EV-ing in Lands Short on EV Infrastructure

Wait is EV-ing a word? Well why not? I am going to make it a perfect and useful verb.

Rebecca, my beautiful new Kona EV, and I have been having some adventures EV-ing around various Atlantic Canadian locations and racking up over 3000 km since we met. Getting to know her has been fairly easy, although I am still on the learning curve. Public charging, on the other hand, has been challenging at times.

Now as beautiful as Atlantic Canada is, it does have a bit of a reputation for being behind the times, at least in the rural areas. It’s part of the charm and character of the place. It’s nostalgic and one of the reasons people like to visit. And really, those of us who live here don’t want that to change much. However some changes are necessary, like reliable wifi everywhere and; these days, a decent EV charging infrastructure.

Mostly, Rebecca and I bop around locally for a minimal cost because I charge her at home using my Level 2 charger with power produced by our solar panels.  However, some of my destinations were a little further away and public charging was necessary. In the past few weeks, I have made three extended journeys that required more than a full home charge.

TRIP 1

The Doc and I headed to the Moncton area of New Brunswick to visit his two sons. In Theory, we should have been able to do the arriving part of the trip with kilometers to spare, but it was raining; and we were running the wipers, the front and rear defog, the navigational system, the radio and occasionally, the heated seat to loosen up my very tight SI joint. An electric car is not like a gas car or a helicopter for that matter–vehicles that have a dedicated battery to run certain electrical things. In the case of a car, this battery is constantly being recharged by the alternator of the fossel-fuel burning engine. An electric car is more like your smart phone. The more things you run, the more power you use. Everything is running off the same battery. We all know how quickly our phones loose power when we are running Google Maps for directions over a period of time. On this trip, we learned just how much power all these things together can use.

Once in Moncton, we realized that we might not have enough kilometres to make it to Irishtown and back to Moncton to a charger. We located the closest Level 3 charger, at a Volkswagen dealer, and naively thought that charging was going to be as easy as easy as getting gas. Not so! The Instructions on this charger were not very clear. It said tap your card to start and then tap your card to stop. I just assumed it meant my credit card as that would be, to me, the most efficient way to take care of the matter. Well that didn’t work. I kept trying. At one point, a women exited a door next to the charger but had no idea how to use the thing. Finally, and I don’t really know how this happened, the charger started, and we settled in the car to wait for my first quick charge to be completed.

Only it wasn’t a quick charge. It was taking forever. It seemed even slower than my home charger. After an hour and a half, with barely enough kilometers to make it to Irishtown and back, I went to turn it off and disconnect. Well that didn’t work. I could not get the charger to stop and finally called the help number, which I believe connected me to someone in the US, who had no idea where Moncton, New Brunswick was and seemed to be describing a charger that looked nothing like the one I was standing in front of. Finally, I said, “there is a big red Emergency Stop Button on the side, can I just push that? Yep. It finally stopped and we were on our way.

The next morning we drove to the Champlain Mall in Moncton to connect to another Level 3 Charger before starting home. The charger had a Green Start Button and a Red Stop button. And also said, tap your card to start. So Again, I waved my Visa in front of the machine and hit the start button. Nothing. I began to read the paragraphs of small text and in the third paragraph I received my first clue. “You must have an account to use this charger. Go to our website to set up an account.”

No body tells you these things. Nobody tells you that every maker of every Level 3 charger in my neck of the woods requires an account to use. Not only did I need an account with FLO, but I also needed to purchase electricity in advance before I could charge my car. This had to be accomplished through an App. Finally, and I mean finally, we got it all sorted out and Rebecca began charging. We went for breakfast and she was fully charged by the time we were finished.

I was now a proud account owner with FLO; and since FLO chargers seem to be the charger of choice along Nova Scotia highways, I figured I finally had this car charging thing all sorted out. HA!

Trip 2

This trip, with my friend Sue, was to a nice little nursery just past Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. A trip we should have been able to make without any issues. There is no charger for my car in Annapolis Royal so the plan was to visit the nursery then backtrack to Wolfville for lunch where there was a FLO charger at Acadia University. No problem. Except for the fact that the charger in Wolfville wouldn’t work. I tried it three times doing exactly what I did at the FLO charger in Moncton NB, but it just wouldn’t work. I called the help line and a lovely women tried really hard to help us. She walked me through a networking connecting process on the app and rebooted the machine several times but to no avail.

I was down to 40 kilometers. There was no way I could get home with only 40 kilometers. The FLO representative then suggested a charger at a local Inn but it wasn’t showing up on my Plug Share App, which meant that it wouldn’t work on my car. I began scrolling through the map on the App, with my fingers crossed, in search of another Level 3 charger that was close. Low and behold there was one only 14 km away. If I wasn’t an atheist, I would swear it was a miracle. We made it to the charger and topped Rebecca up to about 80% while we ate lunch. We were on our way home in about an hour.

Trip 3

Trip three was a solo excursion to Baddeck, Nova Scotia, a whopping 356 kilometers from my place, to attend a celebration of life event. I mapped out the journey in advance, making notes of the chargers I would likely have to use and how many kilometers to them and between them and from them to my destination. The day started out bright but then turned rainy. I was running the wipers and the radio. The drive was going smooth and I was  watching the kilometers as I went. By the time I was coming up to the final charger before Baddeck, I had calculated that I had twenty more kilometers than my notes suggested I needed to get to there. Twenty whole kilometers. Not being a complete idiot, I pulled into Monastery, a place with only a service station and a convenience store, to charge Rebecca before continuing my journey. Believe it or not, nothing went wrong. 

Later that evening, after the celebration of life and dinner out with some family I pulled up to the FLO charger next to where I was staying. It was in use. The plan was to charge to full before I went to bed. The guy using the charger said it wasn’t working so he was slow, Level 2, charging. No worries, I had enough kilometers to get back to Monastery. I headed for bed.

At 3:30 in the morning, after hours of tossing and turning, I decided to get up and slow charge Rebecca to top up the kilometers overnight. Low and behold, another not-quite miracle, the charger worked at Level 3. I couldn’t help but feel for the poor guy who was charging earlier. He obviously didn’t know the app workaround to start the fast charger that I had learned by calling the help number on my last EV adventure. The next day, I headed home and drove the entire 356 kms without stopping, arriving with 46 km to spare. A perfect trip.

It has been an interesting and eye-opening few weeks EV-ing around this beautiful land with Rebecca; but now I feel like staying close to home for a while.

Thank you for reading. 

Photos:  Jenn Stone 

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