Q&A: What New Brunswickers should know before buying an electric vehicle

The number of electric vehicles on the road in New Brunswick may be growing, but to many New Brunswick drivers they are still largely an unknown commodity.

Meanwhile, EVs are being promoted as one of the keys to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. New Brunswick has a goal to get 20,000 of them on the road by 2030. Canada is aiming to have all new light-duty vehicles be zero-emission by 2035. 

CBC News invited New Brunswickers to submit their questions about EVs and we found answers from those who use the vehicles, from the utility that powers them and from some engineers who are at the forefront of EV research and development.

How does the purchase price of an EV compare to a gas-powered car?

There are very expensive ones out there, but there are also an increasing number of more affordable models, said Carl Duivenvoorden, a sustainability consultant from Upper Kingsclear, near Fredericton, who's had a Chevy Bolt since 2019.

There are also government incentives up to $10,000, he said. So compared to a Honda Civic, for example, if you drive 20,000 kilometres a year, you could make up the difference in fuel savings in less than a year.

How much does an average refill cost? 

To go from totally depleted to totally charged, it's $8 to $10, said Duivenvoorden, who usually charges his car from a regular wall socket at his home, known as Level 1 charging.

On longer trips, charging rates are $15 an hour in New Brunswick and about $12 an hour in Quebec, he said, and a typical recharging stop is 30 to 60 minutes, to recharge your battery from empty to about 80 per cent. 

How does travel time compare when you factor in charging? 

Karen Flinn, owner of a 2019 Hyundai Ioniq, said when travelling from Fredericton to Cape Breton she plans on 15 minutes of charging for every 90 minutes of driving. There aren't very many fast-charging stations in Nova Scotia, she said, and there are often one or two vehicles waiting ahead in line. 

Through Quebec, where charging stations are more plentiful and powerful, stops can be quicker and less frequent. Most of the stations in Quebec have 100-kilowatt and 350-kilowatt Level 3 chargers, said Flinn, whereas along the Trans Canada in New Brunswick even the few Level 3 stations are only 50-kilowatt.

The speed of charging depends on how much power the vehicle can accept, said Duivenvoorden.

"For my Chevy Bolt, I might as well use a 50 because it will never charge faster than a 50, even if I plug it into a 100."

It's about 800 kilometres from his house to Montreal, which takes him about 10 hours, making three stops of about 35 to 40 minutes each.

How hard is it to find a charging station?

"We have stations pretty much all over the province," said Duivenvoorden. "There's quite a network of Level 3 chargers that are part of the eCharge network, but there are also other Level 2 chargers that are at hotels, restaurants and shopping malls."

You can find charging stations plotted on maps at chargehub.com and plugshare.ca, said Flinn.

Flinn has made three return trips to Ontario in her EV. She noted some stations along the way have eight to 16 chargers, some exclusively for Teslas.

In the last year or two, the proportion of EVs has gone up faster than the number of chargers, said Duivenvoorden. "So, we need an expansion in terms of more chargers per location."

Will the charging network be expanded?

Over the next 12 months, 19 Level 3 chargers will be added to the eCharge network, said N.B. Power spokesperson Dominique Couture. And they will be 100-kilowatt chargers.

Four Level 3 chargers were added earlier this year — in Saint John, Moncton, Shippagan and Harvey. The utility plans to partner with municipalities and businesses to add charging sites and to install additional chargers along busy routes and at tourist spots, Couture said. And it plans to keep improving the network to meet customer demand.

How do you pay for charging? 

To use the eCharge network in New Brunswick, you start by setting up an account online at echargenetwork.com, said Duivenvoorden. There are links to it from N.B. Power's website.

You can either download an app or order a card that will be used to make payments. If you choose the card, once you receive it you go back online and load it with money from your credit card. Then you can swipe it at charging stations, the same way you'd swipe a gift card at a place like Tim Hortons. When your charging session is finished, you get a text or an email saying, this is how much you charged and here's what's left on your card.

ECharge is linked to two other charging networks — the Electric Circuit in Quebec and the Flo network across Canada. It's not linked to the Ivy network, which is one of the operators with stations in Ontario. That means you have to plan ahead, said Flinn. Ivy doesn't accept credit card payments at charging stations, so to use their charges, you have to install an app before you go.

N.B. Power says it will continue discussions with industry to try to improve customer experience.  

For maintenance, can you go to any shop or do you have to go to a dealer?

For anything under warranty, it's best to go to the dealer, said Duivenvoorden, but for things like brakes, suspension and tires, you can probably go anywhere.

EVs require less maintenance than a gas-powered vehicle, he said, because they only have about one-tenth the number of moving parts. There are no oil changes and there's no exhaust system. 

Scheduled maintenance for his Bolt includes rotating tires, filling windshield washer fluid, putting on new wipers and changing the air conditioning fluid at about seven years.

He's had his Bolt for 2½ years, and the only maintenance he's done was to replace brakes, tires and a burned-out signal light.

How would the heater hold up if you got stuck in a snowstorm?

Turning on the heat while the car is parked will not instantly drain the battery, said Duivenvoorden. You'd make sure you had a full battery before you set out. And if you ended up having to sit for a while, the heat would run for "a long time."

A 2022 study by Car and Driver magazine estimated EVs would be able to keep their occupants warm for 12 to 30 hours, compared to 35 hours for a combustion engine.

Why is there not more focus on retrofitting gas vehicles into EVs?

It's a pretty complicated and expensive process, said Isaac Barkhouse, an EV researcher and developer CBC first spoke with in 2018, when he was part of a UNB engineering project to convert a Subaru Impreza to electric. Barkhouse now lives in Saint John and is working on developing electric vehicle components.

There are a few shops in North America that specialize in electric vehicle conversions, and there's a company in France that sells conversion kits for certain models, he said. The cost can range from $15,000 for something like an old Volkswagen Beetle that's only going to be driven for groceries or to a car show, all the way up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for luxury vehicles with greater power and range.

Converting to electric is more viable and popular for industrial and commercial vehicles, sailboats and classic cars, said Barkhouse.

What are the material hazards in the event of a severe accident?

EV batteries have a lot of electricity in them, so they do require special training for first responders, said Duivenvoorden. 

But if an EV is in a collision, control electronics place the battery into a safe state, said Barkhouse. 

Battery fires, while still possible, are not as big of a problem as they used to be, he said, also noting that EV batteries "tend to be less explosive than gasoline."

As with gas-powered vehicles most battery packs are cooled by liquid, he said. Some of these can be toxic and flammable. Solid-state batteries, however, are "on the brink of commercialization."