Canada needs hundreds of thousands of public EV charging ports. Who is going to build them?

Most of the people who come to visit Debbie Nightingale's Ontario farm are lured in by a chance to get up close and personal with her herd of friendly goats. But some visit for more practical reasons: to charge their electric vehicles.

"We have people who come on a regular basis because they know we have these," Nightingale said, gesturing to the two-port EV-charging station she installed last year with the help of a federal tourism recovery grant.

As part of the federal government's net-zero targets for the future, it is aiming for all new light-duty car and passenger truck sales to be zero emission by 2035, which will require a nationwide network of public charging ports.

"We think sustainability is really important, and when we looked around, we didn't see many other EV chargers in the area. So we thought it would be great to have one locally," Nightingale said.

She pulled out a map to demonstrate her point. Nightingale's farm is in Newtonville, roughly 100 kilometres northeast of Toronto. Around it, her map reveals only a handful of far-flung public EV charging stations.

Ian Everdell, who lives nearby in Port Hope, said he appreciates the new addition to the goat farm after he and his wife bought their second EV.

"We specifically got one that we knew we could get into and out of Toronto on a full charge, because it is still a challenge sometimes to find a charger," he said.

"When you do find one, sometimes there's a vehicle already plugged in there. There's 18 different apps that you might have to use. They don't always work."

The lack of chargers across the country is a big concern for Brian Kingston, president and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association.

"We currently do not have enough charging infrastructure to support the EVs that are coming onto the roads today," he said from his Ottawa office.

More concerning for Kingston is the massive expansion of public charging infrastructure needed to meet the 2035 zero-emission vehicle targets of what could be upwards of 12 million electric vehicles on the roads.

Natural Resources Canada estimates that depending on the availability of home charging, Canada will need between 442,000 and 469,000 public charging ports by 2035. It says that as of Dec. 1, there are currently 10,425 charging stations and 25,246 charging ports based on data from the Electric Charging and Alternative Fuelling Station Locator.

In August, an internal report found that fewer than one in five federally funded chargers were operational.

"There's a big gap between what we currently have and what is required," Kingston said. "And if we're going to hit these very aggressive sales targets, we need to see a massive build-out of charging infrastructure."