This post serves to memorialize our first electric car road trip, and the seven things we learned along the way. For that reason, it's mostly going to be about public electric car chargers... high excitement indeed.
We wanted to go to Squamish for the weekend to visit visiting friends, and also resident friends. It's not quite winter yet, the weather forecast looked good, and it's a 1000 km round trip which isn't exactly cheap to do in Big Stupid. So, we (mostly I) thought for reasons of economy, science, and adventure we should take StEVe the electric car.
I looked at Google map. I looked at Plugshare. I did some rudimentary arithmetic, and came to the conclusion we would need to charge the car somewhere after conquering the wilds of the Okanagan Connector, and again somewhere before we got to Vancouver. This seemed almost too simple, which of course it was.
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| Fast chargers everywhere - we are living in the future already |
After a reasonably prompt start we wasted an appropriate amount of time getting stuck in traffic in Kelowna, doing Kelowna chores, and buying food... then we headed up The Connector and found the decent weather, rather like myself, had taken the afternoon off.
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| Not quite the road conditions I was hoping for |
Learning experience #2 was that not all fast chargers are as fast as you would expect. Whilst finding car chargers of any kind on a mountain pass in BC is a wondrous thing, we were later to see that Loon lake doesn't offer your fastest charging fast chargers... but at least we could make a snowman.
Learning experience #3 came on the descent from The Connector. Last winter I learned that regenerative breaking and snow aren't friends - lift your foot too fast and you lock up the front wheels, with the only way out of that situation being to step back on the "gas". Whilst that sounds thrilling, I'm not a fan, so I just turn off the re-gen in slippery conditions and use those old-fashioned brake things. Of course this means no battery charging on the downhill. Disappointment.
So off we went again. Unfortunately The Connector was only the first mountain pass of the afternoon as the joys of the Coquihalla (or indeed the "Highway Thru Hell") came next. Predictably, a thrilling mix of snow, rain, and general dankness was served up and StEVe's battery suffered the consequences. As unlikely of a place as Loon Lake seemed for car chargers, Britton Creek is even more so. Three gleaming actually-fast chargers in a row cranking out 50 kW, in the snow, surrounded by mountains and trees. How convenient.
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| Some loons, charging their car at Loon Lake |
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| ...and this was before only 2 hours into the 11 hour trip west. |
Two chargers checked off, we stopped in Hope for a much needed coffee break and plugged the car into the thoughtfully placed charger on the street where the Blue Moose is. At some point on this trip I had the thought that keeping our Jetboil stove in the car for these trips would make coffee preparation while charging a thing in those wilderness rest-stops. That thought may have come on the way home, but for the sake of storytelling continuity let's pretend I had it while drinking coffee and charging the car.
At this point, with the perils of the mountains behind us, our charging and driving plan was complicated by news of over an hour delay on the highway heading into Vancouver. Rigorous Googling revealed we could divert into Langley and charge the car at either a Harley Davidson dealership on a BMW dealership. This all seemed rather unlikely, but we chose to vorsprung durch technik and visit BMW. That decision appeared to have been a good one, until the charger stopped working and told us to go away. We had planned to stop for groceries at a shop with a charger in the parking lot anyway, so undaunted we continued.
Learning experience #4 came in the form of the realization that "fast" is a relative term. The Superstore "fast" charger did at least have the decency to have a sign on it apologizing for it being so slow. Having bought some bananas (probably containing more energy than what the charger managed to add to our battery) among other grocery items, we headed for Horseshoe Bay in search of a charger that could help us get to Squamish.
To cut the rest of this part of the tale short, we made it to Squamish, having stopped to charge the car no less than six times... though only successfully doing any charging at four of them. Given the experimental and rather ambitious nature of our journey of 500 km over two mountain passes, in the snow, with four people*, five bikes*, and a huge roof-box, that didn't seem all that bad. At least we didn't get towed.
*Some small people and small-people bikes included
We had an excellent weekend and over Saturday night charged our car the way nature intended... in a driveway, while we drank beer inside with friends. In contrast, according to the internet, "plug rage" is now a thing and people don't like to charge their cars at home, or their friend's houses. Learning experience #5 was the confirmation (via true facts) that using public chargers is only a thing to do when you're on the way somewhere and stopping there when you don't need to is just silly.
*Some small people and small-people bikes included
We had an excellent weekend and over Saturday night charged our car the way nature intended... in a driveway, while we drank beer inside with friends. In contrast, according to the internet, "plug rage" is now a thing and people don't like to charge their cars at home, or their friend's houses. Learning experience #5 was the confirmation (via true facts) that using public chargers is only a thing to do when you're on the way somewhere and stopping there when you don't need to is just silly.
Before long, Sunday afternoon appeared and in setting off home we had a few things going for us. Better weather, a better idea of what we were getting ourselves into, and calculations courtesy of the incredible ABetterRoutePlanner, (learning experience #6) which told us to do this:
Passing through Abbotsford, things were going incredibly well... so we decided to ignore the route planner calculations and hope we could make it to, you guessed it, Hope. Coasting into Hope with all the low battery warnings flashing (familiar to us from our arrival at Britton Creek on Friday), we plugged StEVe into his feeding hose and went to the playgound, and then the Blue Moose. Probably our slickest charging performance so far.
Next stop was Britton Creek, and from there we (I) thought we could make it all the way to Kelowna, pick up a little more charge and then home. Then "range anxiety" got the better of me and I imagined being stuck on The Connector in the cold and dark, with only hungry bears for company. So... we stopped at Loon Lake for 15 mins extra power. This turned out to be completely unnecessary (learning experience #7) since the enormous downhill into Kelowna gave us back around 50 km of range - which was sadly not quite enough to get us home. Sigh. So we made another 15 min stop at our first paid charger of the trip. This is where the $3.68 cost of our journey was incurred, and I'm sure will become the norm for public fast charging. After all, nothing worth having comes for free.
Final conclusions from our experiment were that even in the cold, with a lot of stuff, big mountains, and completely compromised aerodynamics - Vernon to Vancouver can be done with two 45 minute stops and a 15 minute one. One of these stops (Hope) has a playground and a coffee shop, and another (Britton Creek) would be nice for a picnic if it wasn't freezing. All in all, I see potential for electric road-tripping, just not in the snow.
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| Route-tee-toot |
Next stop was Britton Creek, and from there we (I) thought we could make it all the way to Kelowna, pick up a little more charge and then home. Then "range anxiety" got the better of me and I imagined being stuck on The Connector in the cold and dark, with only hungry bears for company. So... we stopped at Loon Lake for 15 mins extra power. This turned out to be completely unnecessary (learning experience #7) since the enormous downhill into Kelowna gave us back around 50 km of range - which was sadly not quite enough to get us home. Sigh. So we made another 15 min stop at our first paid charger of the trip. This is where the $3.68 cost of our journey was incurred, and I'm sure will become the norm for public fast charging. After all, nothing worth having comes for free.
Final conclusions from our experiment were that even in the cold, with a lot of stuff, big mountains, and completely compromised aerodynamics - Vernon to Vancouver can be done with two 45 minute stops and a 15 minute one. One of these stops (Hope) has a playground and a coffee shop, and another (Britton Creek) would be nice for a picnic if it wasn't freezing. All in all, I see potential for electric road-tripping, just not in the snow.
