Does London need more fast-charging stations for electric vehicles?
CBC
When it comes to electric vehicles, Don Millar is an early and enthusiastic adopter.
As the president of London's Electric Vehicle Association (LEVA), the retired chiropractor has owned four EVs over the past eight years. For the six years before that, he drove a hybrid vehicle.
These days Millar owns a Tesla Model Y. With an $82,000 sticker price, the SUV is far from the cheapest EV available.
To help encourage other drivers to go electric, he likes to talk about EVs, answer questions about them and give people a ride in his Tesla. However, he also feels governments could be doing much more to help convert car buyers who are hesitant about moving away from gas-burning vehicles.
In a written submission to London city council last week about the city's proposed Climate Emergency Action Plan, Millar said a lack of Level 3 charging stations in London is a key barrier.
"If you drive just east of here and go to Ingersoll, the little old town of Ingersoll has a Level 3 charger right in its main square," he said. "Why doesn't London? London has no chargers in its main square."
So what's the difference between a Level 2 and a Level 3 charger?
In most cases, Level 3 stations can charge a vehicle in about an hour, while Level 2 stations can take up to eight hours to do the job.
Rolf Maurer is with ChargerCrew Canada, a Woodstock, Ont., based company that installs vehicle chargers, including 20 new Level 2 ChargePoint chargers installed on city property last fall.
Maurer said while Level 3 chargers do the job much faster, drivers pay a premium for that convenience: About 25 cents per minute of charging versus about two to three cents a minute for Level 2s.
Also, Level 3 chargers cost $100,000 to install versus about $10,000 for Level 2 chargers (although there is currently a rebate of up to $50,000 from the federal government for fast-chargers). Another important factor, Maurer points out that Level 3s need to be installed where they have direct access to a high-voltage power line, which limits where they can be located. Simply adding an outlet to an existing building doesn't work with Level 3s, which are also known as fast-chargers.
"In most cases, you need [Level 3s] in areas where people commute," said Maurer. "If you put them into shopping malls, they are completely underutilized. They're just too expensive to place in there."
Sneha Madur is an engineer with the City of London and an EV owner herself.
She said London currently has just under 200 charging ports throughout the city at 67 different locations. She said about 74 per cent of those charging locations are Level 2s.