More electric car chargers in Sask. give owners more chance to roam

Saskatchewan is a land of straight highways and wide empty spaces — not exactly a paradise for electric vehicles — but as chargers get more common, it’s opening up possibilities.

Petro-Canada recently opened its first EV Fast Charger in east Regina, and has plans to open three more in the province — one each in Swift Current, Moose Jaw and Whitewood — as part of its project to have charging stations coast to coast along the Trans-Canada Highway.

Other companies, like Tesla, are also in the process of building more stations in some Saskatchewan communities, like Davidson.

Jeri Nixon thinks this is great. She has owned a 2014 Nissan Leaf as her only vehicle for a couple of years now.

“More charging stations is positive because that means you can go,” she said. “And with the chargers, especially if you have a newer (vehicle), you’re able to make those long distances no problem.”

Nixon and her partner bought the car after renting one while on vacation and loving it. She said there’s no need for oil changes and no stopping for gas every other week.

The car charges at their home, and Nixon estimates it has only added about $15 a month onto their power bill — a bill which will soon be going down as the pair have recently installed solar panels on their home.

“I like the greenness of it,” Nixon said about the car. “I’m not burning gas, and now that we have our solar panels up it’s also reducing that too. We’re just trying to reduce our carbon footprint.”

The car does have its limits though. It takes about four hours to charge from an empty battery. Newer vehicles and high-tech chargers can cut the charge time down to about 20 minutes, which is the estimated time for a charge on Petro-Canada’s systems.

As well, on a perfect summer day, Nixon’s car can go only about 145 kilometres on a full charge. Newer models with better technology can stretch a charge to 200 km or 250 km.

That, and the lack of publicly available chargers in communities, means long road trips can be out of the question for electric car drivers.

It hasn’t bothered Nixon and her fiancé too much. She said if they want to take a road trip, they either rent another vehicle or swap with a friend.

The new chargers going up around the province have Nixon happy, saying they’ll make trips more possible for other electric vehicles.

That’s something Suncor spokesperson Nicole Fisher said the company was thinking about when it started the Petro-Canada charger project. She said they wanted to enable the cross-Canada drive.

“It was important to us really just to be part of that energy mix. A lot of households have different types of vehicles now, so you might have a hybrid, you might have an electric, or you’ll still have a gas car. So, it just kind of gives a different opportunity,” explained Fisher.

There are a few charging stations tucked away around Saskatchewan already, several in hotel parkades. The DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Regina has several chargers which see action once or twice a week.

It’s the same story for a charger at a NAPA Auto Parts store in Davidson. It has been there for a while and someone will come to use it about twice a week, most going between Regina and Saskatoon according to a worker at the store.

Nixon said she’s starting to see more electric vehicles around these days. She said she’d encourage anyone to buy an electric car, explaining that they’re fun to drive and her life has got better because of the car.