EV cross country adventure
So my wife and I just finished a cross country trek from Toronto to PEI with a new Kia EV4. A couple of observations, apart from the outstanding beauty and spectacular people, we will focus on the EV experience.
Ok, captain obvious points: but driving out to PEI is downhill so you can get great mileage. Driving back not so much.
110 km speed limits really impact mileage as well. Going faster uses more energy.
New Brunswick is a deep dark hole for EV charging. Tesla chargers are Tesla only and so even though the Kia EV4 has a NACS port you can’t use them. (This was a pain, come on Tesla you can update software in a car over the air, fix your chargers). They are ideally located to help you get through the province. CCS are not really located in great spots. For some reason it appeared that most charging stations in NB were all reduced power, so expect half the listed rate. As well, the CCS spots we found were shared, so when someone else plugged in, it was halved again. This made travelling back through NB (uphill the whole way) slightly more anxious than it ought to have been. NB power seems to be installing a few more new stations but none of them are active yet.
Speaking of downgrading power output, don’t trust your hotel charging rates. We were overnighting in Edmonston and the hotel had 6 chargers, but they ended up putting out 1 kWh rate, and would have needed 61 hours to charge. This really crimped the easy travel plans, and meant that we had to find a CCS charger (see above) to get us to Quebec.
Quebec’s infrastructure as expected is top notch. Ontario’s still needs some work, but in some aspects is better than Quebec’s mainly not having to exit the highway proper to access chargers. On Routes are finally set up (though not enough total heads).
For interest, the route was Toronto, Ottawa, Wakefield, QC, Quebec City, Riverie de Loup, Moncton, Wallace/Pugwash, Charlottetown, Edmonston, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto.
We saw almost 600 km’s outbound at 100% charge, and closer to 450 km’s coming back. We did end up stretching down to 11% (70km guess-o-meter) on the final stretch from Ottawa to Toronto. But generally never went below 20%.
Trip was a success. I’d plan a bit differently through New Brunswick, given just how vacant the province is for chargers, but other than that it was A spectacular trip with some exception golf courses ruined by my scrub swings.
Hope this helps others!