4250km Toronto-Kelowna Kona trip: What to expect from the charging infrastructure and your Kona EV.

{reposted with permission from Reddit}
We just completed a 4,250 km drive from Toronto to Kelowna in our Kona EV 2021. Prior to this trip, we had enough challenging experiences with charging stations that we were cautiously optimistic that we would make it across the country without major incident.

The good news is that we were successful! No major incidents. It needs to be noted, however, that there were a couple of close calls and definitely frustrations at almost every one of the thirteen fast-charging stations that we used along the way. Along the way, the charging stations we used were:

• 8 Petro-Canada
• 2 Ivy
• 1 Flo
• 1 Co-Op
• 1 BC Hydro (with the Flo app)

Plugging In

I think there were only two occasions on which we drove up, used the app, unlocked the station and began charging without incident or delay at all. At every other station…

The app might or might not work.

Sometimes because there was not sufficient signal to open the app;

Sometimes because it just didn’t work – no explanation;

At least twice because it didn’t think I was close enough to the charging station to use the app – even though I was parked next to it!

The card tap might or might not work. More than once, the tap seemed to be working but, once we had gone through all the steps and were just waiting for the charge to initiate, it would decide not to. On occasion, we got the message that the car had rejected the charge. (Silly car!)

There was a wait for the charger because another car was using the only working station. We had to wait twice because the second station was broken down and, on a third occasion, we made someone else wait while we used the only operational station.

Our closest call was a stop in Wawa at which a technician was working on one of the two stations there and we waited about 45 minutes while another car charged. After they left, the app wouldn’t work so we tried tapping only to get the message that the tap function wasn’t available. With no fast-charge station for 200 km around, this was a concern.

Fortunately the very-friendly technician (shout out to Jesse), who had been working on the other station, came over and, in 5-10 minutes, had our station reconnected so that we could pay and charge. Interestingly he told us that he had also just repaired that same problem on that station before the previous vehicle had charged. So the fix lasted for exactly one vehicle. Once charged, we drove away not knowing if the next about-to-be-stranded vehicle would have better luck.

Charging Times

As for the charging experience itself, that was slightly better though the mystery of charging speeds remains opaque to me. Even as I was writing this, I Googled the issue and found an article claiming that “In many cases [at a Level 3 charging station], you can charge an EV’s battery to 80% in 30 minutes.” Unsubstantiated and inaccurate general claims like that frustrate me as they have vastly over-promised on an industry that is about to substantially under-deliver. Even a more thorough and helpful article here claimed that “drivers can now typically charge in 15-45 minutes.”

Our Kona seems to claim a maximum charging speed around 75 kW. I can’t actually find that on the Kona site but found a couple of industry sites that indicate this. This means that, even at full speed (which is rarely achieved…more on this below), it would take just under an hour to go from 10% to 80%. Not 30 minutes and not even 15-45 minutes.

Compounding this is the fact that it appears that every charger slows down in the higher ranges (i.e. when the battery is 70% full). And in case you are reading this early in your EV research, every EV battery slows down dramatically – even at a Level 3 charger – once the battery is charged beyond 80%. It’s no longer a “fast charger” once the battery is over 80%. It’s still faster than a Level 1 or 2 charger but significantly slower than it was under 80%. So on the road, it’s rarely beneficial to charge beyond 80%.

But the worst part of fast charging is that it rarely delivers on the fullness of its promise. Our Kona (maximum charging speed of 75 kW) only saw that speed 2 or 3 times – out of thirteen stops. Granted, the Flo chargers top out at 50 kW so getting 45 kW at a Flo is okay. But at several stations where the charge could have been up to 75 kW, I was getting 30-35kW. This includes one station that teased me with a 71 kW figure for the first two minutes followed by a nosedive to 30 kW for the next hour. For those doing the math, that’s less than half of the potential speed which means double the charging time. On a long road trip, that adds up.

There is some “it’s not our fault” writing out there about why the charge is slower than it could be but, honestly, it doesn’t ring true for me. One of the theories is that your battery is too hot and so the vehicle slows down the charge so as not to overheat the battery. But that doesn’t explain why it would be slow at one charger and not at the next (after an equally long hot highway drive). Nor why people experience a slow charge at one station and try the one next to it and get a much faster charge. Some of the fault must lie with the machine.

Cost savings

Having driven the 4,250 km from Toronto to Kelowna, I tabulated our charging costs and it came to an impressive $212. As a comparative, I Googled mileage rates for both hybrid and regular vehicles and found that a hybrid would likely have cost us $290 and a regular vehicle about $450. The van that we traded in to buy this vehicle would have run us around $750. We saved some money there!

This was helped too by the fact that, for three of our five nights on the road, we likely saved $20+/night by finding a free Level 2 charger close to where we were staying. “Close” is a relative term, I suppose.

Convenience

We don’t yet have charging stations – even Level 2 stations – on every street corner. When we stayed with friends, each of them drove with us at night anywhere from 2-8 km to a Level 2 station. We plugged in, left it for the night, and then they graciously drove us back in the morning. A little extra-special way of spending quality time with a friend!

When we stayed in hotels, there are still very few hotels that have charging stations on site. And those that do have a station of their own, typically only have one or two. So I could roll the dice, pay the premium to stay at that hotel and hope that no one else is using the lone charging station. Or – as we did – we could plan on finding a public station that is hopefully not too far from less-expensive accommodation.

This, however, means checking into the hotel, unloading, driving to the charging station (hopefully free), praying that your car won’t be vandalized in the abandoned parking lot overnight, taking my bike 2-3 km back to the hotel…and then returning in the morning to pick up the car, drive back to the hotel, and get back on the road. All in all, an extra hour or so of adventure in an unfamiliar city born of the extra complication of needing to charge the car!

Planning

Doing a long-distance trip like this is not for the technologically faint of heart. I was routinely consulting three apps at a time to make this work as smoothly (?) as it did.

ABRP (A Better Route Planner) was the best way to see which charging stations were along our route, suggesting charging stops along the way and estimating time for the trip.

PlugShare is needed to get user reviews of each of the charging stations. Which ones are working? Is the left or the right one faster? If there are three kinds of stations in the area, which one is best to use. You’ve gotta know that you don’t want to use the 30 kW lame station when there’s one firing at 71 kW just down the road. If every EV driver used the app, it would also tell you which stations are in use as you arrive into town – but we’re not there yet.

The third app that was open was the specific app for the charging station that I was going to use. I have five different charging station apps on my phone at the moment and I would need to consult the appropriate one as were getting nearer to get the most authoritative read on whether or not it was working and/or currently in use.

Along with the apps, there is the constant calculation of range. That goes something like this: “When I left the last station, it said that I had 280 km range and that my next stop would be in 240 km. But I’ve driven 100 km so far and now I only have 125 km range. What if range consumption accelerates? Will I still make it? I better keep checking this (obsessively) every 10 km or so to make sure I get there. I sure don’t want to add the time and cost of a tow truck into the trip!”

This isn’t helped by the fact that the actual driving range of the EV fluctuates so much. This won’t be a problem when EV charging stations are as ubiquitous as gas stations but that’s not the present reality. So for now the fact that my range on a full charge seemed to vary between 275 – 450 km makes planning a lot more complicated.

Contrary to what you might think, speed and/or hilliness of the road don’t seem to be the major factors that you might expect. We made great mileage at relatively high speeds and poor mileage at relatively low speeds. There seems definitely to be some relationship between speed and efficiency but it’s not as simple as one might hope.

Would we do it all again? We’re going to. Heading back West to East around this time next year! Will the charging stations be more reliable by then? I hope so. Will there be more of them by then? I hope so. Maybe the apps will be better too. One can only hope.