Flying to Winnipeg - An EV diary

By Ray Rivers

June 5th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

I’ve come to hate flying, mostly all the hassles and, of course, the impact on our climate.  But I have family spread across northern Ontario and into Manitoba and thought I should visit them while I had the chance.  Plus I had just bought a new battery electric car (EV) with a driving range of over 400 kms, so why not?

I drove over 4400 kms in less than two weeks – visiting family in Thunder Bay, Ear Falls and Winnipeg.  Driving in my new EV was sheer delight but re-charging the car was another matter.   For one thing it takes time to re-charge.  Instead of 10 or 15 minutes it can take a hour or more before hitting the road again.  I used the charging time for well deserved bathroom and meal breaks and an occasional well deserved nod off after some three or four hours of driving.  And fortunately I was always able to locate an empty charging station.

Eat Falls, Ontario – population of less than 1000

There were no commercial charging facilities when my voyage took me to Ear Falls, a small community of fewer than a thousand people near road’s end in northern Ontario.  So I connected the portable charger which came with the car, plugging into my cousin’s 120 volt outlet.  An overnight charge was enough to give me the 70 or 80 kms I needed  to get me comfortably to the next high speed commercial charger.

There are three levels of charging for an EV.  Besides the slow 120 volt mode I used in Ear Falls, my regular home charger operates on 240 volts, much like the plug you have for your clothes dryer.  And then there are fast commercial chargers which require direct current and can offer various rates of fast charging.  However, fast charging is not considered a battery’s best friend, so other than when I’m travelling, my home 240 volt unit is the way to go.

This is not my first rodeo with an EV.  Before my Ford Mustang I had driven a Nissan Leaf, with a much more limited 240 km range, which gave me chronic range anxiety for all but local travel.  Still, over those six years that Nissan was entirely trouble free with zero maintenance cost other than a cabin fresh air air filter and a set of windshield wipers.  It was dependable, quiet and almost free driving.   And though I charged it at home 95% of the time, I never noticed any change in my energy bill.

Tesla has the most complete and easiest charging system but uses its own connection system which automatically charges your credit card as well as your car.

Commercial charging is still problematic.  Tesla has the most complete and easiest charging system but uses its own connection system which automatically charges your credit card as well as your car.  This system is almost mindless and will most likely become the industry standard.  There are two other high speed charging connection systems for the non-Tesla folks to complicate the picture.   And there are a multitude of companies offering these charging services, almost all of which insist that drivers have an app and account and use an internet connection to connect.  In my experience these systems are troublesome and a huge disincentive for the average driver.

Petro Canada was the exception and it became my favourite on-the-road charger.  They advertise a Canada wide electrical charging highway and were mostly accurate in that claim.  Just like the gas pumps, one only needs to swipe a credit card to activate and get charged up.   Unlike the others, they charge by the minute rather than by the quantity of electricity delivered to your car, but in my experience Petro Can was comparable in overall charging cost to the other companies.

Ontario Power Generation and Hydro One have been given the On Route road side station concessions with their system, which is called IVY.  Unfortunately their pumps, which look like they were installed 30 years ago, require one of those nasty online accounts and an app to activate it.   I couldn’t help thinking that these are agencies of a government which ripped out all of the chargers the previous government had installed at Ontario’s GO stations.   Once I receive the Tesla adaptor for my car I’ll be relying on Elon Musk or Suncor’s Petro Canada for my future on-the-road needs.

The magnificent views of the north shore of Lake Superior, the glorious mountains of granite and the verdant forests along the way made it a wonderful road trip.

It was a long journey and there were moments when I almost regretted not taking the plane, though I would have had to rent a car anyway to get to Ear Falls.   And I would have missed those magnificent views of the north shore of Lake Superior, the glorious mountains of granite and the verdant forests along the way.  The ride was quiet in the EV with only tire road noise to let you know you are travelling.

And these cars are almost perfectly reliable since they contain only 10 percent of the moving parts of a regular gas guzzler and so less likely to break down.    Oh, and did I mention how fast all the EV’s are compared to their usual gas guzzler predecessors.   Electric motors provide instant torque compared to guzzlers.  This is something very useful should you need to pass a slower vehicle safely on a two lane highway.

I kept an eye on the gauge sporting my estimated driving range as I drove along and found, much as with gas powered cars, that staying within the posted speed limits and avoiding  the temptation to race from point A to B, vastly improve driving range and mileage.  And in addition slower driving made the long journey that much safer and more interesting.  But when I needed to speed up, this car was a rocket.

There weren’t many other EV’s on the long road I took to Winnipeg and back.  In fact I never had to wait my turn to use a charging station.  But that could change once people better understand the value proposition of going electric.  So even though commercial chargers were relatively rare on this trip locating a charging station was not really a problem.  Shell has also started installing chargers and even ESSO, the global chief climate denier, has announced that it too will be moving in that direction.  Hopefully they will take a page out of Petro Canada’s book and implement charging pay-at-the-pump.

When I needed to speed up, this car was a rocket.

It’s been a decade since EV’s have appeared in a showroom and two decades since the first hybrid electric made it’s debut.  So I continue to be amazed at the ignorance of the general public on something so essential to our lives as the private automobile.   Everywhere I went people were curious about the car and almost nobody knew what a charging station was or where I could find one.

When I ran the numbers on the cost of driving there and back I was a little disappointed, since I was used to essentially driving for next to nothing for the last six years.  Driving back from Winnipeg cost me $242.99 in charging costs.  By comparison a more modest gasoline car would have cost me twice as much in fuel alone.   But then the commercial charging networks need to make money too.  I’m still glad I decided to drive rather than fly but I’m unlikely to do that long a road trip again.

Background links:

IVY Charging –    Petro Canada –    Tesla –