Extending and improving charging infrastructure and alleviating concerns about range and price will be critical to get rural and remote communities switched on to electric vehicles.
Canadians bought more than 86,000 EVs in 2021, and the bulk of them ended up in urban and suburban homes, not rural or remote ones, writes The Weather Network.
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And a 2021 poll by the Canadian Motor Vehicle Association, which represents the Big Three North American automakers, found that rural Canadians are more likely than their urban peers to feel concerned about what they see as the limited driving range of EVs, their high price, and inadequate public charging infrastructure.
“In the case of limited driving range, 61% of rural respondents listed the reason, compared to 50% of urbanites,” The Weather Network says.
Many rural residents do want to buy an EV, said Sarah Sinclair, digital media and project coordinator with the Kaslo-based British Columbia Rural Centre.
“We all love where we live and we love the environment,” she said. “And we don’t want to be seen as part of the cause of more greenhouse gases, more climate change.”
But rural dwellers do face certain obstacles to purchasing EVs, beginning with cost. The Weather Network writes that a new EV purchased in Canada can cost between $32,000 and $160,000. (On a quick scan, The Energy Mix was hard-pressed to come up with a new EV under $40,000. The 2023 Chevrolet Bolt came closest at $41,147. We did find a 2022 model with 17,700 km on it selling for $36,998.)
But even a brand-new fossil-fuelled truck of the kind seen everywhere in rural B.C. costs around $40,000—the baseline 2023 Ford F-150 starts at $46,055. Plus, the relatively higher cost of an EV is swiftly recouped in lower operating and repair costs, as charging is cheaper than gasoline and EVs take far fewer trips to the garage than their fossil-kin.
“So, even if you do pay a little bit more up front for the car, you’re saving a bundle over time,” noted Cara Clairman, president and CEO of the non-profit Plug’n Drive. Clairman conceded that finding an EV mechanic in a rural community in Canada may prove difficult at the moment.
Another obstacle is the perception that the cars are too limited in range, especially in rural Canada, where the network of charging stations is patchy. On the face of it, this concern makes sense: in 2021, the median driving range of EVs was 377 kilometres, compared to the 649-kilometre capability of the gasoline fleet.
But Clairman said most rural people typically live near a larger town and take extended trips only a few times a year.
Even in B.C., 377 kilometres is decent range. The distance between Nelson and Kelowna, for example, is 347 kilometres by the shortest route.
But rural Canada does lack charging stations, a problem compounded by the fact that even the fastest chargers get a driver rolling much more slowly than the gas pump.
And getting more charging stations installed in places like Kaslo won’t be easy, as there just isn’t the critical mass of drivers (of any kind) to let companies quickly recoup installation costs.
In a bid to surmount this obstacle, the federal government is funding EV chargers in some rural and Indigenous communities through Natural Resources Canada’s Zero-Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program (ZEVIP), The Weather Network says.
A final hurdle is the capacity of rural electricity grids that may struggle to handle the load if everyone charged their EVs at once. Grid transformers are also frequently knocked out by storms, sometimes for hours or even days.
Testifying to her own experience living in Kaslo, Sinclair describes days-long power outages. “You have to get your kids to school, or you have to get to work yourself,” she explains. “That’s not really a feasible implementation.”
In Canada we get 4 seasons of weather every year & temperatures drop to minus 40 degrees or lower in winter sometimes. That is below the minus 25 degree level where EV batteries no longer work I understand. I think that is the primary reason why rural folks stay away from EVs IMO. So IMO the solution is a HYBRID vehicle for those folks who are concerned about low temperatures freezing out EV batteries rather than a total EV which may not work in very cold temperatures. That is my major concern about a total EV vehicle. How can low temperature concern about total EVs be addressed? What are the facts & also your opinions about this matter?