Canada

The parents of the youtuber Technology Connections life on a farm, yet they own an EV, and apparently they never use charging stations as the range on a second hand one is more than good enough for regular trips despite going to an entire city over.

Modern EVs have a range starting at 400km nowadays, and I did say that highway rest stops should have charging stations. No matter how quickly you need to get somewhere, it can't be so desperate that you can't afford a half hour stop every three or four hours. And if it is, it sounds like something you probably shouldn't be driving yourself for and instead be calling for an ambulance or helicopter.

In the end, my argument is that all this shit about not having enough fast charging stations is going about things backwards. Charging stations shouldn't be concentrated in cities, but instead along the highway, as EV range is great enough that daily transit doesn't require charging along the way, or even at the destination.

Try saying that when your commute involves spending an hour in rush hour going a single kilometer that a subway does in five minutes. Your situation isn't an argument against public transit, but for making decent public transit. Of course you're going to chose a car if there's no good public transit where you live. But what if there's a bus terminal five minute walk from where you live, or a subway station in ten minutes by bike with parking, and the rest of the trip takes half as long as it does by car, at a fraction of the yearly cost (gas, insurance, maintenance, licensing), and you can even sleep on the trip because you're not the one driving. Not to mention never having to worry about finding parking near your destination if you're not paying for a dedicated spot.

This is the reality for those of us who are able to use transit on a regular basis, and we only pay like 15 minutes a day from our wages for this service, not a week's worth every month to own a car. It's even better in the EU, like in Germany or Spain, since high speed rail means that you can go pretty much anywhere you want, even on vacation, without a car. And for cheap. One guy ran the numbers, and for 10% the cost of owning a car, he was able to get a yearly pass for both high speed rail and city transit in two different cities for the cost of owning and operating a car for a year.

I picked Longlac because there's a long stretch of pretty-much-nothing to the east of it until Calstock (Geraldton's to the west). Even if you're driving an ICE vehicle, you want to keep an eye on your gas if you're up that way. You'd need to be even more careful if you were driving an electric on a -36C January morning. Maybe one of the handful of campgrounds or tourist resorts along that stretch has a charger (if they don't, they should get some put in, 'cause they'd probably make a killing).

@Stochastic @danielquinn

EVs are an environmental disaster because:

one, even a minor accident makes the vehicle unrepairable, because the battery packs can't be tested to verify if they've been damaged

and

two, battery packs are worth up to 50% of an EVs' price, so replacing them is cost-prohibitive, so EVs are written off after 8-10 yrs (because the batteries are old tech at that point and can cost upwards of $15k to replace).

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratched-ev-battery-your-insurer-may-have-junk-whole-car-2023-03-20/

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/hybrids-evs/what-happens-to-the-old-batteries-in-electric-cars-a1091429417/

Ahhh, okay, so the data is fine, it's just the definition that isn't clear. They only speak of "fast charging" which can be type 2 or 3. Type 2 would generally be sufficient for local users, with type 3 being more important for trips that require a charge during, ie long distances.

With that in mind, I think type 3 chargers to highway volume may be a better metric. For example, a couple type 3s by the bridge and ferries in PEI is probably sufficient. Whereas Ontario needs significantly more along highways 11 and 17, when you spend a day crossing the province.

The total number of EV cars is less relevant than the number of EV cars that do long trips, or that would do trips if the charging potential was there.

Of course a single dedicated passenger rail line could eliminate the need all together.

There are Flo network chargers near the mall entrance closest to the Tesla chargers. One 50kw ccs and a Chademo plus two level 2 chargers.

Get the Plushare app to find charger locations.

Maybe 100 in total? Doesn't matter... It used to be a factory, and it's now mixed use. They did a few modernization projects (lighting, replaced old power-hungry equipment), and reduced their average power draw by 1MW. And there aren't that many electric cars, and they're not all there are the same time. When I need to charge, I plug it in, but schedule the charge to start at 1am when demand drops off.