TL;DR driving an EV in Aug/Sep is much better than Feb/Mar
EV Roadtrip Round 2 — initial stats
4,230 miles/6,800km through five provinces over 27 days…
This time I stuck all the charging sessions I paid for into a spreadsheet — here are some figures to chew on. All prices are in Canadian $ — I drove my Ioniq 5 standard range RWD, which cost me $50,000 inc tax back in February. You don’t need a high-end EV to be able to comfortably do long distance road trips these days!
Driving cost
$260.81 — roughly $3.80 per 100km (supplemented by some free L1 charging with friends/family)
ICE equivalent cost
$CA 920 or $13/100km Est driving cost driving a Hyundai Tucson 2022 via Fuel Savings Calculator (at $1.65/L)
Total waiting time for charging
13hrs 36 mins (about 1/2 hour a day). This seemed surprisingly low to me at first. But it excludes L2 time my car charged while I was off doing something else, and it demonstrates how even on a road trip there are plenty of opportunities to top up painlessly. Most of the remaining “wasted” time was spent enjoyably chatting with other EV owners.
Best new highway charging experience
ONRoute Trenton — I would like to see more high speed chargers luring people off the highways to nearby local communities, but where you just want to charge and take off, this is a reasonable model to follow. Big screens to tell you about local news and traffic, free WiFi, an ATM, a choice of restaurants and plenty of spots to sit in a space protected from the elements… and a charger that added 235km of range to my car in 23 minutes, for $7.80. Honorable mention to Masstown, which I returned to this year. A slower charger, but I didn’t care because I was busy buying tea, jam and fudge…
