Our overall experience with owning an electric car in Atlantic Canada has been quite joyful for our first 3 months. There is a learning experience involved to get familiar with how the various charging options work, plus we were delighted to find how may “free” plug in chargers there are – resulting is zero cost for our driving fuel !
We chose a Toyota Prius Prime, which is a “Plug in Hybrid” PHEV, meaning it has both a gas engine plus a battery with a range of 72Km (45miles). The vehicle automatically switches seamlessly back and forth between gas and battery, for those who don’t want to think about the differences. We tend to use the battery when driving in the city, and the gas engine (ICE) for highway driving to the cottage and such. The PHEV eliminates the “range anxiety” that might otherwise be related to EV’s because you can use gas when your battery is empty.
Starting with a PHEV is a great way to get familiar with the various charging options available in your particular marketplace. In our case there was only one Tesla super charger station in the whole province, which would provide the fast 15 minute charging experience, while you grab a coffee at Tim Hortons, but that would not work for our lifestyle.
Understanding Charger types
Aside from charging at home, you need to understand the various ways to charge your vehicle when going further distances. The market has essentially 3 main types of charging,
- Level 1 plugs in to a regular household 120VAC electric plug. But this is best suited to overnight type charging at home or hotels.
- Level 2 has a few types of plugs (e.g. J1772), and is twice as fast as Level 1. But the charging time also depends on your vehicle. Most level 2 chargers offer over 6 kw/hr service (bigger is faster), but my Prius can only use up to 3 kw/hr, so typically an hour to charge. The Halifax QE2 hospital patient parking lot has these now.
- Level 3 DC charger is much faster, and frequently used by Electric only vehicles to provide charging in less than an hour. Again there are limits related to the particular charging station, with the most recent ones up to 350Kwh, but most are less than 100kwh. Petro Canada (expensive) and Canadian Tire are starting to offer these now.
Our Prius Prime can only use Level 1 or Level 2, which means finding a charging station that is conveniently located near a coffee shop or shopping center is ideal for the 1 hour charge time.
The EV social club
A surprising social dimension of owning an EV is the chance meetings with others at EV charging stations. Since you are both “killing time” while your vehicles charge, it provides a relaxed time to chat. I enjoyed an interesting chat with a man who charges his using 100% solar power at his home, and exchanged charging tips with others. Many drivers are happy to share their EV driving experiences, charger tips, and vehicle choice experiences, but some just want to stay heads down on their phones.
Retired person benefit
Since we are retired, and we don’t have any charging options available in the building we live in, I use the public charging stations in our area. Although this sounds inconvenient – it led me to discover various “free” charging stations in our neighborhood. So my morning routine which used to involve sitting in my recliner chair at home to read my social feeds on my phone- now involves driving a few blocks to a free charger (no near by coffee shop) and reading my social feeds there for an hour! Its hard to say how long free charging will continue to be offered, since often its more of an advertising gimmick or employee perk during daytime hours, which makes it more available for me after hours.
Paying for Charging – multiple apps
The price you get charged at Level 2 charging stations is typically in the C$1 to $2 range per hour (vs $0.20 per kwh at home) – big savings when compared to buying gasoline. This kind of makes sense as it sort of represents the amount of energy you are transferring, but it is also affected by the vehicle design (3000kw/hr max for my vehicle means it would take 50% less time on a different vehicle). Plus some chargers encourage EV drivers to un-plug to free up the charger by charging a steep surcharge if you stay parked there after you are fully charged.
I have five different charging company apps set up in my phone for our area! It would be nice if there was more sharing, but I suppose its like getting all the gas stations to agree on one credit card.
- Plugshare is a great website to help you locate chargers near you or along your route, but it is not designed to deal with payments.
- Tesla EV drivers have a great map service, which is integrated with your credit card, so you just plug in a go!
- ChargePoint in our area seems pretty common, and seems to be trying to integrate with a few other charger brands with limited success.
- The local NS Power uses Flo in quite a few places, but is does not have consistent branding. They offer a credit card sized RFID charge card that is helpful where no internet is available.
- Switch is shows up in some places.
- Charge Lab also is a random one.
Underground parking charging can sometimes be a problem, since the apps need to use the internet to validate your mobile phone app information. The solution to this is to have a RFID charge card, or dongle which means you need to plan ahead.
Tranquil Driving Experience
The serenity of driving an electric vehicle is something I’ve grown to value. While not silent due to wind and tire noise, the electric motor’s soft hum contributes to a peaceful drive, especially in urban settings. However, it’s important to be mindful of pedestrians who may not hear the vehicle, leading some regions to mandate noise-making devices for EVs! It sounds a bit like a field of chirping cicada’s or maybe a quiet spaceship.
Other Cool EV features:
- Some PHEV’s like the PRIUS Prime can actually charge the EV battery from the gas powered engine! From an energy use perspective this is a dumb thing to do, but I do enjoy the quiet drive experience and sometimes prefer to drive on battery power even though it costs me more to charge with gas.
- Some newer EV’s have a V2L feature which is great during power grid outages, or places you need 120V power from the EV battery, using a plug in adapter.
- There are actually two batteries in the PHEV. The conventional 12 volt car battery and the bigger EV “traction battery”. They are interconnected in both directions.
Excellent Gas Mileage
Even if we only used the gas engine and did not plug in the car to charge the battery, the Prius Prime gets excellent gas mileage because its a hybrid and recovers energy when coasting down hill, etc. into the battery. Our vehicle gets 3 L/100 (78 miles per USA gallon) this way!
A Personal Driving Challenge
The instrumentation is crafted to inform you about how your driving habits affect battery consumption, enabling you to make smarter choices. If you’re not concerned, you can simply drive as usual. However, I’ve found it rewarding to take on the personal challenge of slow acceleration, controlled speeds, and minimal air conditioning to achieve a noticeably better driving range. The “advanced” panel shows your personal 1-5 “score” for acceleration, driving and deceleration for each segment in real time as you drive.
Halifax Region Chargers Problem
The most disappointing aspect of our experience has bee the availability of reliable charging stations particularly in downtown Halifax. Perhaps they were the early adopters and didn’t focus on a solid support plan. The fancy Nova Center used for many business conferences, has lots of chargers in the parkade, but most are “out of service” for many months. The Halifax Library also has a similar problem. So far the new parkade at the QE2 hospital seems 90% available. Thankfully with a PHEV the gasoline engine saves the day. Outside of the downtown area seems to be getting pretty good charger infrastructure growth and reliability.
Conclusion
Electric vehicles will take some adjustment, but once you invest that time it results in a rewarding driving and travel experience, which has good implications for fuel savings as well as helping to conserve our planet. There are also many “green” related savings like $10,000 rebates by federal and provincial governments, plus banks that give 2% lower rate, when you buy an electric vehicle including a PHEV.
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