How do EV batteries hold up during a Saskatchewan winter? What's the current state of Canada's charging network? In this episode, join host Tara Jean Stevens in conversation with Kenneth Bokor, host of the popular YouTube series EV Revolution, and Emma Jarratt, executive editor of Electric Autonomy Canada to learn about the realities of driving an electric vehicle in Canada – including the surprising advantage an EV can bring to cold-weather driving.
How do EV batteries hold up during a Saskatchewan winter? What's the current state of Canada's charging network? In this episode, join host Tara Jean Stevens in conversation with Kenneth Bokor, host of the popular YouTube series EV Revolution, and Emma Jarratt, executive editor of Electric Autonomy Canada to learn about the realities of driving an electric vehicle in Canada – including the surprising advantage an EV can bring to cold-weather driving.
VARIOUS VOICES:
What's the difference between a PHEV and BEV? Will the cold Canadian winter shorten my battery's life? Where will I be able to charge my car?
TARA JEAN STEVENS
I'm Tara Jean Stevens and this is Road to Electric - an original podcast powered by Mazda.
I've been thinking a lot lately about driving. My kids -- like a lot of young people -- are concerned about climate change, and have even been asking if, and when, we'll be switching out our family car for an electric vehicle.
And I don't know what to tell them. I don’t want to tell them, “Hey this is an adult thing, there's a lot of contradictory information out there, and it can be hard to know where to begin.”
Which brings us to this podcast.
Over the next four episodes, I'm on a journey to separate fact from fiction when it comes to electric vehicles -- and I'm taking you along for the ride as I try to figure out the Road to Electric.
As someone who grew up in a world of mufflers and horsepower, I have to admit – all the terminology surrounding different EVs needs some explanation.
So we’re going to start off with a little primer. A glossary of some of the terms you’re going to hear a lot over the next four episodes.
VOICE: What’s the difference between a PHEV, a BEV and an MHEV?
These are a few different categories of electric vehicle. The PH stands for plug-in hybrid, the MH stands for “mild hybrid”, and the B is for battery.
BEVs are powered entirely by an electric rechargeable battery, with no gas power backup.
Plug-in hybrid EVs draw most of their power from an electric battery, but are also equipped with a fuel engine that can power the car if needed. And MHEVs - mild hybrid electric vehicles - draw their power from a combination of battery and gas.
VOICE: What are EV enthusiasts talking about when they’re talking about ICE vehicles?
This is one I’m still getting used to, since “ICE” usually means something quite different to Canadian drivers! But in the context of EVs, an ICE vehicle is just the opposite. It stands for “internal combustion engine,” – aka fully gas-powered cars.
So we are now armed with a few vocab words and we’re ready to take the first step on this EV journey of discovery.
The first person we’re going to meet has helped a LOT of Canadians find their footing in this brave new world of electric vehicles.
Kenneth Bokor’s EV Revolution show has racked up more than a million views on YouTube since starting five years ago, and he has become a go-to source on the realities of electric vehicles in Canada.
So on this journey, this series, we are examining myths about EV driving in Canada, and I'd love to know what you think are the most common misconceptions.
KEN BOKOR
Yeah, you know, you touched upon a few in your intro, you know, can I actually, you know, drive it in the winter? Can I take it through a car wash? Will it get me to work back and forth? What happens when I run out of power and I'm in the middle of the highway?
These are kind of the most common questions that we get from people that are starting to think about EVs. And what I would say is, you know, there is an EV for everybody at some point in time, depending on your driving, your use cases and more importantly, where you are in Canada, because we do have a pretty big country and there isn't a lot of ev charging infrastructure when you start going into more of the northern latitudes.
So when I talk to people and I try to answer their particular use cases, I do dig into a little bit of what's unique for them, but in most cases, an EV, either a plug-in hybrid or an electric vehicle can fit.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So if there's an electric vehicle for everybody and the information is all out there, why are these misconceptions spreading? Why is there so much concern? Where's that coming from?
KEN BOKOR
Yeah, it's a great question. You know, some conspiracy theorists will say it's, you know, big oil and all this kind of stuff, but I don't think so. It's just a lack of information and, you know, people, we don't like to change as a species, right? We've had internal combustion vehicles for well over a century now, and we're used to them and we know that there's a gas station almost on every corner.
We know that whole experience. We know we have to sink a lot of money into these cars to keep 'em running for the 10 to 12 to 15 years that the average Canadian keeps a vehicle. But we're used to that. That's just a known fact. So this is something radically different. You know, EVs are a disruption in the automotive industry like we've never seen before, you know, since the horse and carriage.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
I think here in Canada one valid concern we have is the potential loss of battery range in cold weather. A very Canadian concern with EVs. What's your response to that?
KEN BOKOR
Yeah, absolutely correct, you know, and that's just the physics of batteries today. Even with your cell phone, you go outside, you're skiing for the day, you notice that your phone has half the charge. It’s usually just the way the physics of batteries are. So when I talk to people about that, I say, you, well, you know, you can still buy an EV that can do 250 or 300 kilometers even in minus 20, minus 30 degree temperatures.
Is that enough for your daily range? So when I talk to people, I try to size out like a worst case scenario. Um, you know, I've driven in minus 20, minus 30 degrees, and by the way, they start fine. You just either press on a pedal or press a start button, like a light switch, and off you go.
So you don't have to worry about “Will it start in the cold?” So it's all a matter of finding a vehicle that meets your daily requirements that will still give you the range and the distance that you need to go under those severe circumstances. But EVs today have thermal management systems, which means they keep the batteries warm in the winter and they keep the batteries cool in the summer.
Batteries are kinda like my wife, they like to be at around 20, 21 degrees Celsius, you know, so, if you keep 'em at that temperature, they operate very well and give you the best range. So that's what good thermal systems will provide today to, to keep them safe for driving in those cold temperatures.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So, Ken, I know that you've been reporting on EVs for five years, and you recently made the prediction that 2023 is the year of the EV, which I feel is a really big statement. So what's behind this prediction?
KEN BOKOR
Well, a few elements.. One of them is where the markets got to at this point with the proliferation of electric vehicles that we see today. I'm sure anybody listening to this can drive to work and probably notice many different brands of electric vehicles that are out there today. Many more than we would've seen only three, four, or five years ago. So we're seeing a lot more on the roads today.
We're also seeing a lot more advertising. I mean, the last few Super Bowls have had big ads about electric vehicles for many companies. That's something that we never had three or four years ago.
So more advertising, more in your face information about electric vehicles on a day-to-day basis. Now we also are seeing the numbers that show a market share, specifically in the US, the US is kind of the main North American indicator anyway, because in Canada our market is about 2 million new vehicles a year.
That would be really good, for Canada, whereas in the US it's about 18 to 20, so about 10 times the market size, but they've hit 5% market share for EV adoption. And when I say EV, I mean plugin. So with a plugin, hybrid or an all-electric, at the end of 2022.
Now 5% doesn't sound like a lot. But if you look at some well-known brands that have many, many different vehicles, not just EVs, but a lot of internal combustions that only have 5% market share, and they've been in business for 30, 40 years - that dictates that EVs have now hit a threshold of recognizability and that consumers are starting to take them seriously.
So it's not just a fad. It's not just something that's gonna pass, where we see a couple here and there. So all these kind of things lead me to state that I believe that 2023 is the year of the EV and it's a great market for consumers because there's now dozens and dozens of models and trims that you can buy here in Canada that are all electric, for example, that we didn't have just a short couple of years ago.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
And you absolutely touched on this in that answer, but when it comes to widespread EV adoption, where are we right now in Canada?
KEN BOKOR
Yeah, we are at about 9%.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Is that impressive to you?
KEN BOKOR
I guess so. We're a little more conservative people, right? We don't typically follow the American trends. American markets always react and move faster and you know, uh, I'm in this as my real job, so I see that in that market sector and many others. I think it's a good number. I think we could be doing better and I believe we will now that there's more. I mean, I can't watch TV without seeing an ad about electric vehicles. But to put that market into perspective, and how much room we have to grow, we have about 27 million LDV or light duty vehicles on the road in Canada today.
These are pickups, SUVs, sedans, hatchbacks, uh, stuff that's still running, uh, that, you know, that's kept together by duct tape or whatever. How many vehicles are registered in Canada and on the road today? Out of that, only about 260,000 of that 27 million are cars that have a plug.
So the market potential for growth in Canada is huge, and that's where it takes some time, for those fleets to transition, for these older cars to finally die off and become non-useful. And then for those shoppers to go and buy an EV to replace them with it. So we've got a long way to go and the number's decent, but I would like to see it higher.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
What else do you think could make people more comfortable with making the shift?
KEN BOKOR
Well, I think the main barrier to EV adoption today is education. It used to be things like range anxiety and lack of charging infrastructure, and those come up as well, but you know the average brand new, all electric vehicles sold today can go 300 miles. You hear that in commercials and through auto journalists and that's kind of table stakes now. That's the main standard. That's more than enough for the majority of people to do a day a day run, you know, to go to work, to do their errands, to go whatever they need to go. So we have many manufacturers that are providing products at those levels.
So I think range anxiety is a thing of the past. When you talk to people who actually buy an EV, especially all electrics, 90% of them do most of their charging at home. So home charging is kind of a hidden secret here for EVs, because you can't put fuel into your ICE vehicle while it's parked in your garage overnight. It doesn't fuel itself. But you can with an EV, just like your cell phone, your laptop, your iPad, whatever, plug it in overnight. You've got your charge and the next day you can get that 400, 450 kilometers, whatever it is, every day. And, off you go to the races out.
And another driver is the cost, right? We're going through inflation, we're going to go through a recession, depending on who you talk to. Prices are high. Gas is always up there. The cost to home charge an EV to get 400 kilometers overnight is about five bucks. And when I tell people that, they think I'm crazy, but our electricity - especially here in Ontario - is so cheap.
Most of the provinces have very good off-peak rates for charging overnight. So that $5 could be $6, could be $4 depending on what province you're in, but it's really cheap here in Canada for electricity across the board. So you look at the financial aspect, you look at the convenience aspect of having that full charge every day, so you don't have to go to a gas station.
EVs are also very safe. There's a lot of characteristics and attributes that are designed from the ground up, that have very high safety elements and they all score very high in these crash tests. So that's another interest that I find consumers looking at when I start peeling away the layers and talking to them.
And then finally, EV infrastructure. There's lots of EV infrastructure out there. It's just that they tend to be stuck in back, you know, corner Walmart parking lots or behind buildings. They're not as front and center as gas stations are today, but they're there and I can't go a week without seeing a news article that Canadian governments are investing, and all these corporations and organizations are continuing to add EV chargers both for city use and for longer road trips.
So the explosion is definitely happening.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
And Ken, I know you don't have, you know, a crystal ball or anything, but like, can you give me a specific date? When do you think we're gonna reach a tipping point where EVs become the dominant driving technology? I mean, I'm not talking about December 31st, 2024, but are we talking five years off, 10 years next year?
KEN BOKOR
Yeah, it's a great question, and when I started this journey a few years ago, I kept trying to look ahead, to look at a tipping point when we see more than 50% of those yearly sales of new vehicles to be electrified, with a plug-in hybrid or an all-electric Bev product.
I think we're still several years away. A lot of analysts predicted it would be in 2030, but I just feel because of the things that are going on now, political, world events, business and economics that impact that supply chain and all this other stuff, I think that's gonna be pushed out a little.
We should hit a tipping point globally, potentially, in maybe 2032, 2033. In Canada, we're at almost 10%. Can we get to 50% in seven years, eight years, nine years? I think so. Part of the issue is we just need product, we need more manufacturing. We need all the OEMs to really start kicking out production. A lot of them have made announcements but they're still not producing a lot of actual products for people to buy. So that's what we really need. All these things have to coincide for that growth to happen, but it should be in the early 2030s.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Ken Bokor is the host and creator of the popular YouTube series EV Revolution.
When it comes to driving EVs, people in Canada face a harsh reality. It can get REALLY COLD here. So our next stop on this journey is one of the country's coldest cities – Regina Saskatchewan.
SEAN PRPIK
WE really get some of the most extreme weather in the world, not just in Canada, and I attribute this to the fact this is an enormous province that's basically flat. There's no mountain ranges or gigantic forests in most parts of the province to affect our landscape.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Sean Prpick has been driving since he was 16 years old. And after several decades of driving ICE vehicles, he switched to an EV two years ago.
SEAN PRPIK
So we're a big plain and the wind comes right down from the Arctic every winter. So it can be plus 40 in the summer and minus 40, minus 50 in the winter. If it's minus 50, the oil in your engine is like a thick goo rather than a nice viscous oil. So it's really, really hard for those cars to start. So it's kind of a game the first week of January, around Christmas time, you get in the car and you sort of say, “Will my car start this morning? I hope it starts this morning.” And then, if you're lucky, the car springs into life.
With this electric car, it's a completely different experience. So long as you follow recommendations and keep the battery fully charged, you get into the car on the coldest day, you switch on the power, and you drive away.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Sean admits to a bit of schadenfreude on these cold mornings.
SEAN PRPICK
I shouldn't enjoy this, but it is an interesting experience on the very coldest days, in December and January, when you're driving down the street and three or four people are either trying to boost their cars or they're sitting there on the phone talking to CAA waiting for somebody to come help them. And I just sort of sail past them and wave at them.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
And that great Canadian pastime of warming up your car for 15 minutes on a cold winter morning? Well, that’s also a lot simpler in an EV – not to mention, more environmentally-friendly.
SEAN PRPICK
When a car is idling like that, it starts from a super cool temperature and it's idling and it's an environmental mess because it's emitting a lot of extra hydrocarbons and it's burning a lot of gas and it's not cool. You gotta do it, but it's not cool.
With an electric car, it's an environmental plus to preheat your cabin because what you're doing, – like in my car in January, before I go out, I preheat it for 20 minutes follow manufacturer's directions by using my phone or my key fob - that actually is a good thing because if I get into a warm car I'm not cranking up the heater and I'm not wasting battery range by making the car really warm in a hurry. I've gently warmed it up and I've used practically no energy just to warm the interior and then I drive to the pharmacy or the supermarket or whatever. So if we're a little bit smug about that, that's one reason why people use electric cars in the winter, they use the cabin warming feature and it's actually better for them and the environment.
And it's sort of the opposite with gasoline engine cars.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
It's a misconception that electric cars are less reliable in extremely cold temperatures. In Sean's experience, it's just the opposite.
SEAN PRPICK
Far from it being a problem, this is a big advantage in wintertime, in terms of reliability. If they look after the car and keep it charged, it's just gonna go and it's gonna take you to work or take you to school, whatever you need. Range IS affected, uh, pretty dramatically, but it varies by model, by the technology that's onboard the car.
I have sort of an early model car, I would call it the second wave of electric cars, and it doesn't have some of the gadgets. The very latest electric cars have a heat pump that really looks after it, keeps your battery warm, and warms up the car very rapidly in the wintertime. And it makes for really good winter performance and longer range.
It won't be as long as in summer, but you might be within 10 or 20% of the range. With my car, without that fancy heat pump, I'm probably losing about 40% of my potential range of about 350 or 400 kilometers. But again I'm not doing an enormous commute, most Canadians aren't doing enormous commutes, so as long as you keep that battery at the proper charge, and for most cars in the market today, you keep it at about 80% for day-to-day, day-to-day use - as long as you get it up to 80% overnight - you've got no problem, you're gonna be driving down the road in any weather.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So it turns out that cold weather isn't the deterrent that I thought it might be. Plus, I live in Vancouver, where it rarely - if ever! - gets as cold as the temperatures Sean was talking about in Saskatchewan.
But no matter where you live, if you’re investing in an EV – it needs to be charged. And having access to reliable charging is a huge factor in many Canadians’ decisions to make the switch.
Emma Jarratt is a journalist and the executive editor of Electric Autonomy – an online publication that aims to encourage Canada’s transition to electric mobility and reports on developments in that area.
Thanks for joining us Emma!
EMMA JARRATT
Thank you for having me.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So I want to start with the absolute basics here on this journey. I've been hearing a lot of different terminologies around charging stations, like level one, level two, fast charging. Can you break that all down for us?
EMMA JARRATT
Definitely. So broadly speaking, regular public EV charging is broken down into three categories, the ones you mentioned, level one, level two, and fast charging. Level one charging is the amount of power that you would use to plug in a lamp, it's that very standard 120 volt outlet. A level two charger is the same amount of power that your dryer or your oven would draw, so that 240 volt, slightly bigger plug, you obviously don't have as many around your home. And then finally, the fast charging is mostly considered anything above a hundred kilowatt hours dispensing energy. So it's quite a bit faster and more efficient than anything we would have in our homes.
In people's homes, they usually have a level one or maybe a level two, if they have enough room on their electrical panel and can get that installed. The fast chargers are most useful in applications where you're targeting commuters, so highway-side is a very common place to find them. You might find a few scattered throughout an urban setting, but generally speaking, they are targeted at people who are driving long distances, who are stopping for a bathroom break or maybe a quick bite to eat for a half hour or 45 minutes, and then they want to be back on the road.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Where are we currently at with public charging infrastructure in Canada? Are there parts of the country that have more public charging stations than others?
EMMA JARRATT
Definitely. So hotspots right now would be BC, specifically the Lower Mainland around the Vancouver area and Quebec between Montreal and Quebec City, that corridor is very well populated with chargers.
Generally speaking across Canada it is not just possible, but comfortable, to drive coast to coast in an EV. There is more than enough charging infrastructure now built up along the major highway routes that you can get to where you need to go, and the challenges start when you're traveling North, to areas that are not as heavily charger populated as I'm sure residents there would hope.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
I'm from the North. I grew up in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, which is, you know, it's on the coast, but it's fairly isolated and I know a lot of my friends up there would love to get electric vehicles, but they're further behind on this than we are in the city. What's the hope for electric charging infrastructure in the North? Is that something that we can anticipate soon?
EMMA JARRATT
There's every indication that we will collectively - we being Canadians - will see chargers everywhere, just like we see gas stations everywhere,but the business case for them is easier to make right now in more dense urban settings. You know, these are very expensive pieces of infrastructure to put in and you wanna make sure they get a certain amount of use in order to make them feasible.
So in more Northern locations, and obviously I'm not counting Prince Rupert in this because it's still on the main grid, but in really far North locations, particularly First Nation communities, some of them are not on the main grids that run across Canada, they're on self-contained grids, usually powered by a diesel generator. So trying to get chargers up there, well, first you have to get a grid up there, so the more remote you get, the more steps there are you have to go through, which drives the cost up even farther.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Canada is obviously this geographically massive and diverse country with different regions and vastly different needs depending where we're at. So when it comes to EVs and charging infrastructure, what are the needs right now in urban centers?
EMMA JARRATT
In urban centers, the biggest stumbling block right now is access to charging in people's homes. Overwhelmingly in urban centers, that can mean condo dwellers or townhome renters or much more dense living arrangements versus someone who lives like me out in the suburbs, who has a garage and it's not a big deal to get a charger put in.
Things get a lot more complicated in a city when you're in a condo building that has 10,000 other residents. A lot of the buildings that were constructed prior to 2019, which was when Toronto started passing municipal legislation to make buildings of a certain size EV ready - have outlets so people can have access to charging - but buildings before then don't have them.
To retrofit charging systems into existing buildings is quite difficult for a number of reasons, and can be cost-prohibitive for most people unless there is a situation where you have a lot of people in a building banding together and saying, you know, we're going to share the cost of this amongst ourselves and make a plan for the building, and the condo board is on side. It DOES happen and we have many examples that we can point to where this is going well, even if it is a retrofit, but there are definitely stories where some buildings are struggling and the residents just don't have access to charging at home.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
It does come off to me like renters are getting the butt end of this deal compared to homeowners. So are there any cities that are maybe innovating in order to help build charging infrastructure for specifically renters apartments, condos.
EMMA JARRATT
I think that the leading cities, if I was gonna peg a handful of them, would be Vancouver and the Surreys and the North Vancouvers of that area and then Toronto and Ontario. Montreal is very aware of this issue, but they haven't quite figured out what they're gonna do with it yet.
There are municipal plans in place to address the issue, but at a certain point, you need to have the cooperation of all the private stakeholders in this as well to advance anything. But Vancouver is really looked at as, you know, the place where multi-unit residential building, charging issues were seen first, dealt with first.
And people are having consistently good experiences now, the building codes are quite stringent in terms of demanding that everything that's built is EV ready.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
And how about globally when we're talking about innovation, which I think for me is what really starts to get me excited and I can see the future or feel myself in this future of, you know, electric vehicle driving. Are there any innovations or solutions that you're hearing about globally that could inspire our market and infrastructure here in Canada.
EMMA JARRATT
Well, Norway's always looked at as the place - they are so far ahead of the rest of the world in terms of EV adoption, we're all tiny specs in their rear view mirror.
Iceland is another kind of sleeper example of a place that has done really cool EV advancement work.Just a few years ago, Iceland's EV adoption was low. Then Iceland decided to undertake a project to install EV chargers all across the island. And for those who aren't familiar with Iceland, it's basically connected by one road, which makes it very simple to put in EV chargers.
There's one main highway that goes all the way around it called the Ring Road, and the government got chargers installed all along that road, even in the places that are really remote corners where people aren't going. They just wanted the public to have the confidence to know that if you buy an EV in Iceland, you'll be able to charge it, whether you are staying in Reykjavik or you're going to your second property up in the North or going hiking in the backcountry. And their EV adoption now is very high,like third in the world the last I checked. So it was a charging initiative that had a huge measurable impact.
Obviously Iceland is a bit of a unique case because as I said, it's quite small. It has one main highway. The logistics of doing this is more simple and they have a zero emitting power source because the island is entirely run on geothermal electricity. But it has been done.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Emma Jarratt is the executive editor of the online publication Electric Autonomy.
That publication conducts an annual tally of charging stations across Canada. Their most recent tally, which they published back in March, shows that public chargers across Canada have grown by 30 percent since last year – and Canada has finally cracked the 20 thousand charger mark.
Charging infrastructure in many parts of Canada is still growing and developing. But even though there is still room for improvement, for the most part -- depending on where you live -- you WILL be able to charge your EV conveniently and consistently.
And the cold weather question -- well, according to our intrepid EV driver Sean in Saskatchewan, that's pretty much a non-issue if you're prepared.
I'm Tara Jean Stevens and you've been listening to Road to Electric - an original podcast powered by Mazda.
Next time on the show we're talking about the thing that makes EVs go -- the battery. How much battery life and range do you REALLY need?
Find and follow us in your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss it. Thanks for listening!
DISCLAIMER
The thoughts, opinions, and views expressed in this podcast are solely that of the guests and do not represent the thoughts, opinions, and views of Mazda Canada. The material and information presented in this podcast is for general information purposes only.