An EV speed run from Whitehorse to Vancouver: Part 2
After a relaxing soak in Liard Hot Springs while my Mustang Mach-E recharged, I pushed on again and arrived in Fort Nelson around 1:30 a.m. The new chargers there were really new, only being activated that day.
In fact, I had trouble getting one of them going and when I called in to BC Hydro’s help line (yes, live-staffed even after midnight) they told me nobody had charged at this location yet. While the first charger I tried refused to start a charging session, another one a few feet away connected just fine and I charged successfully.
My charge wasn’t full because I figured I would stop at Prophet River just to try the charger there, but I was disappointed to hit my first real EV snag. The chargers there would not acknowledge my car at all and I had no cell service to call support. I was faced with either pushing on to Wonowon or taking an hour to go back to Fort Nelson.
Nelson was easily on my remaining range, but Wonowon was a stretch. “God hates a coward,” I muttered to myself and pushed on south. I cut my speed to 80 km/h to preserve range and made it down to Pink Mountain, where they had another off-grid charger like the one I’d used at Liard. The cook at the lodge came out to grab a picture because he’d never seen anyone charging there in the week it had been operating.
The sun was up by the time I was done charging at Pink Mountain and I headed down to Fort St. John for my next installment. The BC Hydro charger there is in the Canadian Tire parking lot. I caught a needed nap during the charge, making sure to set an alarm for an hour so I wouldn’t incur idle charges.
Is it cheaper to road trip in an EV? In terms of the actual driving, sure. BC Hydro charges 37 cents per kWh, and I get about 5 km for each one, so that works out to about 7.5 cents.
In the compact truck I used to drive I would get about 9 km per litre, so at $1.80/litre it comes out to about 20 cents per km, well over double. It is true that you stop more often, though, and it’s not hard to spend more money at those stops.
I had worried a bit about Pine Pass, but from Fort St. John I easily made it down to Bear Lake, where BC Hydro had put a charger at the community centre. It was a bit off the highway and a minor chore to find, but it was a beautiful day and I wasn’t in too big a hurry. At that point it was early afternoon and I hoped to make my hotel in Surrey by midnight.
From that point there was no anxiety. From Prince George south there are many public chargers and if I ran into any problems there would always be another charger available nearby.
I even got to use Tesla Superchargers at Quesnel and Cache Creek. These are very fast chargers, and almost double BC Hydro’s price but for a driver in a hurry they make a great choice. And still cheaper than gas.
I got into my hotel around 1 a.m.–37 hours on the road, 8.5 spent charging. I know that sounds like a lot, but some of it is covered by time I would have spent stopped anyway, including that hour at Liard Hot Springs, meals and naps. And I was pleased to find my Mach-E was an excellent road-tripper, easily passing slow-moving trucks on two-lane mountain roads and keeping me comfortable and entertained with audiobooks and music through Apple CarPlay.
The next morning, I headed down to the Vancouver Convention Centre to attend Everything Electric. I had been in touch with some staff from BC Hydro and they wanted to find out how my experience had gone, and a number of people I normally only see on YouTube were there in live panel discussions.
The show travels around the world, and not only lets guests see just about all the EVs on the market up close, but even allows test drives on a short track in the downstairs hall.
While it was great to see the cars, it was even better to connect with a larger community of EV enthusiasts. I got to meet many of the BC Hydro staff who had worked on the northern charger deployments and I expressed my deep gratitude for effectively opening up the rest of North America to drivers like me. To be continued…
