I recently drove to Huntsville, Ontario, about two hours north of Toronto, for a few nights in the fully-electric Cadillac LYRIQ. I’ve driven the LYRIQ for some time now, but this was my first extended road trip in an EV.
I left Toronto with 90% charge, which meant the 260 kilometre commute was well within reach (for reference, the LYRIQ has about 500 km range on a full charge). Our place in Huntsville does not yet have a home-charging station, so as a first-time EV long-haul adventurer I became a little preoccupied (read: obsessed) with figuring out where and when and how to charge up out of town.
The MyCadillac app was intuitive and mapped out local chargers. We landed on a DC Fast charger near Main Street in Huntsville. I uploaded credit card payment, plugged in the charger, and by the time my wife and I finished our morning coffee in town (some 25 minutes later) we were back to 95% charge. More than enough juice to get us through the weekend and back home.
When I speak with “EV-curious” customers at our dealerships, the most common concern I hear is around charging. Less and less about battery range, because in the city – between the shorter commutes, home charging and robust public networks – range isn’t the issue.
It’s really charging on the road (and downtime) that people seem concerned about. I can understand this.
A major key to hitting that inflection point for EV adoption will be reducing the “time-to-charge” for drivers on the road. That will happen with faster charging, more charging stations and functioning chargers. Once the average time-to-charge (between finding a station, re-charging and getting back on the road) gets to parity with the typical gas re-fueling experience (15-20 minutes), we are going to see EV sales really start to take off.
James Ricci is President of Roy Foss Automotive Group.
