Lack of convenient public charging ports major headache for EV owners: CAA study

Lack of convenient public charging ports major headache for EV owners, new data from a CAA study concludes.

Canadian electric vehicle drivers say a lack of reliable and convenient public charging is their biggest challenge, according to a survey by the Canadian Automobile Association.

More than 16,000 EV owners across the country shared their experience with electric vehicles, including battery range in the winter, charging infrastructure and overall car maintenance in a CAA/PlugShare survey called, The Voice of the Canadian Electric Vehicle Driver.

The survey found that seven out of 10 EV drivers are not satisfied with the number of fast-charging public ports.

“There’s the ABCs of EVs, which is ‘always be charging,’” said Ken Shields, a member of the Electric Vehicle Association of Northern Ontario.

“Since we bought our (electric) car in 2021, there have been no improvements in northern and northwestern Ontario. That I can really say.”

It becomes more problematic when faced with long road trips in colder weather.

More than half of EV drivers said they would rather use a gas-powered vehicle on long trips in extremely cold weather; two-thirds said lower battery range in the cold has been a problem.

More than two-thirds (68 per cent) of the general public said they wouldn’t purchase an EV because the driving range of an EV drops too much in cold weather.

“There’s all this two-lane road,” Shields said.

“You are at risk of a road blockage due to the weather or collisions.”

Next month, CAA will conduct Canada’s first EV winter test drive to dive deeper into electric vehicle range and battery performance in cold and snowy Canadian conditions.

CAA said manufacturers in Europe run winter tests, but often in controlled environments.

“What we’re hoping to do is to do a test where we take EVs out on the road, from one city to the other and run them to zero and see how long that takes and then check in along the way,” Julie Beun, CAA North and East Ontario’s managing director, told CTV News.

In Northern Ontario:

In northern Ontario, 37 per cent of EV drivers are more satisfied with the cost of DC fast charging than the rest of Ontario (31 per cent).

Overall, EV drivers in the north are more likely to use Level 1 and Level 2 home charging than the rest of Ontario, reflecting the lack of charging infrastructure.

Range anxiety is also higher in the north (25.59 per cent) compared to the rest of Ontario (22.25 per cent).

The survey also found that most electric vehicle owners plan to buy another EV when they need to replace their current vehicle, citing longer-term benefits like lower cost of fuel and maintenance compared to a car that runs on gas.

“While I’m walking or biking around town, I count the electric vehicles and I can count way more than I did say when I bought my own,” said Shields, noting Norway has become a global leader in the adoption of electric vehicles.

As of September 2024, more than 94 per cent of registered cars in Norway were electric.

The Canadian government continues to push automakers hard to have new light-duty sales in Canada be electric or plug-in hybrid by 2035.

There are also interim targets of at least 20 per cent of all sales being EVs by 2026 and 60 per cent by 2030.

“The EV adoption is about 10 per cent right now,” Shields says. “So, we can do this.”