my home, this is what I see:

That’s a #fail. Chargers have to be as ubiquitous as gas stations. On top of that the EV that I was driving was capable of charging at 115 kWh. But the two DC fast chargers were not capable of charging at anywhere near that speed. Given that a lot of EVs are capable of charging at 100 kWh or faster, DC chargers need to do that. That would take the charge time to sub 1 hour most cases. And at the same time make EVs a viable option for many and drive adoption. Especially to those who don’t have a charger at home. Because nobody has a gas station at home because there’s a gas station usually within easy reach most people. EV charging needs to be just like that.

So based on this three day experience, my wife and I won’t be getting an EV. But if the charging infrastructure improves, or we get access to a level 2 charger, we might change our minds. Hopefully the needle moves on that front as I think EVs will eventually be the future of vehicles. We just need to have the infrastructure to allow as many people as possible to fully embrace the future.

This entry was posted on December 11, 2024 at 9:31 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Electric Vehicles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.