Here we goooooo!! Canada is expected to announce this week that all new cars must be zero emissions by 2035. Only 12 years left to buy a gas guzzler, people!
Let me guess, you live in a large #urban centre? Or perhaps a suburb of such?
When you live somewhere where there are no fast chargers, and possibly no chargers at all, along your 750km drive - and there will still be none there in 12 years - "just go #EV" starts to sound a little like "Hi, I live in Toronto and/or Ottawa and/or Vancouver, and I don't care how it affects you".
Add in drives which require ICE cars to have the heater full blast the whole way... bye, battery range.
@cazabon@erinwhalen unless there's a huge buy back, gas/diesel will be around a long time as used vehicles. Our small city Alberta has gone from 0 to at least 3 public chargers in less than 3 years. Petro-Canada and Shell have already started building out charge stations, and batteries continue to get better, so 12 years is not unreasonable.
I'm not sure where you live, but here things can be a whole lot more #sparse. I used to do a 750km drive where there was exactly one place you could stop for gas on the way, around the middle. It consisted of one gas station / convenience store combo, and half a dozen houses.
There was no way to build a charger there without running a new power feed to the "town" hundreds of kilometers, which isn't going to happen in my lifetime.
@cazabon@erinwhalen there is a proposed indigenous energy corridor running from Fort McMurray to Churchill. There's no reason it couldn't include power as well as fibre optics.
And ... ? That would cover one line from Alberta to Manitoba. Doesn't help with any of the routes I'm talking about.
Why is it impossible for advocates of BEVs to admit that in this country of ten million square kilometers, there are large parts of it that are quite unlike the fifty-square-kilometer area that they're most familiar with?
A solution tailor-made for urban centers and the main highways that connect them is never going to cover even a majority of Canada.
@cazabon@cass_m - Yes, for these reasons, I suspect Canada will lag behind the rest of the world in our adoption of EVs – especially for people who have to do a lot of long-distance driving in the remote areas you describe. (Important to note we're talking about a small minority of the population, though.)
I also think it's worth considering that EV batteries 12 years from now are likely to be more advanced and have much longer ranges/faster charging times than today's car batteries.
> This couple have just completed a drive from the North Pole to the South Pole. Something
> no one has ever done before. And they did it in an EV.
And they had to have a #trailer with #solar panels and #wind turbines to be able to do it, because there is no electric charging infrastructure for large parts of the journey.
Are you suggesting you'll give everyone who doesn't travel within close proximity of a fast charger station one of those trailers?
No need if there's charging available at the destination.
And for those remote hard to reach places, you can buy a last gasp ICE car in 2035, run it to 2045 and I expect by then it'll be a none issue. Range options will be massive and charging infrastructure will be solved.
Failing that there's always trailers with turbines and solar 😄
> [...] 2045 [...] then it'll be a non issue. Range options will be massive
> and charging infrastructure will be solved.
Maybe where you are. Charging infrastructure will definitely not be solved for large parts of my province by 2045 - or ever, possibly. Remember the bit where I said the population density up north was perhaps 0.1 people / km^2?
Many of the places up there don't have electricity. At all. There goes your "just slow charge when you get there".
@cass_m@cazabon@mackaj@erinwhalen Partly true. Only plugin hybrids will still be permitted, must be capable of 80km electric travel on a charge. More common self charging sort won't be allowed.
Hybrid isn't going to do a lot for highway drives in the cold here - cruising at high speed (with serious headwinds...) doesn't give regenerative charging a chance to do anything. So it means relying almost purely on the ICE -- but a pure-ICE car would weigh 0.5-1.0 tonnes less and do the same thing, so the hybrid would produce more CO2...
This sounds like the average Dutch citizen 2 years ago. Once a tipping point is reached the amount of chargers and EVs will increase rapidly in your area as well.
I imagine it still feels like early-adopter stage over there so I can totally understand it's not for you right now.
My province: population density ~= 1.7 people / km ^ 2. And the population here is concentrated heavily in the southern third of the province - up north, it's 0.2 or 0.1 people / km^2.
For large areas of my province, it will never be #economically feasible to build #charging infrastructure for #EVs.
@cazabon@erinwhalen But there will be Hydrogen #HFEV there to save the day. Isn't that right @Hypx ? I mean sure we've gotten electricity just about everywhere and can't even get Hydrogen to the LA basin consistently, but I'm sure it will make it to the far reaches of Canada in a decade, yes?
@cazabon - Thanks so much for weighing in with your thoughts! I really appreciate it.
I actually live on the outskirts of a town of less than 5,000 on the BC coast that's accessible only by ferry.
I hear you on the lack of infrastructure throughout most of Canada, which is why I am excited to see the federal government set a deadline on the sale of new gas cars, as I suspect it will provide serious impetus to kickstart the development of that infrastructure. ✌️
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