How realistic is it to take a road trip with an electric vehicle?

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This week:

In our last issue, Emily Chung examined the greenest ways to travel across Canada, challenging the assumption that train travel is necessarily lighter on emissions than air travel in covering the distance of this vast country. 

In response to the article, a number of people wrote in, echoing this sentiment from reader Reynold Reimer: "I am disappointed to see no mention of electric cars in the piece about the greenest way to travel across Canada."

In our (humble) defence, the article was mainly concerned with the greenness of rail travel. But electric vehicles (EVs) are certainly a low-carbon option for seeing Canada, one we thought we'd explore this week.

EVs have no tailpipe emissions, but there are emissions involved in the manufacture of the vehicles, and quite often in the generation of the electricity needed to charge them. To properly understand the latter, you need to consider where you live. 

If you're in a province with a low-emissions grid — such as Manitoba (about 97 per cent hydro), Newfoundland and Labrador (96 per cent hydro), Quebec (94 per cent hydro) or Ontario (largely nuclear and hydro) — you can feel confident that your driving is not producing much pollution. 

Power generation is more emissions-intensive in provinces like Nova Scotia (mostly coal) and Alberta (mostly coal and natural gas). But a recent study by the International Council on Clean Transportation showed that if you factor in all aspects of the vehicle — from manufacture to maintenance to fuelling — even an EV charging on a so-called dirty grid still produces significantly fewer emissions over its lifetime than a gasoline-fuelled one.

Obtaining clean energy is one thing, but the idea that you can easily cover long distances in an EV is perhaps optimistic. It comes down to a familiar refrain: it's not the vehicles, but the infrastructure. While we're seeing improvements in Canada's charging network (with more coming, courtesy of Canada's Emissions Reduction Plan), the current situation is hardly ideal.

I know this from experience. I've been driving a Nissan Leaf since June 2019, and have undertaken a number of longish trips with my family. The car has a range of about 350 kilometres, although that will drop in cooler temperatures.

We recently completed a trip from Toronto to Montreal (about 550 kilometres) and back. As usual, we relied on the FLO app to guide us to available Level 3 (or fast-charge) stations. (Side note: Concerns have been raised that fast-charging your car too often weakens the battery, but the evidence is largely inconclusive.)

Of course, you have to find ways to amuse yourself for the 45 minutes to an hour that it takes to charge on a Level 3 machine. But beyond that, our journey was incident-free. 

But it isn't always this way. And part of the problem is the disconnect between what's promised and what's operational.

For several years now, Petro-Canada has been touting its own charging network with the slogan, "You've always been able to drive from the Rockies to the Maritimes. And now, you can do it in an electric vehicle." To that end, Petro-Canada has installed charging stations at a number of locations along the Trans-Canada Highway.