Megaton327
Senior Member
As an electric vehicle driver myself, Metrolinx made roughly every possible wrong choice when installing these charging stations:
- They installed "smart" ChargePoint units with an upfront cost of approximately $10,000 each, rather than "dumb" stations with a cost of $500-$1000 each (still rated for commercial installations) or regular wall outlets (which I will detail below)
- In addition to a higher upfront cost, these stations cost roughly $1000 per year each in a support subscription to provide the smart features like the ability to bill for usage
- These stations cost $2.50 per session to use, which discourages usage; many electric vehicles would not use $2.50 of electricity to charge from empty to full; and the first 400 uses of the year would just break even on the $1000/year contract for service, since there were allegedly 0.8 uses per day, they did not even break even on the support contract let alone the cost of electricity, installing the stations, etc.
- Most plug-in hybrids can charge from empty to full in between 2-5 hours at these stations, a poor fit for GO stations where most people are gone for 10-12 hours at a time; many fully electric vehicles can charge empty to full in approximately the same 5 hours; electric vehicles with the largest batteries can take 10-12 hours to charge, but that assumes their entire 400~500km range was depleted upon arrival at the charger; overall, there is no need for these stations when people will be gone 10-12 hours
- There were only 2 stations installed at each of the pilot GO stations; anecdotally, I have seen approximately 20 electric vehicles at Aurora GO station at any one time - not all of those vehicles need a charge, but EV adoption was growing rapidly in the many years since the first 2 stations were installed, and they were in use most of the times I visited them
- Money was spent to install wiring for 4-6 charging stations, at least at some of the stations. Aurora had wiring for 5 stations in total. New stations were never added, and now that the stations are being removed, those 2-4 extra rough-ins were installed and paid for by taxpayers for literally nothing.
- Gas car drivers frequently park in front of the stations and block them, as do electric vehicle drivers who don't actually use the stations because the fee is too high, they just want preferred parking; I have called GO's security line dozens of times to report them, they have never once shown up to write a ticket despite the sign that clearly says "electric vehicle CHARGING only"; this has gotten better since 2017 since there are so many EVs that the stations are usually both in use by 7AM or so, but it is still unacceptable
- Install a series of regular 110V wall outlets, in weatherproof enclosures with lockable covers, which each receptacle on a dedicated 15A circuit; electric vehicle drivers would bring their own 110V portable charging units, which are included free with every single plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle that has been sold in Canada since 2011 through present, and they would plug in and use a small luggage lock, if desired, to prevent theft of their unit; I have personally used this exact setup at York University and it works great
- This solution would be free of charge, due to the minimal cost of installing regular wall outlets with drivers providing their own charging units, the low peak electricity demand (5 vehicles can charge at 110V/12A=1.32kW*5=6.6kW using the same power as 1 vehicle charging at 6.6kW on a 208V/~32A chargepoint station)
- These stations would charge most plug-in hybrids from empty to full in anywhere from 6 to 10 hours, and in the ~10 hours that most people are parked at a GO station, these would provide a fully electric vehicle with anywhere from about 35km of range in the dead of winter to 70km of range in summer, depending on the specific model of vehicle;
- Provide approximately 16 such spaces signed for charging only, and an additional 16 spaces reserved for electric vehicle parking with no charging available, to help support the Province's (at the time) wider policy to encourage people to switch to electric vehicles; Teslas with a 500km range and the owner living 2km from the go station really don't need to be charging - and they likely wouldn't go through the effort if they had to bring their own portable unit, plug it in, and secure it
- Aggressively ticket and tow non-plug-in vehicles parked in any of these spaces, and plug-in vehicles plugged in the charging spaces while not plugged in; mind you, the 16 preferred parking spaces would at least help discourage other electric vehicles from blocking the charging spaces
- These stations could easily be expanded in the future due to the ease and cheapness of installing regular wall outlets compared to full charging stations; the 16 parking spaces could be converted
The Wynne government had a lot of bad EV policies. For instance, I own a 2013 Chevrolet Volt, which I bought used; it had previously been a MTO fleet vehicle. The Volt can drive up to 70km without using any gas whatsoever, then it switches to gas and gets about 5-6L/100km, and burns premium gas. With 70,000km on the odometer, it had only been plugged in a handful of times, >99% of the driving had been on gas, the lifetime fuel economy was an abysmal 5.4L/100km (for reference, I'm at 0.9L/100km, including two round trips to Ottawa which constitute much of my gas use, I use <1L of gas from April to October). To make things worse, the province is ineligible for its own rebate, so they paid the full ~$48,000 price for the vehicle including HST.
So they spent $48K on a plug-in hybrid that had consumed ~3780L of premium gas, when the Toyota Prius starts around $30K including HST and gets approximately 4.0-4.5L/100km and would have burned 2800~3150L of regular gas in the same time period.
