Electric Car Infrastructure in Metro Vancouver

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by LeftCoaster

Tesla is in active discussions to land a large supercharging station downtown Vancouver.

Their network of chargers is only going to grow and grow, especially with the success of the model 3.

Interesting if they are changing the model to have "in city charging". I wonder if this will come in conjunction with a "pay per use" type model.

I agree they are expanding their supercharging network around the world at an amazing pace.

[SFUVancouver]

I am quite serious about buying an EV in the coming years, with the Model 3 being the standout leader in my preferences.

[Alex Mackinnon]

I think BC Hydro would be the best organization to roll out chargers. They already operate the street lights in most parts of the province. If they could upgrade the wiring for the street lights and include a pay per kWh charger, they could make EVs accessible for just about everyone.

Instead of dealing with a 3rd party, just have a system of paying hydro direct for their costs. An RFID card like compass or chargepoint would work perfect.

This would also let hydro implement load balancing should they need it.

[mezzanine]

I remember the press about the v-poles:



link. Designed by douglas coupland!

Last I heard, council was exploring viability.

[mezzanine]

As city council explores V-Pole technology, which combines light, communication and transportation service in street fixtures, Telus has launched a $1-million project that brings aspects of the idea to the West End.

The Vancouver park board this week approved a Telus plan to build three so-called “monopoles” in the city’s West End that would allow Vancouverites to charge their electric vehicles and bolster wireless service. Telus spokesman Shawn Hall said the project involving the monopoles, which are smaller than a light standard, appears to be a first of its kind.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle4254214/



link. Not sure if this is rendering, but the actual station looks like this, which has been built at sunset beach.

[mezzanine]

Don't have an EV, but I really like the regenerative brakes on my hybrid. It stops on a dime and the pads have lasted twice as long as my last non-hybrid car and are still going.

I'd probably get another hybrid until there is further maturation of the EV market and the infrastructure.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

The Bolt dimensions are close to the Spark, so I'm not sure it will meet your space/size needs.

The Bolt is a little larger than my Prius C, and it has a lot deeper cargo compartment because there's literally nothing between the rear wheels - no batteries, no fuel tank, no exhaust system. In fact it looks like it might even have a spare tire well - still waiting for confirmation on that.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by Alex Mackinnon

I think BC Hydro would be the best organization to roll out chargers. They already operate the street lights in most parts of the province. If they could upgrade the wiring for the street lights and include a pay per kWh charger, they could make EVs accessible for just about everyone.

Instead of dealing with a 3rd party, just have a system of paying hydro direct for their costs. An RFID card like compass or chargepoint would work perfect.

This would also let hydro implement load balancing should they need it.

Yes they should manage it, but sadly BC Hydro doesn't take the lead on much around here. I think there are some complicated rules around the re-sale of electricity, which clearly Hydro can already do.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Porfiry

I don't get that. Yes, it does depend on which EV you get and your budget, but right now you can buy a Tesla that gets nearly 600km at highway speeds. That's better range than my gas-burning SUV. Also, unlike an internal combustion engine, electric motors don't degrade in performance at altitude. My SUV does struggle up parts of the Coq. Finally, EVs regenerate power when descending, so you do actually gain back some power when you come down the mountain pass.

One thing working greatly in favor of EVs in BC: cheap, clean electricity.

Are you sure you can? Even on Tesla's site if you play with the tool and put it at 120km/h at at 20 degrees outside you get 406 km for the 90D, the 70D gets you 323 km (turn on the AC and its 385, 316).

Throw in some hills, and the occasional slowdown to 60km/h because a truck is passing a truck up hill, then accellerate back to 120 uphill, and then what is your range like?

The Tesla should make it. According to this site http://www.jurassictest.ch/GR/
It can just make it between Hope and Kelowna but with under 20% charge remaining (that's cutting it a bit close for my taste).

And that is for a Tesla. I would hope spending $100,000 on a car means I can take it places.

But most of us don't have that much money to spend on a car. If I buy a fuel efficient regular car for $25,000, my capital and operating costs will never come close to the cost of owning a Model S.

Every other car I checked on that site that's available in Canada wouldn't make it between Hope and Merrit at the posted speed limit, and only a couple would start to reach Merrit if I dropped the speed down to bellow 80km/h. Most won't even make it from Surrey to Hope at the posted speed limit.

And it's all fine and dandy to compare a Tesla to a "gas guzzling SUV", but what about a midsize or compact? My Altima with a CVT can climb the Coq at 120 km/h at a steady 3000rpm. I have made the trip from Surrey to Kelowna and back on a single tank (but typically I stop in Abbotsford, top up, then stop in Abbotsford on the way back to top up for cheap).

If I do stop for gas once, that's a five minute stop. How many times do you have to stop to charge up a even a Tesla on the same trip, and how much time do you spend charging? And what about something like a Leaf or Focus? You would have to charge before getting to Hope, at Hope, maybe make it to the summit and charge from a wall plug at Zopkios, charge in Merrit, and maybe make Kelowna if I drive bellow 80km/h? How long does my usual 3:40 minute drive take? And how long if I can't find a level 2 charger?

That's what I mean by BC isn't great for electric cars, at least not yet. Vancouver yeah. If you can live your driving life entirely in Vancouver, an EV is awesome (as long as you have regular access to charging). If you have a very regular commute then an EV is probably perfect. But a Tesla model S is out of reach for most of us (even the Model 3 when you factor in exchange, taxes and necessary upgrades to get the right amount of battery).

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

Are you sure you can? Even on Tesla's site if you play with the tool and put it at 120km/h at at 20 degrees outside you get 406 km for the 90D, the 70D gets you 323 km (turn on the AC and its 385, 316).

The 90D is now rated for 294mi / 474km by the EPA. Vancouver to Kamloops is 343km. So it should do it easily without stopping.

In the winter, maybe a 10 minute stop in Hope would be a good idea at 150kW, that's another ~125km range. The 70D would be similar.

Going uphill drastically increases your power consumption, but going downhill reverses most of the drain. Coming down from the Coq summit in my Volt I can usually get somewhere around 15km of operation before the gas engine turns back on.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Porfiry

One thing working greatly in favor of EVs in BC: cheap, clean electricity.

Also, that is a bit subjective. Site C is going to cost $9 billion to set up. It will be enough to power 450,000 homes. If they weren't financed through debt and selling off excess or via the general taxpayer and not ratepayers directly, and instead you got together and charged every household an upfront construction cost, that's $20,000 per household.

The dams also have a large environmental impact. Making concrete isn't exactly "green" and the large swaths of land that are consumed by the reservoirs take away land that can be harvested (forestry and farms) and also release greenhouse gasses as the trees drowned by them slowly rot and the turbines and spillways disturb algae releasing methane.

At the moment I support Site C, and dams in general as they are better than many alternatives, and currently improve the situation. But don't fool yourself into thinking they are perfect. A similar amount of generating power could be made from solar farms costing less than $3 billion. India's 4000MW project is costing them $4 billion (almost 4 times the capacity of site C at half the price). And the cost will only get lower as technology becomes more efficient, whereas building dams will only get more expensive.

[BCPhil]

Originally Posted by Alex Mackinnon

The 90D is now rated for 294mi / 474km by the EPA. Vancouver to Kamloops is 343km. So it should do it easily without stopping.

In the winter, maybe a 10 minute stop in Hope would be a good idea at 150kW, that's another ~125km range. The 70D would be similar.

Going uphill drastically increases your power consumption, but going downhill reverses most of the drain. Coming down from the Coq summit in my Volt I can usually get somewhere around 15km of operation before the gas engine turns back on.

Tesla says it's a bit different different.

https://www.teslamotors.com/en_CA/models

At 120km/h (the posted and defacto speed limit most of the trip) and at 20 degrees it's a 406 km range on the $121,000 90P. That's cutting it close on flat land. Drop it down to 0 degrees and turn on the heat and the 70D gets 295km.

If you go to Kelowna which is 390 km trip, you slap on the fancy 21" wheels and turn on the AC and you won't make it. Throw in some rain or a headwind or colder temperatures......

Sure, if you do it properly you can regenerate while going downhill. The problem is you have to travel more than 80% of the entire trip before you get a significant down hill portion. If that climb was at the 50% point and the rest of the trip was downhill, that would be a lot better. On the way to Kelowna you spend 340km mostly going uphill or on flat land.

The problem is that most EVs can't make it from Hope to the descent into Merrit on a full charge. If you can't make it to the downhill portion, you can't really brag how much energy you get back from it.

You are going to need charging stations all along the Coquihalla at every rest stop and brake check to make EVs work for people who aren't super rich. And I don't even know if there is enough existing electrical infrastructure to actually make that happen.

BC hydro has a story about someone driving Vancouver to Calgary in a Tesla. He stopped 5 times. Remember, that's a $100,000+ car. And he laid over in Sicamous. https://www.bchydro.com/news/unplug_...omparison.html

[Porfiry]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

Are you sure you can? Even on Tesla's site if you play with the tool and put it at 120km/h at at 20 degrees outside you get 406 km for the 90D, the 70D gets you 323 km (turn on the AC and its 385, 316).

At 20°, 90km/h, the 90D is rated at 577km.
At 20°, 100km/h, the 90D is rated at 512km.
At 20°, 110km/h, the 90D is rated at 456km.

Speed makes a huge difference. There's also reportedly a 100D coming in the near future. Battery capacities are only gong to increase and prices are only going to decrease.

Throw in some hills, and the occasional slowdown to 60km/h because a truck is passing a truck up hill, then accellerate back to 120 uphill, and then what is your range like?

I don't know, my point is that on flat ground a Tesla has better range than my current gas SUV. The delta between the two will actually increase in mountainous terrain because, as I said, my SUV doesn't recoup power going downhill.

The point is that your comment about "vast distances between communities" is equally applicable to my gas car. I would need to fill up every 400-500km regardless of whether I get a Tesla or stick with my current gas SUV. Yes, charging takes more time, but if you plan things properly, so you're charging while having a meal for example, it's less of an issue.

[Porfiry]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

BC hydro has a story about someone driving Vancouver to Calgary in a Tesla. He stopped 5 times. Remember, that's a $100,000+ car. And he laid over in Sicamous. https://www.bchydro.com/news/unplug_...omparison.html

Well, that article is 2 years old and was written before Superchargers were built on the route.

"When [Superchargers are built], says Gates, it'll be possible to do the drive in one day, because the Tesla charging stations can get the cars to 80 per cent of capacity in about 30 minutes."

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

link. Not sure if this is rendering, but the actual station looks like this, which has been built at sunset beach.

I built this charger. The city didn't like it though, so I had to disassemble it. The property line wasn't quite where I thought it was.



Street charging is going to be a hard issue to crack without a big utility running the show.

[logan5]

LOL!

Is there enough juice in those light posts to charge a car overnight?

Rigging something up at each light post and utility pole would be pretty easy.

[logan5]

Actually, just set up something similar to parking meters. Put your credit card in to buy a certain amount of juice.

[GMasterAres]

Anyone have any thoughts on how EVs will crack the Strata issue in Metro-Vancouver? Case and point, the majority of new condo developments do not include EV charging stations. Also if they did, it would only be a few and you couldn't account for a lot of vehicles.

For a Strata council to retrofit after the fact can cost upwards of $5000+ per charging station and I've found in talking with residents that even those with EVs are unwilling to pay the fee themselves to have a station installed in their parking stall.

If developers were instead to build into the parking EV options it would push up condo prices even greater as they would need to compensate for the large expense.

In our strata here we have no EV stations but we've actually had the odd EV or two parked overnight in the underground (friends of a resident) and they plug in to the regular wall socket. This has become a point of contention whenever it happened because other residents will argue that they are subsidizing this person for "free fuel" since it is strata paid electricity and the 1 owner (out of 194 units) is effectively only paying 1/194th of the expense.

Granted the power usage is likely quite low overall, but it still becomes a point of contention. Curious what you all think, especially those living in Vancouver where I think EVs are a bit more prevalent to date.

Personally, I still see EVs as a commuter vehicle around town and I worry about the long-term reliability and cost of ownership. Will they for example last 10-15 years? i know our Hybrids at work are needing battery replacements and they are 6-7 years old now and it is expensive. Replacing the batteries also completely undoes any possible fuel savings you may have realized by charging by electricity and EVs have even more batteries than Hybrids. I guess you could just replace your vehicle every 5 years but then you're paying for a vehicle all the time.

On the flip side, I have a feeling prices will continue to drop as more are mass produced and become more common and technology will only improve. I still think Hydrogen is the ultimate goal for vehicles, but there are still challenges with that beyond those shared by EVs and we'll likely see fully autonomous vehicles before Hydrogen cars become a practical reality as EVs have recently.

That said, they've certainly come a long ways and given some of the EV based super cars you're seeing being made today, I definitely think they are here to stay.

Those against Site C dam though may argue the point that the energy is cheap in BC. *shrug*

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by jhausner

Anyone have any thoughts on how EVs will crack the Strata issue in Metro-Vancouver? Case and point, the majority of new condo developments do not include EV charging stations. Also if they did, it would only be a few and you couldn't account for a lot of vehicles.

Aren't new condos in BC required to have a certain number or percentage of parking spots either with EV chargers or with pre-installed wiring for them? Pre-wiring is a huge advantage and lowers the installation cost considerably.

EDIT - The City of Vancouver requires that 20% of condo parking stalls have receptacles fed by 240V/40A wiring for charging and the electrical room must have space for installing the equipment necessary to supply power to chargers at every parking stall.

For the older condos we need a law like they have in some states that says the condo association can't block the installation of an EV charger if the owner pays for it. It can still be expensive, but at least it provides for the possibility.

EDIT - Plug-in BC will fund 75% of the cost of EV charger installation in multi-unit buildings to a maximum of $4,500. But I don't think the condo association is obligated to allow it.

Personally, I still see EVs as a commuter vehicle around town and I worry about the long-term reliability and cost of ownership. Will they for example last 10-15 years? i know our Hybrids at work are needing battery replacements and they are 6-7 years old now and it is expensive.

What kind of hybrids are those? Priuses have a pretty good reputation for reliability - Consumer Reports tested a 10-year-old Prius with 200,000 miles (over 300,000km) on it and found it performed basically identically to the original. My Prius C is only a few years old so far, but it's been rock solid.

Car batteries, especially Li-Ion ones, are very dependent on how they're handled by the car. For best longevity the car shouldn't fully charge them or fully discharge them, and it should keep the batteries cool when they get hot and warm them when they get cold. I think there have been some reports of issues with Leaf batteries in hot climates because they just use air cooling, while batteries in cars like the Volt that have active thermal management seem to be building a pretty good reputation for longevity. There's a US Volt that's racked up 300,000 miles, over 100,000 of them on the batteries, that hasn't had any loss of all-electric range.

But all-electric vehicles haven't been around long enough yet for us to really see how they're going to hold up. The best reassurances are the manufacturer's warranties, which are typically 8 years or more.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by jhausner

Personally, I still see EVs as a commuter vehicle around town and I worry about the long-term reliability and cost of ownership. Will they for example last 10-15 years? i know our Hybrids at work are needing battery replacements and they are 6-7 years old now and it is expensive. Replacing the batteries also completely undoes any possible fuel savings you may have realized by charging by electricity and EVs have even more batteries than Hybrids. I guess you could just replace your vehicle every 5 years but then you're paying for a vehicle all the time.

6-7 years? I'm not sure where you work, but if you talk to the average taxi driver, they will tell you how the Prius hybrids are the best cars they've ever had in terms of maintenance and longevity/reliability.