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.
Last week I put out an article about why Canada is not ready for a transition to electric vehicles. Some people after that article came out emailed me to ask why I was anti-electric vehicle. To be clear, I am not anti-EV. I just believe that a lot has to happen before Canada can transition to them. To illustrate that I would like to give you the reasons why I am bullish on EV’s:
EV’s can help to (mostly) solve our problem with greenhouse gases. The reason why I say “mostly” assumes that the source of electricity is clean as well. But assuming that this is the case, EV’s can help to reduce greenhouse gases. The knock on effect on that is that greenhouse gases have effects on human health. So reducing greenhouse gases can only help humans and other species live longer.
EV’s can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. That’s a good thing as fossil fuels often come from places that may not be the best places to deal with. On top of that, extracting fossil fuels is a dirty business. None of that is cool. Thus any reduction in use of fossil fuels is a good thing.
Jobs. Frankly a transition to a green economy can only be a boost to the economy. And people need to wrap their heads around that and do things to foster that. After all, we need charging infrastructure, people to build EV’s, etc. And these will be high skill, high wage jobs. That’s going to be good for the economy as a whole. That’s a win for all of us.
So to conclude, I am not anti-EV. I am pro EV as there are benefits to being pro EV that benefit us in one or more ways. My argument in my original article was that we need to be prepared to make that change. And at the moment, we’re simply not ready.
Last December, the Canadian Government announced a plan to phase out gas powered cars by 2035. In short, what the Canadian Government wants is to have all of us driving zero emission vehicles (which is another way of saying electric vehicles) by that point or shortly after that point. This is an attempt to reduce emissions and allow Canada to hit their climate change goals. Now to be clear, I am all for making the environment better and reducing the effects of climate change. But this plan to shift drivers to electric vehicles is not workable for a number of reasons.
Let’s start with the fact that a robust and easily accessible charging infrastructure doesn’t exist. While some homeowners who own electric vehicles have level 2 chargers at home, there are a lot who don’t or can’t do so. Yours truly for example lives in a condo that doesn’t have any charging infrastructure whatsoever. And that’s the same for those in apartments as well. And many building management companies aren’t willing to budge on that. So what that means is if I want to charge an electric vehicle, it may be a challenge as illustrated by this search that I did on Apple Maps:
You’ll see a lot of big green dots and smaller green dots indicating where a EV charger is located. Compare that to simply searching for gas stations:
There’s a lot more blue dots (gas stations) that are big and small versus green dots (EV chargers) big and small. That means many people will find it a challenge at best to charge an electric vehicle. And that will hamper the sales of electric vehicles because humans will only adopt something if it is as easy or easier than whatever it is replacing. And right now if someone can’t just pop out to a charger that’s a five minute drive down the road and get a charge that gets their car to at least 80% in well under an hour, they’re not going to get an electric vehicle.
That brings me to my next point, electric vehicles are too expensive. Anyone that I know who has an electric vehicle is also someone who is willing and able to spend luxury car money on a gas vehicle. Even the cheapest electric vehicles out there are out of the price range of the average consumer who typically buys a Honda Civic or something in that price range. And that factors in government rebates for buying or leasing an electric vehicle. Now I get why this is the case. Car companies aren’t selling them in high enough volume to enable them to bring the price of these vehicles down to affordable levels. In fact, some companies have shifted away from producing more electric vehicles to producing more hybrids as those are actually selling. Until that changes, the needle on electric vehicle sales is going to move very slowly.
Sidebar: You should take Tesla out of the mix when it comes to companies who are shifting to making more hybrids as all Tesla makes are electric vehicles. Thus they have economies of scale working for them. Unlike every other car company that makes electric vehicles.
The next point that I’d like to bring up is the range of these vehicles. My 2016 Hyundai Tucson gets about 600KM on a single tank of gas. Sometimes more if I drive in a more “subdued” manner. That’s important as buyers like me who want to drive electric vehicles want to get a similar range relative to we get now with. a gas powered vehicle. In fact a KPMG study revealed that 80 per cent of Canadians wouldn’t “consider buying an EV unless it has a minimum 400 km range fully charged.” The problem is that many electric vehicles don’t get that range. Part of that is due to the fact that Canada is very cold for six months of the year. And cold weather has a negative effect on electric vehicles. Part of that is that you get reduced range in cold weather. Some people say about 30% less range. But there’s also the fact that the car might not work at all if it is too cold. I cite this example where many Tesla cars in Chicago wouldn’t work because it was too cold. Another somewhat related factor is that the range that an auto maker gives is often in “ideal” conditions. And none of us drive in “ideal” conditions because those “ideal” conditions are in a lab or a test track. Which is another way of saying that you’re going to be unlikely to see the range that the auto maker says you should get. Thus this is something that needs to be sorted before electric vehicles get adopted broadly.
Finally, there’s reliability. Electric vehicles generally are reliable than gas powered cars and this Consumers Reports article goes into the weeds on that. But let me cut to the chase here. Nobody is going to move to technology that is less reliable than what they have now. And that lack of reliability will slow electric vehicle adoption.
All of this makes Canada’s plan to move to zero emission vehicles by 2035 a non starter in my mind. I honestly would love to be proven wrong on this. But as things stand right now, I don’t think so. The only way I might be proven wrong on this is if there’s a major course correction to make electric vehicles more affordable, more reliable, improve the charging infrastructure, and make the range more in line with gas powered cars. This is something that all parties in this space, meaning government and the car industry need to tackle. And they need to start doing that today if meeting that 2035 deadline is to be achieved.
Do you agree with me? Do you disagree with me? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
Hello IT Nerd. I’ve been following your blog for a while and I note that you’re writing about cars and I’d like to ask what you’d think of electric cars. My wife wants to buy one because it’s the right thing to do for the environment. But I think it’s a technology that isn’t ready for the mainstream yet. What do you think?
Thanks for the question and thanks for reading my blog. I have two thoughts on electric cars. First, there’s no distribution network for these cars when it comes to electricity. There’s tons of gas stations, but very few electric charging stations. Thus, you can’t take it on a road trip, nor can you “top off the tank” as it were while you’re out and about. Oh, I’ll also mention if you run out of power you’re pretty much walking home or waiting for a tow. Nobody is going to bring you a tank electricity in a red can to get you to the next charging station. Thus this is a limiting factor in terms of making these sorts of vehicles truly as useful as gas powered cars.
That brings me to the second thought I have about them. If you live in Canada or the US, you’re charging these cars from a power grid that has a significant amount of fossil fuel based power. Example: Coal fired generators or gas powered generators. Thus, there may be nothing coming out of your tailpipe, but there’s stuff that’s harmful to the climate being emitted long before the batteries in your electric car get charged. All I believe you’ve done is shifted the emission point from your tailpipe to elsewhere. Thus, are you really doing your part for the environment?
Thus I’m really not a fan of these cars. I think that for the foreseeable future, we’ll be driving cars based on the internal combustion engine and we should be focused on making those cars consume less gas and put out less emissions that harm the environment. Mazda for example is rolling a package of improvements to their cars dubbed Skyactiv which is based around improving the engine, transmission, body, and chassis of their cars to increase fuel economy. Other companies such as Ford and Hyundai/Kia are now using turbocharged engines. For example instead of using a V6 in a car, use a turbocharged 4 cylinder. That way you get the power of a V6 with the fuel economy of a 4 cylinder. That makes a lot more sense to me, at least for the foreseeable future.
Agree? Disagree? Post a comment and share your thoughts.
The problem that I see with electric vehicles is the fact that these is no infrastructure to recharge them. That’s important because unlike cars, nobody is going to bring you a can of electricity if you run out of battery power. That may be about to change. Tim Horton’s which is Canada’s leading place to get a coffee (such as the aforementioned “double double” which is Canadian speak for double cream and double sugar) is starting a pilot project at a location in Oakville On (just outside of Toronto) where you can charge your electric vehicle for free while enjoying your coffee:
“The electric vehicle infrastructure is in its infancy and we see a potential opportunity for Tim Hortons to help make a true difference by expanding that infrastructure in Canada,” said Paulo Ferreira, Senior Director, International Design and Building Standards, Tim Hortons. “At this stage, the goal for us is to explore and understand the technology, to see how it can work at our restaurants and how we can, in turn, support our guests who choose to go electric.”
Tim Hortons partnered with Oakville Hydro and Town of Oakville to launch the pilot project.
Now this is a good idea as if this pilot is successful, this may help to encourage other companies to do the same thing and that will help the growth of electric vehicles. That’s sure to make Tesla (Model S), Toyota (Prius Plug-in) Mitsubishi (iMev), Nissan (Leaf) and Chevy (Volt) very happy.
I Lived With An EV For Three Days… And Charging It Is Less Than Optimal If You Don’t Have A Charger At Home
Posted in Commentary with tags Electric Vehicles on December 11, 2024 by itnerdOver 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:
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.
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