P.E.I. driver dreams of day when all cars are electric

When Harry Smith drives to the Earth Expo on Saturday in Charlottetown, he won't be stopping for gas. In fact, he never stops for gas — his car is electric.

"When it's cold, you see people holding the nozzle, filling up their cars, shivering," he said. "Not us."

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Smith would like to see the day when all the cars on P.E.I. are electric. It's not likely to happen any time soon.  After all, there are only a handful of electric vehicles on the Island, and he owns two of them. One of his Tesla S models will be on display at the P.E.I. Farm Centre during Earth Expo.

He hopes it will inspire people to think about what they can do to use cleaner energy sources, and replacing gas-fuelled cars with EVs is just one way.

"It's not going to happen overnight, but the sooner it starts, the sooner it will," he said.

One barrier to electric cars has been price — many people simply can't afford them.

Smith paid about $100,000 US his first Tesla S in 2012, but prices have started to come down, and the new Tesla 3 coming out in 2017 retails for about $35,000.

Smith says in the long run, it's cheaper than a gas-fuelled car. He charges his car overnight in a dryer plug and on a full battery can easily drive from his home in DeSable, P.E.I., to Souris, P.E.I., and back.

He figures his electricity cost works out to about one cent a kilometre in the summer and three cents in the winter. Hydro-Quebec has calculated that an electric car would use about the same amount of energy in an average year as a hot-water heater.

For Smith and others who drive electric cars, it's not just about saving money, it's about saving the planet. That's why Chris Stewart, a psychiatrist in Summerside, P.E.I., bought his Nissan Leaf EV.

"Buying this car is the most moral thing, most spiritual thing, best thing I've ever done — more than anything I've ever done as a doctor," he said.

According to its website, Tesla already has 325,000 reservations for its new model.

Most of those will sell in the U.S., where there is a more elaborate network of super-charging stations that can fully charge a battery in less than half an hour.

Smith has volunteered in the past for a company called Sun Country Highway, which installed many of the 20-or-so charging stations on P.E.I. At those stations — located at private businesses like the Delta Hotel and P.E.I. Preserve Company — an hour of charging will last about 78 kilometres.

And as Smith likes to point out, in the winter you can wait comfortably inside while your car charges, instead of holding the nozzle and shivering at the gas pump.