Electric vehicles are great ... but not in the North

I am thinking the jury is still out on the verdict of whether electric vehicles will grab a significant portion of the consumer market anytime soon.

I purchased a newer vehicle in December all the time thinking that I should hold out for an electric vehicle, or at least a gas-electric hybrid. The other vehicle was 10 years old so I figured it was time.

Living in Northern Ontario, my first instinct was to have a vehicle that was reliable in the winter. I honestly don’t believe the electric vehicle market is there yet. My new Jeep is a gas guzzler, but not at bad as my old Nitro. Still I am enjoying the current low gasoline prices, even though I have no where to go!

There is a different story for commercial vehicles, that can afford to have charging stations and support systems for batteries. In mining for example, if you purchase an electric vehicle, you likely purchase a spare battery unit at the same time.

When one battery needs recharging, you replace it with a freshly charged battery and go back to work in minutes. You put the other battery on charge.

We did this in the 1980s when I was a miner at Kidd Mine in Timmins. One of my jobs was to drive the electric underground train hauling ore. If the loco began losing power in the middle of the shift, we pulled into the shop and switched out batteries. It took about 10 minutes. Enough time for a smoke.

This would be nice if you could do it with your new electric car in 2020. It doesn’t work like that. Also, with communities in Northern Ontario – indeed in most of Canada – being rural and remote, it is not always easy to find a charging station.

That’s the key reason for me. Winter and long distances. I don’t see electric vehicles measuring up anytime soon. I can foresee news stories in the next few years where motorists with electric cars run out of power and get stranded in a snowstorm or on a busy highway. Yes, it happens with gas vehicles already, but I believe it will be more of an issue with electric cars.