An EV Speed Run From Whitehorse To Vancouver
I spent a week in Vancouver and had a few days to make my way home, so I routed up to Kamloops to see how my car’s hands-free BlueCruise system would work on the Coquihalla Highway.
I had used it with great success in Vancouver (it was great to let the car drive itself in heavy traffic on the Trans-Canada out of downtown). Unfortunately, in the mountains it disengaged so often that it was more of a hassle to keep it operating. And the grades on the Coq drained my battery faster than I expected, so I decided to stop in Merritt for a charge.
Here, I uncovered a definite hazard of EV road-tripping: unreliable chargers. Merritt is very well-equipped for charging, but many stations were out of service here and I wasted precious electrons finding a working charger.
Most of the fast chargers in town were out of service, though once again, it was a Tesla Supercharger to the rescue. I stopped in Kamloops at an Electrify Canada station and that was amazingly bad; of six available chargers I had to try five of them before finally getting a charge.
When I finally got back on the Cariboo Highway headed north, I stopped at Clinton and got a charge there, while remotely attending a Treasury meeting for a group where I volunteer. See, you can use that time. I also found charging stops to be a great opportunity to catch up on email, texts, and Duolingo lessons.
I’d booked a room for the night in Chetwynd. When I got up the next morning, I found their new fast charger was open and caught some quick juice before heading out on the Hudson’s Hope road. It was a beautiful morning, and I was looking forward to the drive; I hadn’t been on this road since I left trucking 16 years ago.
The road was a great, scenic drive, though much-changed since my last trip on it, due to needing realignment for the Site C Dam reservoir. I stopped to take in the sights and get some pictures. It would be fun to come back and compare after the reservoir is finished filling.
I got to Wonowon and hit a major wall: all of the new BC Hydro chargers there were down, even the L2s. This was a problem, because I was right in the middle of two chargers with barely enough range estimated to get to either. I could go back to the Mile 80 pullout with a slow (but free) Flo, or I could try to push 55 km forward to Pink Mountain.
It had saved me on the way down, so why not? I limped at 70 km/h all the way there and only had about 5 km of range left. But I got the charger going and headed inside to download the videos off my dashcam to my iPad.
This was the most anxious I was on the whole trip; the car was displaying an ominous “Chargers Unreachable” notification, though I knew that Ford’s navigation had not been updated with any of BC Hydro’s new location. It was uncomfortable, I won’t lie.
By this time I was well behind. As I left Fort Nelson, the daylight was fading. Climbing up Steamboat on the Alaska Highway saw my estimated range drop like a rock. Even so, I wasn’t worried; I’d get much of it back heading down the back of the mountain. I was really enjoying the drive, too.
The Mach-E has great handling, and I love putting my foot down for that instant torque. I knew that Summit Lake is the highest point on the Alaska Highway and I would recover more juice descending from there.
Once again, I charged at Liard Hot Springs before finally leaving B.C. I arrived too late to go for a dip this time, but I caught a little rest and headed north into the night.
I’d spent a lot of time on the road and I was ready to get home, but the trip held one more surprise for me: a brilliant display of Northern Lights started dancing across my windshield, and I had to get out of the car and grab some pictures. It was an amazing way to cap off the trip.
I was happy with the trip. I’d made it the full length of B.C. and back in my electric car, and while I encountered some technical issues at a couple of chargers, it was easy to forgive those glitches as teething problems.
Most of the chargers I used were quick and reliable; I could allow BC Hydro a little leeway when they’d set up over a dozen northern sites in a matter of weeks. Opening these chargers up means the rest of North America is now easily accessible for Yukon’s growing population of EV drivers.
