By Michael Trusiak
WOODSTOCK - To quote a famous 1996 car commercial, “the electric car is here.” Well the electric car has come and gone, only to be risen from the dead 15 years later.
This past December, GM and Nissan unveiled the next generation of electric vehicles (EV): the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf. As with everything in the automotive business, their competitors also want a piece of the action and are jumping on the electric band-wagon once again.
Throughout 2011, there will be a surge of EVs coming to market: The Toyota Rav4 Electric, Mitsubishi MiEV, and the Ford Focus Electric, to name a few. The Volt and Leaf have just gone on sale here in the Great White North, but only in select cities.
While all this talk of EVs might have people feeling warm and fuzzy inside, the fact remains this technology is still in its infancy and requires an infrastructure to properly support it.
So is New Brunswick ready for the Electric Revolution 2.0?
B-EV, in this place
New Brunswick is the second smallest province by population and geography in Canada. The province’s rural landscape is dotted with villages, towns and cities, few and far between.
Winters are also a defining characteristic of New Brunswick, as with the rest of the country. In the past few years we have had several record breaking winters in terms of snowfall.
Trucks too are a big part of our landscape; with one-fourth of all vehicles on the road being a truck.
So why would anyone want to buy an electric car here and risk being taunted by F-150 drivers, swallowed by snowdrifts or stranded in between towns.
EV technology has changed quite a bit since the late nineties, when the first wave of electric cars began showing up on the road. These EVs where expensive, used nickel-metal batteries (opposed to the more efficient lithium-ion batteries used in EVs today) and did not have the sort of green movement that many states or provinces have today. Not to mention they were only available in California.
Greg LeBlanc is the climate change coordinator at Falls Brook Centre near Knowlesville. He believes the time is right for electric vehicles.
“I think that there is a number of reinforcing factors today that just weren’t there ten years ago when the first movement of electric vehicles started,” said LeBlanc. “People are so much more conscious now of climate change and gas prices, you know those types of aspects.”
LeBlanc says that in order to have a sustainable infrastructure for EVs, there must be a replacement for the provinces current gasoline structure.
“A lot of people are still going to be on the go, so what’s happening on the west coast of the U.S. is that there is a pilot project developing sort of an “electric” gas station where people can recharge their EV’s in about the same time as a gasoline powered car,” said LeBlanc.
These fast charging stations however are still being developed and use a large amount of energy, in the span of minutes to fully recharge an electric car.
“The easier steps are hooking up homes, businesses, retail stores and other places where people park their cars with 240 volt electric connectors,” said LeBlanc.
All EV manufacturers are offering a 240-volt charger upgrade from a standard 120-volt. While this may cost an extra $2,000, it will also significantly decrease the charging time of the car. For example: A Nissan Leaf will take about 16 hours to fully recharge on a 120-volt outlet; but cars charged through a 240-volt connector, like the one running your washing machine, will only take eight hours to charge.
There may also be an EV mentality already ingrained in the minds of not just New Brunswicker’s, but Canadians, thanks to the prevalent use of block heaters.
Trying to start your car in 40 below weather is always a tense moment. Those first few seconds of listening to the engine struggle can melt a snowman. Fortunately, block heaters have made this process much easier.
The concept is not much different for recharging an electric car. The exception is, instead of plugging in your car on the coldest of nights, you’re doing it every day.
Power overwhelming?
Despite having the added, feel-good mentality of not burning fossil fuels, electricity is not free.
NB Power estimates that an electric car in New Brunswick would consume an extra 3000 kWh per year; about the same as a water heater or $24 more on your monthly power bill.
While the cost would be hundreds of dollars less than what a normal gas powered car would cost in a year, could this added power consumption affect the province’s energy distribution.
Melissa Morton is a spokesperson for NB Power. She says the company is confident it can deal with the added weight of an EV infrastructure.
“Electric Vehicles are still an emerging market in the province but we have been doing extensive research on them. As far as our distribution system goes, we (NB Power) don’t expect EVs will pose a significant strain on it, as EVs would most likely be charged during off-peak hours,” said Morton.
Smart Grids are an emerging concept towards how energy is distributed to households. They effectively communicate with houses connected to a specific grid and determine the most efficient time to power your appliances, lights or, in this case, recharge your electric vehicle.
“You plug-in your car and it talks to the grid and says I need this much energy to recharge my battery,” says LeBlanc. “Then the grid says back to it ‘well maybe you can wait an hour because that is when we expect to be generating a lot of wind’ or ‘people will be going to bed.’”
Critics and aficionados of the electric car have also debated whether charging your EV through fossil fuels like coal plants actually qualifies as 100% zero emissions.
“If we continue to hold on to a lot of our fossil fuel generation then electric vehicles won’t be as clean as they are touted to be,” said Leblanc. “Yeah, you might be getting off not burning gas in your tank in your vehicle but you’re just transitioning that to a coal plant a hundred kilometres away.”
30% of New Brunswick’s energy consumption comes from renewable energy sources such as hydro, wind and bio-mass. The government is planning to increase that number to 40% by 2016.
The electric players
So which cars will hit the New Brunswick market?
Well, the first electric car to go on sale this summer in Canada was the crown techno-jewel of the new General Motors: the Chevrolet Volt. But it is a little more complicated than that.
The Volt or EV’s in general are not your typical mass-produced car. As blasphemous as this may sound, they are more of a specialty vehicle right now, like say a Bentley or Porsche 911, for environmentalists.
While the Volt is already being sold across Canada in select markets, Matthew Toner, Sales Manager at CYV Chevrolet, said New Brunswick will have to wait a little longer to see the Volt.
“Probably late 2012-13. What will happen is dealerships will most likely need a special license to order them in and stock them,” said Toner. “The larger cities like Halifax and Saint John will probably be the first ones to start selling them in the Atlantic region.”
Toner also said dealerships will have to spend a certain amount of money upgrading and training their mechanics in order to carry the Volt.
As for the Nissan Leaf, it has just hit the market, with the first one being picked up late last month. Meanwhile, New Brunswick – and Atlantic Canada for that matter – appear to be looking in from the outside as Quebec, Ontario and BC all venture into electric-car-happy-land.
This, of course, is reflective of the infrastructure or lack thereof in the province.
“We are quite a ways away in New Brunswick because the government hasn’t really taken a lot of action on moving in that direction yet,” said Leblanc. “It really takes the prerogative of the province working with the utility to set up the infrastructure.”
The Electric car is here, perhaps for good. It’ll just take a little more time getting to New Brunswick.
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The pure breeds
Unlike the Volt which has a small gas powered engine (just in case), the Nissan Leaf and electric version of the Ford Focus are 100% gas-free. The Leaf’s 24-kWh lithium-ion battery (like the smaller ones in laptops) has enough juice for 160 kilometers (100 miles) on a single charge. The Focus has a similar sized battery offering 23-kWh, which Ford claims will match the Leaf’s driving range.
Also Canadian auto parts giant, Magna International developed the Focus’ entire electric powertrain.
The Focus and Leaf are also dripping with more gizmos and gadgets than the Star-ship Enterprise. Both cars sport LCD screens in the centre console that can display anything from the cars’ climate, radio and navigation controls. The car can also notify you where the nearest charging station is, the most efficient route and how much energy the car will consume. As with many EVs and hybrids they usually come with an eco-driving coaching feature that lets the driver know how efficient his/her driving is. For instance, the Focus’ LCD screen displays a “flock” of butterflies when driving. The more aggressive you drive, the more butterflies will fly away off the screen. The Leaf and Volt also have their own variation of this.
All three vehicles also have their own set of special apps for smartphones that connect directly to the car. You can set when you want to charge the car; find it in a parking lot using GPS; or the vehicle itself will notify you when it’s done charging.
Volt: It’s not actually an electric vehicle.
To clarify, the Chevrolet Volt is not an electric car; GM insists on calling it a Range-Extended Electric Vehicle. In layman’s terms, that means it essentially has two power sources; a large, 16-kWh lithium-ion battery, coupled with an electric generator as the primary power source; and a small 1.4 litre, 4 cylinder gasoline engine to extend the range when the battery runs out – hence the name. With both sources, the Volt will get an estimated combined fuel economy of 153 mpg (imperial). But it is a little more complicated and intuitive than that.
The Volt can run on pure battery power for about 40-80 kilometers, below 112 km/h (70 mph). Once it accelerates above 112 km/h, the gas engine kicks in to help power the wheels. However, the range of the battery is also dependent on how hard the car is driven. City driving is where the Volt truly shines, like any other EV or hybrid. If your daily commute is less than the 40-80 kilometers between charging times, chances are you may never see a gas station.
The simplest way to describe how the Volts’ powertrain works would probably be how an average household furnace operates. When it gets too cold in the house, the furnace kicks in to maintain the set temperature. When the battery depletes or when the Volt is under hard acceleration, the engine activates to drive the car. The two systems complement each other, taking turns to power the car under certain circumstances, until you get back home or run out of gas.
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