Electric Vehicle 101
Rebecca Abernethy and her Nissan LEAF at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday. Photos 250News
Prince George, B.C. – She’s been wanting to show if off for some time and finally this BC Day long weekend Rebecca Abernethy has returned to the town she grew up in to let people see what the buzz is all about.
You see Rebecca, a Kelly Road Secondary grad who now lives in the Big Smoke by the Sea, took the Vancouver commute into consideration when out shopping for a car. With environmental concerns front and centre and along with a daily 100 km Vancouver to Chilliwack drive, she decided electric was the way to go and bought herself a 100% electric 2015 Nissan LEAF. It cost her about $30,000.
The car can travel at full highway speeds and has a range of 130 to 150 kms on a full charge. It uses about $1.50 worth of electricity to travel 100 Kms. During this weekend’s drive to Prince George Rebecca stopped along the way to charge up in places like Hope, Cache Creek, 100 Mile House, Williams Lake and Quesnel.
On Saturday she spent some time at the Prince George Farmer’s Market to speak with people and show off the car. Rebecca says “there were two main reasons that I decided to buy an electric vehicle. The first was due to the environmental benefits of an electric vehicle compared to a conventional one. My vehicle runs exclusively on electricity so it does not consume any gasoline or diesel or oil, and it produces zero emissions. And also because electricity in British Columbia is mostly hydro-electric, there are very little upstream emissions as well. So environmentally an electric vehicle has a lot of benefits.”
“And the other benefit for me is financial, which surprises some people. An electric vehicle is much less expensive to run because the electricity costs considerably less than gasoline, and there’s very little maintenance as well. There’s no oil changes required, there’s no complex engine maintenance needed because it doesn’t have an engine. So I’m actually saving in the order of $5,000 a year by operating an electric vehicle instead of a gasoline one.”
She told us “there’s very little maintenance required for an electric vehicle. The main maintenance is tire rotation, topping up the windshield washer fluid, changing the cabin air filter occasionally, that’s basically all that’s needed. In order to maintain the warranty on the battery, so there’s a comprehensive 8-year warranty on the battery, you’re covered for quite a long time, you need to get an annual battery check done which takes just a few minutes at the vehicle dealership. That’s actually covered for the first few years of ownership and after that its in the order of $30 so it’s very inexpensive to operate and maintain.”
The power and the charging ports of the Nissan LEAF.
Abernethy says eventually your battery will need replacing, adding “the current pricing that has been announced is about $5,000 for a battery replacement and I expect that number will actually go down over time. The way that I also look at it is that I’m personally saving about $5,000 per year in gasoline and maintenance costs so if I have to spend $5,000 on a new battery after eight years, I still save $35,000 over that period so it’s very compelling.”
“Rebecca adds “that as an added bonus, my electric car is really fun to drive. It accelerates very rapidly, it has a single speed electric motor so it doesn’t have gears to shift through. It’s really quiet to drive, its zippy, it’s really fun.”
We asked about top-end speed, and she told us, rather sheepishly, “I’m not sure if I should say this but the top end speed that I have reached in my vehicle is 155 kilometres an hour, so it’s very capable of that.”
We asked Rebecca how much she spent on driving her car from Vancouver to Prince George. “So I just did an 840 Km trip and it directly cost me five dollars, I made one five dollar donation at a place that I had to charge at in 100 Mile House because there wasn’t public charging stations available. But most of the public charging stations in B.C. currently are free to use. So not only is electricity much cheaper than gas but the public stations that are out there are mostly free, at this time.” She concedes that as more drivers switch to electric cars those charging stations will be charging customers to power up their vehicles.
“In terms of the actual cost (of charging an electric car), if you charge at home, which is one of the main places where people charge, you can actually plug it into a hundred-twenty volt outlet at home, it costs less than two dollars in electricity to fully charge this car, and that’ll go up to 150 kilometres. And I would ask, how far can you drive in your gasoline vehicle on two dollars? I’m willing to be it’s not that far.”
There are about 600 charging stations in BC right now, but finding them could be an adventure. Abernethy says “the main way that electric vehicle drivers find charging stations is using a website or an application. It’s call plugshare.com and it’s very interesting to look at because there’s many more charging stations out there than people might realize. Many electric cars also have embedded in their navigation system the ability for the car to find the nearest charging station.”
So, how long did it take Rebecca to travel from Vancouver to Prince George in her electric car? “It was about 10 hours of driving time and 20 hours of charging time. It was a considerable amount of time but I did the trip for a few reasons. I did it to prove that it is possible to drive a 100% electric vehicle that distance and under those conditions.”
“And as well I want to use this trip to raise awareness that there is good electric vehicle charging infrastructure in many communities however there were some communities that I went through, some distances that were over 200 kilometres, so that’s more than the range of my car, where there is no formal public charging station. So I had to seek out different shops or I could use a 240-volt outlet to charge the car.”
“I want to take that information and share it with those communities that there is a need for public charging infrastructure. It’s being used or it would be used if it was there and we need to continue to expand the network so that more people are able to get into electric vehicles.”
Asked if she has noticed any negatives to driving an electric vehicle she says “I have not personally experienced any drawbacks with the electric vehicle. For my use most of the time and what most people use their vehicle for are commuting to work or running errands, and a range of 130-150 kilometres very easily meets those needs.”
“An electric car can do everything that a normal car can do, it can go highway speeds, it can get you to work and do your errands. It is a little bit more challenging to do a long-distance road trip in an electric vehicle right now but I will tell you there is an electric vehicle that has a range of 450 kilometres or so on a single charge. It’s a Tesla, and the difference is it’s quite expensive. But infrastructure is improving at the time, the cost of the cars are going down, so there’s very little drawbacks.”
She says for two-vehicle families it might make sense to use the electric vehicle around town and a non-electric vehicle for longer trips where travelling time is an important factor.
Comments
Yeah, but I bet it can’t carry groceries and soccer balls like a 1 ton diesel can!
30hrs from Vancouver to PG,must have wore out a dozen hacky sacs on the way,but for the saving what the heck. I`d take a slow boat to China for 5 bucks.
Why has the city of Prince George not been promoting their Leaf car, does anyone remember? Where is it now?
Must be too early in the morning for the anti electricity , climate change denieging , too old to make a change for the better bunch of harperettes to make a comment . Or perhaps reallity has sunk in . Nah . Good on you Rebecca , keep on electric motoring .
I agree with finding better vehicles but everybody seems to forget most of these electric and hybrid vehicles are not designed for canadian winters with the notable exception of Hongcouver until designers figure out a way to deal with the energy sapping cold I will not look at or even consider one of these electric or hybrid vehicles because in reality most of them are only drivable 7 months of the year and let’s face it many people will buy these as primary vehicles not as a secondary vehicle
@walter have you noticed all the gas stations and car dealerships in town . The vast bulk of the money that the dealerships make is on maintenance and repairs of worn out parts . An ev only has about 18 moving parts as opposed to 2000 to 3000 moving parts . That’s why teslas can offer infinite mileage on their cars even for taxi fleets . They just don’t break down like gas burners do . Break downs , fuel costs and down time are the taxi fleets biggest costs . Taxi fleets world wide are going electric for those reasons . So it’s a matter of which side of their current bread is buttered on .
Dearth that’s not true at all . The most rapid deployment per capita in the world is Norway . It’s a bit colder there than it is in pg . Nice bit of bigotry in reference to Vancouver though . That’s also really wrong .
There are loads of electric cars and hybrids driving around Ottawa and the winters here are most definitely not Vancouver like.
On a political note . You folks really need to read greaterfool.ca this weekend . Poor Stevie.
The biggest issue I see with them is range and cost. If you need a vehicle that can travel for long periods without charging, a pure electric may not be for you (Teslas do have more range but they are also very expensive). That’s where an electric gas hybrid could be an option.
Cost wise, I’m not sure where she gets her 5K a year from. I have a Toyota Tacoma that gets decent mileage for a truck and I’m only spending about $120 a month on gas. Throw in maintenance and I’d say I spend around $2,500 a year. It would be far less for a basic car if that’s what I chose to drive. That makes the cost comparison far different, especially if the initial cost of the basic car is allot less than the electric or hybrid option.
IMHO, if we REALLY wanted to see this technology take off, the government should subsidize the R&D costs for the auto makers. Help get the cost down to a point where the electric or hybrid option is comparable to the gas option. Then you would see higher levels of adoption and the increased benefits of lower fuel consumption. You could also toe those R&D investments to domestic job creation. Open a plant or research facility here, employ people and get the dough.
I forgot to mention Garth drives a tesla .
Nmg have a look at where the Canadian R&D money is going . Well over 90 % of it is going to the heavy oil industry and has been since the harpy era began . Not going to happen with the tar bunch in charge.
I have a Ford Fusion AWD with 3 liter V6, A/C, Full leather, well optioned out vehicle. Recent trip south averaged 32 mpg. – 525 miles to Vancouver, burnt 16.4 gallons of gasoline at $ 4.99 per gallon (Costco) = total cost for fuel $81.83. Travel time 9 hours needed one meal $14.99 total cost $96.82. Leaf $5.00 for electricity. 30 hours travel time would need three meals at say $30.00 and a place the sleep, hotel charge about $200.00 – total cost $235.00 aprox. I’m sticking with my gas burner. :)
I wonder how far one can drive the Leaf when the A/C is on most of the time or the heater is on to keep the windshield from frosting up and the interior warm. I doubt that one charge will last for 130 kilometers.
However, maintenance costs on the electric will be much lower for sure:
Tires, brakes, washer fluid and eventually a battery pack. Those oil change places and the dealers who do the usual annual gas and diesel engine maintenance routines will eventually feel the pinch as more Leaf and like cars are found on the roads. Call it progress.
BTW, a turbo diesel SUV (like ours) uses 5.1 L/100km on the highway, 7.6 L/100km if only driven on short trips in town, for an overall combined mileage of 7.6 L/100km. As experienced over the last rwo years.
Correction: Overall combined mileage is 7.1 L/100km.
I can just see it now. 500 people standing around a charging station waiting for a charge. Whats the multiplier effect on that. Some people would have to wait a week or more just to get a charge, unless we had a charging station on each street, and even then it would back people up because of the long wait time. So not so good on the road. Perhaps not to bad for City driving under normal conditions.
The electricity in BC is primarily hydro power, not without it’s own critics and concerns. BC hydro will turn down hydro during off peak periods and buy cheaper coal fried power off the grid. Money wise, good move; Eco wise, not so much. The precious metals used in construction have to be mined by heavy industrial equipment, most of it powered(some electric) by diesel. So the mining, construction(oil derived plastics and energy intensive metals), and electricity for power, are not exactly carbon neutral. Many evehicles have a carbon footprint much bigger than a one ton truck. A small reliable IC engine, in a very reliable vehicle, let’s say a Honda Fit, would probably be a much more economical, practical choice.
This girl is to be applauded for making an effort to try and change things. She may be a little biased or perhaps never looked at both sides of the equation, but at least she’s embracing change. As more consumers jump on board, and as the technology improves, I have no doubt this is the way of the future. But please keep in mind, there are always trade offs. There’s no free lunch.
Was going to say 81.83 to drive to Vancouver in a tiny gas pot? I make it on one tank to Burnaby in my heavy duty three quarter ton crew cab diesel and it cost me just under 90 to fill and still have some left over for putting around. Took 9 hours but we did stop for pee and coffee breaks and a lunch.
I do 2 oil changes a year and could get away with less according to the meter on the dash – at 120.00 per at McQuick (cheaper if I crawl under and do it myself to the tune of half price). Other maintenance in the last 4 years has been windshield wipers and wiper fluid, oh and one fuel filter and a bottle of diesel 911 when Can Tire diesel froze my lines up. Cost me 12,000 to buy it 4 years ago. Plus I can drive all the way down to Van with my heated seats on or AC blasting, kids watching DVDs and not the back of my head… and doesn’t seem to phase the mileage. Pulling a loaded trailer sucks back a bit more fuel but I don’t see a leaf or tesla doing that, so for me a monster size pickup was the ticket. To each his/her own. I can’t imagine two kids on a 30 hour trip…
Curious as to what happens if you run out with a leaf? Is there a jerry can of sorts one can carry to get them to the next refill station?
Electric vehicle the facts 101
In an urban centre like metro Vancouver an electric vehicle could make sense depending on your usage. Lets she her make the same trip in the middle of winter. I think her motel and food costs will increase for added recharging time from much reduced range. What would have happened if she got part way to her next plugin and the road was blocked and had to make a return, would she have the range?In the summer she could sit, but what happens in winter trying to stay warm. Did she get a subsidy for her purchase? In the states only the well healed can afford a expensive Tesla and those same rich get a heavy taxpayer funded subsidy so those who can’t afford a Tesla, pay for them anyhow. Tesla by the way makes their money off those subsidies.
Pollution free not even close. She believes it is emission free while running, is it really. As Govsux says your electricity at night in Vancouver is most likely evil fossil fuel sourced. She also believes BC being mainly hydro electric that also makes the car emissions free well what about all the electrical infrastructure. The mining, transportation, erecting, maintaining of that infrastructure. Lets not forget the ongoing rants about dams, transmission lines and their corridors. The same goes for all the materials in her car and consider the rare earth metals in the motor and their mining. Then there is the battery with its exotic toxic chemical makeup and recycling issues. Replace internal combustion car engines, well there goes the argument against Site C and better start planning for the next source of electricity. Electric car pollution free not even close. Oh it does use fossil fuel, do not forget the lubricants.
Then there is road tax, some areas are considering implementing a mileage driven tax, there goes your free ride.
I also question her maintenance costs, she seems to mostly forget the rest of the car apart from the motor. I have a truck with 200,000 k and a car with 120,000 and the engines have only cost me spark plugs and oil changes. Engines these days are very reliable. My costs have been suspension, brakes, tires, drive line, window winders, heater motor.
How long does it take to charge one?
Charge times also vary greatly, depending on the size of the battery and the speed of the car’s on-board charger.
On a dedicated, 240-volt charger, it can take between 4.5 and 6 hours to fully charge a pure-electric vehicle, depending on the car. (Those figures are based on our test data on Ford Focus EV and the Nissan Leaf, respectively.) But most pure-EV drivers will seldom–if ever–completely deplete their batteries.
Plug-in hybrids can take significantly less time to replenish their energy, ranging from a hour and a half charge for the Toyota Prius Plug-in to about 4.5 hours for the Chevrolet Volt.
Expect a little more than double those times when charging from a standard 110-volt household outlet. Put another way, on a standard household outlet, expect to get about four miles of driving for every hour of charging (and twice that on a dedicated 240-volt charger).
I don’t think electric vehicles were ever designed with long distance driving in mind, so it’s a bit of a red herring to use that as an argument against them. It would be like saying that a VW Golf is terrible because it can’t tow a 20 foot boat, or that a half ton 4×4 is waste of money because it can’t keep up with a sports car on the twisty roads.
Vehicles are typically purpose built. For urban needs, daily commuting and one who typically only takes short trips, an electric vehicle may indeed be a great option. Drive it all day, come home, plug it in, go to bed and repeat. It’s probably the type of vehicle that would be cross shopped with a small or medium sized passenger car, to be used primarily for city driving. These are sold all over North America, including PG.
So we all need electric cars but we don’t need Site C, is that right? Just trying to keep up with you head-in-the-cloud greenies logic.
This I the first time I have ever heard Vancouver referred to as ” Big Smoke by the Sea “. Is this a Hawkinism ?
very interesting story, good on her for the adventure. solar panels on the car roof should be the next advancement.
tipping point should be where the battery cost is halved and the next oil spike coincide.
dearth, yes you are a dick.
Walrus refute dearth instead of an immature responce. I suggest you gain some knowledge on solar panels, energy output in order to move a car. Don’t you think if workable she would have panels?
Everything has it’s place. For those able to use an EV to commute to work and back, great for you! Just too bad that your EV has so many parts still made from the oil and gas industry! Tires, vinyl dashes and door panels, plastic parts galore and let’s not forget about all of the copper wiring (from a mine of course) that are wrapped and insulated in plastic! I suspect that all lubrication will continue to be done with oil products for some time to come!
But if it works for you, more power to you! Would that be hydro electric power, solar, coal fired or nuclear power?
I’ll keep driving my petroleum powered vehicles for now. My time is simply too valuable for a 30 hour drive to Vancouver. Imagine sending an employee to Vancouver! Would they be allowed to travel for only 8 hours a day, perhaps 12? How many hotel rooms and meals would need to be covered for a trip to Vancouver?
We are certainly going to run out of oil and gas one day. But each and every one of us will also run out of “Life” some day! I can’t afford to and I don’t really want to spend hours upon hours upon hours of my life sitting at a charging station in order to get to Vancouver in 30 hours!
EV’s will continue to improve, but for now, they are not much more than a novelty for most of us!
Apparently they don’t work so great in cold weather. So if the batteries are not charged, and they freeze? does that mean the end of the warranty.
Batteries and cold weather do not work.
ICBC is a hindrance to me and many people who find the added insurance costs of a second vehicle negate the savings of just driving the gas guzzler I need on the weekends. If I could swap my plates I could make a much better financial case for an electric. As a auto tech it is worrying that the steering, suspension, brakes and such may not get inspected regularly. I find hybrid cars tend to be heavier (harder on suspension and tires) and the regenitive breaking is good enough that rotor rust and siezed brake parts has become more of an issue. Have no experience with the Leaf (to new). I think the GM Volt idea of having a plug in electric hybrid makes more sense for a northerner. Essentially its an electric with gas back up. It gets you through a normal PG commute fully electric but you can go to Jasper on the weekend without worrying about road conditions using too much juice. Most hybrids on the road are just gas with electric help.
You know I have no problem with people overspending on their basic transportation needs, but it really angers me when the general taxpaying citizen has to subsidize their stupidity. Young Mrs. Abernethy there probably got an approximate $5,000 point of purchase rebate on this car. I’m betting she didn’t include that in the price tag. Not to mention the cost of a charging station at home and all the “free” charging stations all over the province pumping out “free” electricity who have more money than sense.
Any fool with some basic math skills should be able to calculate what the cost of ownership is on different vehicles. Even though the cost of her fuel is “free” her cost of ownership is still considerably higher than a comparable internal combustion commuter car. Her quoted $5000 annual savings is an outrageous figure. Even if we were just talking about cost of fuel, even @ $1.50/litre, you could drive over 35,000 kilometers on that much fuel if your car only gets 25 miles per gallon! Does she travel 35,000km a year? If she doesn’t, that’s just a stupid figure to throw out there. The biggest cost of a car is the depreciation and an expensive commuter car that is unproven like the Leaf will have a very high depreciation cost. In eight years, most cars will require a battery replacement, but by mine costs $75 not $5,500 like the Leaf’s. Most people wouldn’t buy a brand new power plant for a vehicle at $5,500 for an eight year old car, because it doesn’t make financial sense. They would just cut their losses and buy a new car.
Electric cars might be viable one day, but they are not right now. They are mostly toys for rich stupid people. The crime is that our government feels compelled to subsidize this behaviour.
Completely agree with Ataloss’s 7:23 AM comment. The Harper Government is nothing more than a puppet government for Big Oil & Gas, if they get back in it will be 4 more years of falling behind the rest of the world in the race towards developing alternative energy sources.
The comments about how long it took her to get up here (30 hours) because of the lack of high output EV car charging stations between here and Vancouver is a red herring issue.
Vote for a government committed to expanding the use of electric vehicle and you will see Tesla standard car charging stations that take only 20 minutes to fully charge an EV. In fact with the new charging station at Squamish, the whole corridor from California to Whistler, BC is now EV ready, we just need a government to encourage that kind of EV car charging station corridor between Vancouver and PG.
Sage you are stretching the truth again, 20 minutes only gives have a charge to that expensive heavily subsidised car. Are you happy that the taxes you pay goes into a subsidy to a rich person for a car that only a well off person can afford to buy.
Big Oil … blah blah blah … how about subsidies for people to buy electric cars? Subsidies to “fuel” electric cars? Subsidies to solar installations? Sounds like the “green” movement gets its share of subsidies, any “green” corporations getting rich off the working stiff?
Red herring my rear end, get more electric cars out there and all these charging stations will have a line up, not just a few minutes to refill but imagine waiting for someone to refill their Leaf for free ahead of you. Or maybe third or fourth in line at -20 C, trying to conserve your battery to keep your toes warm as you wait while they are shopping at Costco oblivious of the time. Luckily there are only a few of them out there right now so you don’t have to wait (yet), quick charging is hard on the batteries as well so you don’t want to make too many long trips where you have to use these 208/347/600 volt charging stations. Still cheaper in the long haul on your wallet to buy a high mileage I C E.
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