When my husband signed the lease on his Nissan Leaf in February, I knew as much about electric cars as the leasing agent, which is to say, next to nothing.
My husband owns a recycling company, and has always driven environmentally friendly vehicles, and the Leaf was the culmination of years of research and a decade of waiting for the market to catch up with his dream of driving a pure electric vehicle. But this was to be our only car, and I’m a reporter, so naturally I had questions; questions that could only be answered by actually driving one for a few months.
Since then, the car has become such an obvious way to get around that I almost forget what all the fuss was about.
Except for the part where it has totally changed my life.
Driving an electric vehicle has connected us with our community in ways that gas vehicles inherently did not. For example, when we pull into a parking spot – charging stall or not – the people around us invariably start asking questions.
When was the last time a stranger in Vancouver started making friendly conversation with you that wasn’t drug-induced or related to dating? After five years of living in Vancouver, meeting these people and engaging in discussions about cars, the environment, and their day is a foreign and all together delightful part of the EV experience.
Often, the first question people ask is about the range; and it’s no wonder. It seems every article about electric vehicles begins with the same doom and gloom: “They’re great cars, except for the range issues.” The same could be said about gas vehicles – they’re great, except for the gas issues.
I’ll put it this way – I don’t know very many people who drive more than 140 kilometres in a day, and if you do (my husband just took the car to Oregon), there are charging stations. When you need to charge the battery, just like when you’re about to run out of gas, you “fill it up”. And in the meantime, you enjoy quiet, fume-free commuting.
During the first month, I experienced what is commonly referred to as range anxiety. The car was new to me, so I didn’t know if I could trust the GPS range maps and charge gauges, or even the kilometre signs on the side of the road. A 50km trip to visit my parents was the first time I took it out of the city, and I was nervous. But instead of getting stranded on the side of the road, I made it, and discovered that my hometown has a charging station. Right in the centre of town! Huzzah. I parked there and walked the 10 minutes down the hill to my parents’ house and enjoyed my dinner, knowing by the time I was done, my car would be back up to 100 per cent.
Which leads me to another way the Leaf – the poor man’s Tesla – has changed my life: I exercise more and drive less.
Since not every business has the means or opportunity to put a charge point right outside their building (although, anecdotally, doing so is good for business, as EV owners tend to spend money in the area around charging stations as they wait for their cars to juice) we often have to walk a few blocks to our final destination. This has the added benefit of allowing me to discover more areas of the city at street level instead of parking as close as humanly possible at a meter.
Also, many local community centres have charging stations, so we have gotten in the habit of going to Hillcrest pool or the West Van aquatic centre in the evenings and swimming for an hour or two while the car charges.
But isn’t it an inconvenience to have to charge the car, people ask?
I look at it much like owning any other battery-powered device. I don’t resent charging my laptop and cellphone, so why would I resent charging my electric car – this incredible machine that gets me from point A to point B without any emissions? We usually plug it in overnight, roughly every second night, so that it’s ready to go when we wake up in the morning. If we forget or get lazy, there are 550 public, Level 2 (240V) charging stations across BC to get us through our day.
One of the biggest developments the local EV community has been waiting on, though, is the installation of a DC fast charger in Vancouver. These charge the car in half an hour, and they already exist nearby in Surrey, Squamish, and Langley. The charger is coming in early 2015, though, and will be located at Empire Field near the PNE; which will be a huge boon to the quasi charge point desert that exists in East Vancouver. And, according to Sean Pander, Director of Sustainability for the City of Vancouver, the city has largely been spared the expense of this type of infrastructure.
“It actually hasn’t cost us very much,” he says. “We worked very closely with BC Hydro... and worked very hard to get the provincial incentives in place, both for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, as well as personal incentives for electric vehicles.”
But the recent decision by the province to end financial incentive programs such as purchase and charge point rebates has left City Hall thinking more could have been done.
“It is quite a disappointment for us because we think there’s a role for government incentives when it comes to transforming a market,” says Pander. “ You don’t have to keep them forever, but I think it was too early. The mayor wrote a letter of strong encouragement to maintain the incentives. It was working, but it wasn’t done yet.”
So that leaves education and accessibility to do the rest. Case and point: While no amount of zipping my parents around in an electric car and pointing out every charging station has convinced them to make the switch (despite a savings of almost $250 a month in fuel), something really special happened with my 17-year-old sister-in-law. She learned how to drive on our electric car.
She is part of the first generation to do so, and couldn’t stop talking about the car to her friends at school.
She says she wants her first car to be electric, and that is the coolest part of all.
Still interested in electric cars? Well...
More information about electric vehicles in BC can be found here: http://pluginbc.ca/charging-stations/public-charging/
To read about the West Coast Green Highway, a stretch of fast chargers that allows travel from Whistler to Mexico, go here: http://www.westcoastgreenhighway.com/
BC Hydro's electric vehicles FAQ: http://www.bchydro.com/about/sustainability/climate_action/plugin_vehicles/evfaqs.html
The Electric Vehicle Association of Vancouver: http://legacy.veva.ca/home/index.php
More information about the City of Vancouver's Greenest City goals: http://vancouver.ca/streets-transportation/electric-vehicles.aspx
Best EV app: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/plugshare/id421788217?mt=8
