By Eric Stern
January 12th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Think globally, act locally.
I’ve owned a Tesla Model 3 since 2019 and have over 140,000 km on the odometer. In 2019, Elon Musk was a visionary, it’s odd how quickly things change.
How does charging an EV work and how do you make it work for you? Don’t depend on the city to do that for you.
There are two scenarios for charging.
Scenario 1 – Charging where you park.
For most of us, this is at home. You can install a charger in your garage or driveway. You don’t need to pay a fortune to upgrade your electrical service but watch out, some electricians are happy to recommend this. You can buy a switching device to share your stove or dryer circuit with your EV Charger. Another option is a relatively low-cost 24-amp circuit, you can get about 240 km of range in 8 hours. Most of us sleep, or at least try to, for 8 hours a day, and most of us drive less than 240 km a day.
Simple Switch Canada offers solutions for EV charging without a service upgrade.
Once the charger has been installed, you’ll notice two big changes in your life. First, no more trips to the gas station, second, your credit card bill will be a lot lower. By charging at night, 100 km of range costs about $2.50. If you switch to the ultra-low overnight rate plan you can save even more.
If you live in a condo or apartment there are options click HERE
Scenario 2 – Charging on Road Trips.
They say patience is a virtue, one I don’t have. When at home, I can wait 8 hours for my car to charge, not so much when driving to Ottawa to visit family.
The Tesla charging stations will be included in the Blue Oval (Ford and GM) network – meaning that you will eventually be able to charge at any type of system.
Ford, GM, Tesla and other companies make road trips easy with high-speed chargers. High-speed chargers are linked into “charging networks”, Ford’s is called BlueOval.
What do you do? You use the touch screen in your car. All the North American electric cars (Ford, GM, and Tesla) have this feature. You type in your destination and start driving. The computer software behind the network tells you where, along your route, to stop and charge.
There are two things you want to avoid on a road trip. The number one thing to avoid is running out of electricity. The other thing to avoid is having to wait for a charging station. Imagine a long weekend where 50 cars suddenly show up at the Tesla chargers in Peterborough. This is one of Tesla’s newer charging stations so you can “fill up” in about 20 minutes and complete the trip to Ottawa without charging again. But waiting for an hour, arguing about who got there first.
Charging networks know what cars are on the road and where they are going. The network’s software can figure out if too many people are heading to one charging station and start rerouting cars to other stations along the same route.
On trips to Ottawa, we’ve been directed to Belleville, Nepean, Kingston, Peterborough or Madoc. The routing depends on where other people are driving while you’re driving. We have only been rerouted once, a message comes up on the screen explaining that the supercharger you are currently navigating to is busy and the network suggests another charging stop. I have never had to wait to charge the car.
Charging networks are incredibly sophisticated and incredibly simple. Type in your destination and start driving, follow the instructions on the screen, and arrive at your destination.
Burlington has spent approximately $1,400,000 to install 29 EV charging stations.
Surprisingly, on November 18th, 2024, our council voted not to spend another $100,000 on charging stations in 2025.
Most of the Burlington chargers are incredibly slow, I’d need 10 hours to get the same charge I can get in Peterborough in 20 minutes. Most of these chargers have 4-hour time limits. None of the city chargers are part of the Tesla network so Teslas won’t magically start appearing in downtown Burlington, meaning that you won’t be able to dine and shop and charge the car at the same time.
From my research, the two new superchargers the City of Burlington has installed are not part of the BlueOval network so Ford and GM EVs will not be showing up either.
The EV charging stations outside city hall provide a “perk” for city council members – few of them own electric cars.
A few weeks ago, Councillor Nisan posted on his social media accounts that “Burlington has the most per-capita chargers in the GTA”.
Tesla cars, the most common EV on the road, can’t use these new superchargers without the owner buying an adapter but that didn’t stop Nisan from using the #tesla hashtag.
There is just one charging station in the downtown core without a charging time limit, this one provides roughly 50km of driving per charge per hour.
EVs are amazing. Our council needs to decide what’s important, photo ops and social media, or leaving money in people’s pockets so they can act locally.
Related news story:
Frankly why is the City burdening the average property owner with these costs.
How much millions of property tax revenue has the City have invested in this over the last number of years for primarily well-heeled inner-city dwellers. Five million, ten million? How about an audit.
How many of these stations offer free charging and note most of them are clustered around City Hall.
Even the feds are abandoning EV rebates on the excuse that the program has run out of money citing what a success it has been.
I read that 40% or more of folks that have bought an EV will be not buying another however I don’t have a link.
They all need to be voted out
“And they’re 100% free” according to Nisan.
Free to whom exactly? $1.4 million of taxpayer money spent so far on just 29 of these charging stations that not everyone can use, nearly $50K apiece, plus maintenance, plus monthly hydro bills, plus plus plus. These hardly sound “free” to me.
I guess we’re back to encouraging vehicles on the roads and are meant to believe that gridlock is okay as long as we’re stuck crawling behind an electric vehicle, and as an added bonus the general population gets the pleasure of covering the costs so that wealthy EV owners don’t need to foot the bill.
Oh yeah, this sounds fantastic.
The electricity from the Burlington chargers is “free”, truth be told, I use them whenever it is convenient. The electricity is paid for by “The Atmospheric Fund (TAF)”
TAF:
“The City of Toronto Council created TAF in 1991 to finance local initiatives to combat climate change and improve air quality in Toronto. A $23 million endowment, coming from the sale of a City-owned property, was set up to fund our work. …. In 2016, the Province of Ontario provided us with a $17 million endowment to enable TAF’s services to be offered throughout the GTHA. In 2019, the Government of Canada provided us with a $40 million endowment along with the creation of the Low Carbon Cities Canada network. ”
“We do not draw any funds from City, Provincial, or Federal tax bases.”
https://taf.ca/about-us/
The “We do not draw any funds from City, Provincial, or Federal tax bases.” is an interesting line, to say the least.
I don’t think someone driving from Kingston to Niagara Falls would not stop in Burlington for a free charge for two reasons. One – you don’t know if the charger will be available or if you’ll have to line up for an hour. Two – the Tesla and other charging networks are not aware of the chargers and won’t direct you to them. Check out the steady flow of cars in and out of the Tesla chargers at MapleView.
What BRAG asked the city on this issue was why is Burlington using taxpayers money to complete with FLO (at Burlington Centre) and Tesla (at MapleView).
“The level three chargers at 391 Brant Street, like other chargers in the downtown area,
aim to enhance the downtown experience by supporting EV users who wish to visit local
businesses and amenities. This initiative aligns with the City’s goals of promoting
sustainable transportation and economic activity in the area, complementing—not
competing with—existing private charging networks like Tesla and Flo”
Thankyou to all the taxpayers who provide me with free electricity when I go out for dinner downtown, much appreciated.
So Elon Musk is no longer a visionary. In what way?
David, I agree Musk is still a visionary, the wording could have been clearer. What changed is his vision of the future.
Apologies for the delay, I’ve been busy.
The Tesla is arguably the most ground-up, beautifully designed, and engineered means of electric personal vehicles on the market today; its drivers, according to statistics are predominantly male with a higher education and higher incomes and under thirty-four, they are quite fond of Ludicrous mode, which lowers their speed safety scores; I know all this because your car is a snitch; not unlike most of the appliances you love to own; but here’s the thing, to us mere mortals your road manners are up there with BMW and Audi drivers, apparently us working stiffs didn’t need statistics to know that, because individually and now thanks to X collectively we knew this all along and are not as dumb as everyone thinks we are; So now your smart car has ratted you out and confirmed our natural born suspicions we can assume the same applies to leaders of countries, there’s nothing wrong with the country it’s the drivers that are the problem; how to admire a car or a country only to find out that there is no commonality between the working stiff and it’s drivers, even when the Liberal Tesla driver pool becomes contaminated with Left wing extremists, (AOC drives a Tesla) they compensate by hoisting this former bartender above their own shoulders so as not to contaminate the pool; another observation that the poor regular working peeps find amusing is that Tesla drivers are in a bit of a tizzy at the moment; what to do? The builder of your mobile symbol of wokeness has appeared to have gone rogue, he’s switched sides, You can’t admit that you were wrong, that would send the wrong message or the signals were there but you just misread them, that would also be a bad example to set; Countermeasures, fighter pilots use them to confuse the enemy until they can regroup; that’s it verble countermeasures, that’ll fool em. Good luck with that.
https://www.themanual.com/auto/study-reveals-tesla-owner-demographics/#dt-heading-who-are-tesla-owners
Wow Eric, it seems your research has revealed to Gazette readers that our fair City has bought a good number of chargers for a truckload of money that will get you back home in Burlington after your shopping or dining, but not much further.
I think we’ll stick with our hybrid for now and live with the good mileage and lower fueling costs that come with that. The City’s intent seems to be there, but the execution is sorely lagging, the usefulness to most citizens small and the cost to taxpayers staggering.
I find it rather interesting and annoying that the citizens of Burlington are not able to access the charging stations at city hall parking lot outside business hours. It’s interesting because this was not always the case; my partner and I used to use the charger whilst we were downtown enjoying a dinner in one of the great restaurants there. It’s annoying because we don’t understand why this change happened, and why it was not announced to the citizens.
I know that there are folk out there who will argue the case of an emergency meeting of councillors outside of business hours, and that’s why the parking spaces (including the ones that have charging stations) need to be open 24/7. I counter that with the reality that if a citizen (or other person) needs to attend city hall and can’t access one of the spots in said parking lots, they must find another place to park in order to complete their business at city hall.
This, to me, smacks of “the dog in the manger” and it’s just my 2 cents’ worth.
This has to be a parody of an EV driver’s thought process; I spat out my coffee, Following along though, I do agree with you, it is outrageous that someone like yourself who has ticked all the woke boxes cannot have access to preferred parking with EV charging capabilities, like at every major retail outlet or services parking lot is not enough; us regular folk order a pizza and watch a movie so it couldn’t have been us that ruined an otherwise pleasant evening for you.