Hometown Service, Winkler’s Ford dealership, celebrated the installation of the community’s first Level 3 fast charging station for electric vehicles (EV) on Saturday.
Their Shock & Roll EV Learn & Drive event gave those curious about the future of automobiles the chance to check out their new charger and also test drive one of several fully electric or hybrid vehicles. Each test drive translated into a $10 donation from Hometown to Katie Cares. The day raised $1,700 for the charity.
General manager Brian Derksen says they hoped the event would help dispel some of the misconceptions that are out there about electric vehicles.
“We are EV enthusiasts here,” he said. “But there’s a lot of apprehension in the public about EVs. Once you experience an EV, learn about charging, it’s not as scary, so we wanted to get people behind the wheel so they could drive and experience and feel what it’s like.”
Charging stations are popping up in more and more communities across Canada, Derksen said, making travelling with an EV easier than ever.
“With Level 3 fast charging, when you’re travelling you can stop for half an hour to an hour, get a charge, and get back on the road,” he said, noting the charging station at Hometown is open to the public. People pay for how much juice they use while parked there. “It’s the same as a gas station that’s open 24 hours a day. Anybody can come here, they swipe through a credit card—or shortly we’ll be able to activate it with an app—and they charge and then continue on their way.
“Not that long ago, you only found fast chargers like this one in major cities or along the Trans-Canada Highway,” Derksen added. “But now as towns and cities the size of Winkler are starting to see chargers installed, it makes it much easier to travel.”
The average local driver, though, will do most of their charging right at home and will spend far less on the electricity needed to get their EV on the road than they ever did on gas for a traditionally-powered vehicle.
“EVs have a lot of power and are very efficient to run,” Derksen said. “To put it in perspective, when you’re charging at home where the power is pretty inexpensive, you can expect your electricity cost is going to be about 20 per cent of what you’d be paying for gas.
“When I go to Winnipeg and back, I have about $6 of electricity used for my trip to the city instead of $30-$40 on a similar sized gas-powered vehicle.”
Derksen says they’re selling a growing number of fully electric vehicles as well as electric-gas hybrids these days, and they expect those numbers to increase in the years ahead.
Among those on hand to test drive an EV Saturday was Willie Enns.
“I’ve been interested in electric vehicles for quite a while already and I’ve always said maybe my next vehicle might have some component of electricity in it, an electric battery,” he said as he waited to drive the Ford Escape plug-in hybrid.
“Right now, for our Canadian winters, that one makes a lot of sense,” Enns observed. “You have the gas for going to Winnipeg and back, but then 95 per cent of our driving is in town, so then it could be battery-powered for that.”
Enns said he’s most interested “in the fact that we’re finding alternatives to our fossil fuel burning. That’s my biggest thing—whether it’s electricity or batteries or some other energy source that they might develop, that’s the part that excites me.”
