https://motorillustrated.com/canada-will-need-200000-ev-charging-stations-by-2030/103252/ Motor Illustrated reported that the Ministry of Natural Resources has determined that Canada will need 200,000 EV Charging station by 2030 for a cost of $20 billion. Supposedly there are 16,640 EV chargers in Canada now with another 84,500 planned by 2027. They are trying to get at least 1 EV charger for 24 EVs. Hmmm, that means with a population of slightly over 38M then by extrapolation the US with it’s population of slightly over 331M will need close to 2,000,000. iPad ? Pro
maybe their number crunchers don't know Shinola about electric cars, that they can charge at home much of the time.
We have to ask is this a number based on reality? This is 1 public charger for every 24 cars. The article doesn't say if these are fast DC chargers or L2 chargers but they do show a picture of a fast EA charger. Let's assume that a driver goes 15K miles a year. (Canadians can convert this to km). And 2000 miles is on long trips needing fast chargers, the rest being at home. Assume 200 miles per charge so that is 10 charges per year. 3000 miles on long trips would be 15 charges. You (effectively) share this virtual charger with 23 other people, so one charger needs to supply 240 - 360 charges per year. That is one charge per day! A fast charge will take roughly 30 minutes and you're prime charging time is about 10 or 12 (maybe 16) hours per day, So one charger can serve 20 to 24 cars in a day. Even if some people only charged at public chargers they are over building by 10x IMO. Mike
Canada is large and the number stated may be to make certain that there are always chargers within range restrictions. JeffD
When almost everyone has a BEV having a few of the chargers located in lightly used places isn't a big deal and is a small number of chargers in total. I still think their math is off by 10x or more. They don't need 90% more to handle low traffic locations, IMO. Mike
Well California has about the same population (about 500,000 more), do they have 200,000? Nope, they have about 73,000 public and shared chargers, as of 2021, but they are planning another 123,000 by 2025. A report from the California Energy Commission says California (Report Shows California Needs 1.2 Million Electric Vehicle Chargers by 2030) will need 1.2 million by 2030. Canada is the second largest country in the world by land mass and California is 1.6% the size of Canada so maybe the Canadians underestimated? I would respectfully disagree with the Canadians as they didn't anticipate future foreign travelers, like New Yorkers which borders them and Californians, may need more by 2030. I would like to point out Canada may also become a climate migration destination.
If you include L2 chargers it might be a reasonable number since they are inexpensive and possibly rarely used Mike
I’d wager it’s underestimated BUT there’s a significant chunk of the population that are EV hesitant due to winter temps and long distances between towns (think Midwest) and also marketing has done well convince you need AWD so any RWD EVs will be a difficult sell; not impossible but difficult (and Lexus rep once told me they needed more than just the RX400h because the GS450h is RWD and doesn’t sell and the LSh is too expensive. The ISh is RWD too so it never came to Canada. He lamented that there weren’t enough AWD hybrids to sell to consumers). Anyway, I suspect most of the chargers will be located in populated places with a few in Atlantic Canada which is starting to see an uptick in xEV ownership (more provinces adding rebates are the main driver).
Yeah, much of Canada outside of the southern edge is pretty sparse, and effective charger coverage will always be a challenge. I believe the stat is something like 90% of the population lives less than 100km from the southern border, or something crazy like that. I am just outside of Toronto, which is the most urban area in Canada and even here I find the public L2 & (especially) L3 charger coverage is very poor. IMO, a big part of this stagnation is directly related to when the Conservatives and Doug Ford took over power in 2018 in Ontario and cancelled all the generous EV incentives the Liberals had in place. This lead to EV sales tanking (obviously) and then they even started taking out (!!) L2 chargers from commuter train lots because they were “under used”. No vision at all with those clowns… and they were just re-elected in 2022 and given a majority. But that is a conversation for another day… [/rant] Back on topic, there are many remote areas in Northern Canada where you can drive an hour+ between a gas stations, or see any other sign of civilization. A former co-worker in Northern Ontario told me GM vehicles are very popular up there, primarily because of OnStar satellite service… she told me it is not uncommon to go with zero cell coverage for 30-60 mins at a time… so having satellite communication could literally be a life or death situation if something bad happens (and Moose are deadly, nasty winter conditions, etc). There are also areas you cannot even drive to, because there are no roads to get there! (Try searching for Moose Factory, Ontario (nears James Bay) on Google maps and ask directions… “You can’t get there from here!”). You can only fly. Point is, it is hard to see any scenario with widespread EV charger coverage in Canada other than the more populated “90% regions”… it is hard to imagine ICE vehicles will ever disappear from remote areas like I describe above, since even gas station coverage is very poor today.
We’re pretty lucky in B.C. BC Hydro is building out stations both in urban and rural communities - they idea is that you can travel anywhere in B.C in an EV. Most are 50kW but they’re starting to plan and build 100kW stations. These are the most reliable stations. Mountains are a mixed blessing. On one hand, they eat up range. On the other hand, that means most valleys have a cluster of DCFCs as that’s where people will charge before heading out. So we tend to have choices for DCFCs when travelling within the province because the valley communities act as hubs. Your choice of ultra fast Electrify Canada or Petro Can or stay and eat while topping up at 50kW. Wine country doesn’t have many DCFCs but lot of ACs (and a number of wineries do offer charging while you taste or browse). I ended up covering about 80% of use that one day by hopping from AC to AC charger throughout the day.
