There are some technical and infrastructure challenges but often frustrations would be easy to address
It’s the little things that get me down
As I expected, my journey has amply demonstrated that there are no technical reasons why my mid-priced EV won’t be able to drive anywhere I want to go, winter or summer. But I was also dismayed to find (as I feared) that the experience was all too often undermined by small annoyances that would be easy to address at little or no cost if businesses, governments and individuals paid more attention to the needs and desires of present and future EV drivers. My journey from Edmunston to Moncton near the end of my round-trip journey sadly illustrated this well.
The day started fine. By a quirk of fate Edmunston’s tourist office is sited in a disused railway station and offered visitors like myself free charging. I would rather there was a decent rail service — I miss trains in Newfoundland! — but at least having lost some of their past they are looking to the future. Being able to charge overnight there, which was a short walk from the hotel, meant I started my journey with a full “tank” and saved myself 30 minutes or so at a fast charger later in the day.
My journey through the heart of New Brunswick was uneventful until I hit Meductic, halfway through the journey. Two fast Petro-Canada chargers were installed there, but since December one or both seem to have been regularly out of order. When I passed through Feb 23rd one didn’t work and I had to spend 20 minutes on the phone with a helpful technician before we got the other functioning because the billing part wasn’t working … but at least it then cost me nothing. On my return, it was the same situation again (only the conversation was shorter). A bit more hassle but I saved a few bucks so I’ll call it even.
Then I rolled into my (to remain nameless) bed and breakfast in Moncton. I was pleased to see that they not only had empty parking spaces but several of those had electrical sockets in front. I had been planning to drive tomorrow morning to a fast charger before leaving but twelve hours of charging from a 120V socket might save me a few minutes wait and would mean I could comfortably pre-heat my car before departure if it got cold overnight. Unfortunately, a language barrier meant I could not really explain to the manager what charging my car would entail, and she was plainly fearful of what might happen. (For the benefit of potentially benevolent restaurant and hotel owners, all electric cars should draw 12A at most from a standard 120V socket — 1.44 KW or about $0.16 per hour).
No problem, though — there were two locations with level 2 chargers listed nearby downtown in Plugshare. One was the Delta Beauséjour — but I called ahead and they said it was for guests only. Well, fair enough I guess. So I rolled over to the other behind Moncton City Hall. I had thought it was free but it was in a paying parking lot. Better check Plugshare first before I paid and committed… And yes, it seems to have been out of order for at least the last 10 days.
I could just have paid and parked and got the downtown meal and exploration I had wanted, but my blood was up by now and I was determined to charge while I ate, so really I had just one more option… the not-quite as local Fairview mall. It wasn’t a walk away from the hotel but it was a fast charger so I could top up, get a bite to eat at the mall, stroll around… I am not a mall guy, frankly. I would much rather have stayed downtown and gotten a feel for the place, but I was starting to feel a bit unwelcome — at least in my role as an EV owner.
Unfortunately, it turns out mall culture wasn’t a thing after 19:00 in Moncton either. And I had another 20 minute phone call with a technician from Flo trying to get their fast charger to accept my money! I ended up strolling back and forth across the mall’s gargantuan parking lot to the nearby Pizza Pizza (admittedly we have no Pizza Pizza in St John’s, so it was still a welcome blast from the past for a guy who grew up in Toronto).
So what lessons would I want to impart from this catalogue of trifling frustrations? Aside from “don’t keep digging yourself in a hole just to prove a point?”
- For everyday use, support for L2 chargers at homes and offices (public and private) are vital. For tourism, L3 chargers are the most important ways of ensuring people can get to and from single destinations. But as a tourist in an EV, level 2 chargers can “bend” my attention towards lodgings, restaurants and smaller communities that offer them. If I’ve got an hour to stroll around, to shop or to eat, it would be nice if I was also getting an extra 50+ km of driving range when I got back to the car — it might be just enough to keep me having to bother getting to a fast charger before I got home. And it might make the difference between my going to your community or the similarly-interesting one next door.
- It may rankle those who already see EV owners as wealthy snobs, but I would discourage those who do install L2 chargers for public use from requiring payment from users (I’ll come back to this later). True, there is a cost to install the charger, but EV owners know that the electricity they get from it costs the provider perhaps $1 an hour so it can rankle to have to pay on top of their food or accommodation bill (and of course there’s a cost to administer a billing infrastructure, and it is one more potential cause of malfunction). As an accommodation owner even if all you have is a 120V external socket, if you are willing to offer that to an EV driver in need from time to time, or if they can store their car in a warm garage so the battery doesn’t get too cold overnight in winter the goodwill would be well worth the pennies the offer would cost you.
- Subsidizing chargers for business and home use helps, but service businesses and communities need to be encouraged to find out how EV chargers can help them — even if they don’t install one themselves, just a having a little EV awareness can help — eg knowing where the nearest working charger to your business is .
- I’ve always been able to find the charge I needed… but it has frequently been harder than it needed to be, and the fact that broken chargers can languish unrepaired for weeks or that chargers are often hard to find and are rarely physically signposted (except on the chargers themselves) suggests both the provider organizations and the host businesses don’t see them as critical infrastructure. Of course with the relatively low number of EV drivers around presently that may be understandable, but it’s minor frustrations like this that can put those trialling EVs off, and as EV owner numbers rise, the pressure on existing stations and the need for reliability will increase. Petty it might be, but the fact that the friendly folks in the Republic of Madawaska gave my car a free charge while the only public L2 charger in all of downtown Moncton sat broken and neglected in a lot I would have had to pay to use anyway still kinda rankles. I’ll get over it…
