EV owners happy with vehicles, want more public charging infrastructure

Jon Hendricks reports on a new survey that finds while the majority of electric vehicle owners are pleased with their purchase, infrastructure is lacking.

A new survey of 16,000 EV owners by CAA has found electric vehicle owners are overwhelmingly happy with their purchase. The owners say they’re saving money on gas and the cost of maintenance is lower.

But there’s one fly in the ointment, a lack of fast and reliable public charging infrastructure.

Seven in 10 respondents said they aren’t satisfied with the number of fast chargers available.

Fifty-three per cent say they would rather drive a gas vehicle on long trips in extremely cold weather and 67 per cent say a lower battery range in extreme cold weather is a problem.

“I think there needs to be more EV chargers in the smaller towns,” said EV owner Kristen Hayward. “When we go to hockey tournaments and have to stay overnight, we actually had to drive back and forth to do the charge.”

“Your range does diminish a little bit in the winter,” said Kristine D’arbelles, senior director, public affairs, CAA National. “So it means you have to go a shorter distance before you’re able to charge. So having that DC fast charger on your route is really important for an electric vehicle.”

Jason Cruickshank with Swtch Energy, an EV charging company, said the number of charging stations has improved over the last few years.

Still, he believes there’s room for improvement.

“I think especially with some of the faster charging speeds, I think there’s still demand for some of those stations to be added to the network here in Winnipeg and across the province.”

That’s something the Kinew government said it’s committed to doing.

“Our department has been working for quite some time on mapping the province to see where EV infrastructure is today, (and) where it needs to go,” said Tracy Schmidt, Manitoba’s Minister of Environment & Climate Change. “We have been working with great partners, like Eco West and with other partners in the private sector to do some expansion. Already we’re seeing EV infrastructure expansion in the province.”

It seems EV owners are willing to wait for the infrastructure to be expanded. The CAA survey found that nearly nine in 10 owners plan to buy another electric vehicle when it’s time to replace their current one.