Almost a third of all cars in Toronto need to be electric by 2030. Is the city ready for drivers like me?

Thestar.com
Aug. 29, 2022

Like many Torontonians I own no garage and no driveway -- no place at home to plug in an electric vehicle.

The city is going to have to convince a lot of people like me to go electric. It sounds like an environmental mission impossible -- boost the percentage of vehicles in Toronto powered by electricity from about one per cent to 30 per cent. Not over decades, but in only eight years.

That accelerated target, a key part of the city’s strategy to help avoid climate catastrophe, is among the most ambitious in Canada despite Toronto and Ontario puttering far behind some other regions in electric vehicle (EV) adoption.

“It’s really quite sad that Toronto is further behind than it should be,” said Joanna Kyriazis of Clean Energy Canada.

Just 2.4 per cent of new Toronto vehicles registered in 2020 were EVs, way behind the 10.9 per cent EV registrations in Vancouver and eight per cent in Montreal.

Toronto needs to convince hundreds of thousands of people to take up emission-free transport to become carbon neutral and help avoid climate nightmares like the deadly “heat dome” that struck B.C. last year. About 35 per cent of local greenhouse gas emissions come from tailpipes.

For the city to reach its climate goal, a lot of vehicle owners just like me who have no place at home to plug in will need to make the switch. Is Toronto ready for a lot more of us to hit the road?

To find out, I rented a Chevy Bolt for three days. The results? It’s possible. But there were challenges as a city-core EV driver, and there will be many more as people adapt.

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On a spring day, I picked up the Bolt from Electric Vehicle Network, an Etobicoke company that rents and sells used EVs such as Teslas, Chevrolets, Kias and Hyundais.

Johnny Beckett, EVN’s sales and customer service vice-president, said rentals -- I paid $90 a day -- are a great way for gas drivers to get a first taste of zero-emission motoring, while used sales offer a more affordable entry point.

Teslas have consumer cachet, range and cool tech. But starting at more than $60,000 new and about $50,000 used, they are unlikely to be the vehicle of mass adoption.

“Our number one seller is not Tesla, even though it’s the number one known product,” said Beckett. “The main line we get is ‘I’d love to get a Tesla, but I don’t want to spend that much.’”

As EVN’s sales leader, the Bolt was a little over $40,000 new, before a federal rebate, Beckett said. Used, he added, it would fetch about $36,850 after a battery cell replacement done under Chevrolet’s mass recall of Bolts.

Actually getting people behind the wheel of their own EV is one of Toronto’s biggest challenges.

The city lags, Clean Energy’s Kyriazis said, largely because Premier Doug Ford in 2018 cancelled rebates on EV purchases available in other provinces, and has not followed B.C. and Quebec in mandating that automakers sell a percentage of zero-emission vehicles.

California’s regulators have gone further than any Canadian jurisdiction, voting to ban the sale of new gasoline cars by 2035, with interim targets to phase them out altogether.

“Toronto’s goal is ambitious but doable with the right policies and programs, and Toronto has many of them,” Kyriazis said. “Now they need to ratchet them up, increase the speed and scale. The framework is there but they need to get going.”

Canadians eager to buy an EV today face long waits due to a semiconductor shortage. But according to industry experts and EV users, there are also longer-term obstacles to Canada’s biggest city making gas-guzzlers extinct.

They include the relatively high cost of EVs, the insufficient number of public charging stations, and consumer hesitation mostly fuelled by habits formed driving gas cars for decades.

Canadian motorists lag Americans when it comes to intentions to switch to electric for their next vehicle, according to survey results released in June by automotive consultants J.D. Power. Just under 60 per cent of Americans surveyed were very or somewhat likely to consider an EV, while only 46 per cent of Canadians said they are ready to go electric.

Ready or not, when city council last fall accelerated Toronto’s carbon-neutral goal by a decade to 2040, the EV targets automatically moved up by a decade from the already ambitious goal of 30 per cent by 2040 and 100 per cent by 2050.

That “added some additional complexity” to Toronto’s EV strategy, said James Nowlan, executive director of the environment and energy division of the city.

“The plans don’t change -- it’s the same discussion around charging, education and other areas to support EV uptake -- but we have to do it in a faster timeframe.”

From my three-day experience, many Torontonians would be convinced if they simply got behind the wheel.

Settling into the Bolt, I saw a colourful digital dash and large centre screen. It felt more like a traditional car than a friend’s Tesla Model 3 which, with its huge middle screen and little else, felt like I was driving an iPad.

It was a bit disconcerting to push the “On” button and hear no noise. Lights flashed to life, including the all-important range indicator, which sat at 300 kilometres, about 100 shy of a “full tank” for this car.

Keeping that tank full was another issue, one the city will need to improve on.

Instead of range anxiety -- with visions of the Bolt dying in Toronto gridlock as it ran out of charge -- I silently breezed about my business, making frequent short stops at nearby public chargers rather than powering up overnight at home.

But it did take effort. I discovered that just because an app points you to a charger doesn’t mean it’s available, or even operational. These are, after all, pioneer days for EVs and their supporting infrastructure.

When my daughter Tess asked to visit the Eaton Centre, an app called PlugShare pointed me to chargers in the nearby city hall underground parking. There I switched to the Flo app -- maker of the charger -- but it couldn’t locate the device in front of me.

A cheerful woman answering the help line explained that poor underground cell service was the likely culprit. It’s not an issue for Flo customers who buy a $15 card they can wave at the device, she said before remotely starting my session.

“Congratulations Dave, you are charging an electric car!” she enthused, giving me a bit of a thrill. I left the Bolt for just over an hour and returned to find I had added about 40 kilometres range for $2.50.

I got in the habit of finding the nearest charger before venturing out. On the way home from grocery shopping, I stopped at the city’s on-street Alton Avenue charger for 15 or 20 minutes and used the time to reply to work emails.

The PlugShare app showed no chargers within an easy walk of my home but several within a 15-minute drive. They were “Level 2” chargers, adding about 40 kilometres of range in an hour. Before a major trip I would seek out a faster Level 3 charger.

Julian Egelstaff says education campaigns are needed to banish motorist fears about running out of juice and to tune them into EV gas and maintenance savings.

Knowing your chargers is key. Drivers need to adopt a mindset, said Julian Egelstaff, who last year replaced his aging four-cylinder Honda Fit with an electric Hyundai Kona costing $46,000 and boasting a range of about 415 kilometres.

Instead of periodically seeing the low-gas indicator and looking for a gas station, you charge at home -- if you can -- and “places of opportunities” you visit such as malls and parking lots.

Home charging, even with a regular wall socket, “is like having a gas station in your garage that’ll give you a quarter tank a night,” he said, adding that in January it cost him $2.60 per night.

“Level 2” chargers get his Kona the equivalent of half a tank in about four hours. Level 3 chargers get him that much in less than 40 minutes. Egelstaff said cold-weather reductions to range, mostly due to electricity used to heat the cabin, are low and manageable, especially in newer EVs with long range.

He said education campaigns are needed to banish motorist fears about running out of juice and to tune them into EV gas and maintenance savings.

Charging at home in a standard socket in off-peak overnight hours boosts his range by about 100 kilometres, more than enough for around-town driving. Before visiting his son in Peterborough he sometimes uses a faster, city-installed charger -- for a $3 flat rate between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. -- on a residential street near his home.

Last year Egelstaff drove to California in six days, stopping at fast chargers every 200 to 250 kilometres and plugging in every night -- often for free -- at hotels he had scouted while using apps to plan the journey, charger to charger. His drive home via B.C. brought the trip total to 10,500 kilometres.

I wasn’t looking for California: I was just looking to get around the city without losing power. When the app pointed me to a charger at a car dealership, I found the spot occupied by its gas-powered customer shuttle.

My biggest fail happened in the garage under the YMCA near Cherry Street, where hopes of a quick lunchtime workout quickly died. I faced charger after charger, none of them operational. Plugging one into the Bolt, I stared forlornly, willing power to flow. It never did. A YMCA staffer later apologized and said the devices were about to be replaced with new ones.

Still, my range rarely dipped below 280 kilometres.

I charged four times, adding 150 kilometres at a total cost of $8.19 including two free sessions. That is likely pricier than if I was charging at home, but a fraction of the cost of gasoline to drive the same distance.

Still, for a good chunk of the city to drive like I did, we will need more charging capacity. Toronto’s strategy includes an expansion of the on-street chargers. The first 17, which initially saw low uptake, will be augmented this year by 32 across the city after demand accelerated.

The city now requires developers of new buildings to rough-in EV charging infrastructures, provides funding for new and existing projects to install chargers and is adding hundreds of chargers at city-owned Green P parking lots.

Still, the full weight of that EV target doesn’t fall solely on Toronto’s government, the city’s Nowlan said. “It’s us and all our partners -- the other levels of government, the auto sector and the private sector companies installing EV chargers.”

For me, being garage-less turned out to be no barrier at all. For the right trade-in value, I would swap my gas guzzler for an EV in a flash.

My success was specific to circumstances, including my relatively low car use (I also walk, bike and use transit) and a tolerance for some hassle. But maybe the fact that many Torontonians can’t have home chargers won’t, in the end, be the city’s roadblock to widespread EV adoption.

Owning an electric vehicle can be practical for Torontonians with no driveway or garage, the Star's David Rider found over three days of using a Chevrolet Bolt and plugging in wherever possible.

The best moment of my EV adventure happened on a trip to Caledon. My biggest fear over my experiment turned out to be that I’d have nothing exciting to write about, so I tried to give myself range anxiety. I ran down the Bolt’s battery on a country drive to visit family in the Caledon area.
Flying along the highway I shuddered as the digital display shed kilometres at an alarming rate. But after the visit, PlugShare guided me to a charger outside Caledon’s town office. There I watched my range rise quickly -- at no cost -- to get me back to Toronto with 180 kilometres to spare.

The great moment came when I took my foot off the accelerator on the downslope of a Caledon hill. The main driving difference between a gas guzzler and an EV is regeneration which, when activated, feeds energy back into the engine when you take your foot off the accelerator or hit the brake. Friction slows the vehicle enough that you can drive with only the gas pedal.

As I pulled my foot off the pedal, regeneration started feeding juice into the battery, adding two kilometres of range while I was rolling forward.

I felt like the future.

EVs won’t save the planet. Fossil fuels are used to make EVs, which are only as clean as the power we are feeding into them.

Carolyn Kim, senior director of the Pembina Institute’s communities and decarbonization group, said EV adoption is important, but so are bikes, e-bikes, electric buses, car-share services and other alternatives to private vehicles.

The TTC has pledged to have 30 per cent of its buses emissions-free by 2032 and all by 2040. The city’s bike-share program has introduced a limited number of e-bikes for short-term rental.

“Our research points to the fact that we need a multi-pronged approach to decarbonization to reach the ambitious climate targets that governments are setting,” Kim said, pointing out that in Ontario there is roughly one public charger per 25 EVs on the road, compared with one for every eight on the road.

“To get ahead on their net-zero climate strategy, the City of Toronto needs to collaborate with different actors across sectors, including Toronto Hydro and the Ontario government to establish the right kind of financial incentives and programs to unlock (EV) adoption,” said Kim.

They won’t have to convince me to change. More important, they won’t have to convince my kids. They loved the Bolt, a key to getting people like me to make the switch, according to Beckett of EVN.

“Kids understand tech and have a lot of influence on their parents when they buy their vehicles -- we’ve seen this time and time again,” he said.

“It sounds crazy, but if Toronto really wanted to get the parents to buy, which is usually what happens, let the kids know what’s out there even though they may not be cutting the cheque.”