A journalist recounts a 3,000-kilometer road trip in a Hyundai Ioniq 9 through remote areas of Ontario, highlighting the challenges and considerations of driving an electric vehicle on the road less traveled, including charging infrastructure and battery range.
Electric cars make a lot of sense in the city, where they can be easily recharged at home or at any number of fast public chargers. But how about in the more remote areas of Canada, on the road less travelled? I’ve just returned from a 3,000-kilometre Ontario road trip in a Hyundai Ioniq 9 , visiting Nakina and Nipigon for research into a book I’m preparing.
Nakina is north of Geraldton and to get there I drove on Ontario’s Highway 11. This is officially an alternate route of the Trans-Canada Highway and was once the only road to link Canada’s east and west. Many long-distance truckers prefer this road because it’s a little shorter than taking the scenic and more hilly, traditional Trans-Canada along the north shore of Lake Superior. If you just want to drive to the other end, it gets the job done.The Ioniq 9 has an advanced Level 2 autonomous system, which allowed Mark Richardson to drive about six minutes at a time without having to touch the wheel.It’s almost 1,000 kilometres from North Bay to Nipigon on Hwy. 11, with an extra 100 kilometres up to Nakina and back. The Ioniq 9 is completely electric and you canabout it on this journey. Hyundai’s biggest EV has a 110-kilowatt-hour battery pack and is capable of driving at least 500 kilometres on a single charge. Maybe not so far when the legendary cold of Ontario’s northland hits each winter, but temperatures were mostly warm for this drive in September.Despite one of the longest ranges in the marketplace, I needed to plan ahead to know where and when to charge. I brought along my friend Neil, who’s owned electric vehicles for the last five years, to help with the planning; mostly, I brought him along to have somebody else to blame if we should find ourselves stranded. It helped a great deal that the Ioniq 9 has a Tesla-designed NACS charging port, so we could charge at most Tesla superchargers. Not all, however – some are still accessible only to Tesla vehicles. The process was simple at the first charging spot in Bracebridge. It was a Tesla station where there were several vacant chargers. The SUV topped up after 250 kilometres, costing $30.67, while we ate lunch next door at Boston Pizza. It continued to be simple after we topped up again overnight in North Bay at our hotel’s free charger. The next day, there was a 50-kilowatt charger in the Tim Horton’s parking lot at Temiskaming Shores that we thought was broken – the spot was overgrown and the charger looked in rough shape – but it turned out to be working just fine, and it was free to use.We needed to fill up little and often because Neil could find no chargers faster than 50 kilowatts beyond North Bay. If the Ioniq’s battery should be too depleted, a 50-kilowatt charge could take several hours. Hyundai says the SUV will charge from 10 to 80 per cent in 24 minutes if it’s plugged into a 350-kilowatt charger, but such charging capacity is still uncommon in Ontario, and especially away from the Windsor-Toronto-Montreal corridor. We filled up before dinner in Kapuskasing, then the next day after 100 kilometres in Hearst. Then it was 250 kilometres to the next fast-chargers in Geraldton. One of the two Ivy chargers at the Esso station was broken, but nobody was using the working charger, so all was well.At the Tesla Superchargers in Nipigon. It helped a great deal that the Ioniq 9 has a Tesla-designed NACS charging port.“Do you get many EVs at your chargers?” I asked the clerk at the station. After all, they were the only fast chargers to be found before Nipigon, another 160 kilometres to the south-west. “We probably average two, maybe three cars a week,” said the clerk. And Neil and I realized we had not seen another electric vehicle since North Bay. Nor would we see another before reaching Nipigon a couple of days later. When I mentioned to a resident in Nakina that we were driving an electric car, she looked horrified, as if we were in a moon-buggy. The 50-kilowatt charge at Geraldton gave us enough range to easily reach Nipigon, where we were the only vehicle to plug in at the Tesla superchargers. The Tesla app stated the six chargers were each good for 250 kilowatts, but I only achieved 125 kilowatts. I’d wanted to try Nipigon’s Petro-Canada fast charger, but it had apparently been broken for months. We found another free charge at our hotel in Terrace Bay, made a Ford Mach-E wait half an hour for us to finish with the charger at Blind River, added some slow charge at Little Current, and then filled for the final time at Owen Sound, after crossing Georgian Bay on the Chi-Cheemaun ferry.Neil and I were excited in a nerdy way about the Electrify Canada chargers in Owen Sound. There were four of them, all available and all rated at 350 kilowatts. The Ioniq 9 had a 20-per-cent charge left in the battery and the temperature was a balmy 17 degrees Celsius – perfect for maximum charging speed. We wanted to see what 350 kilowatts felt like surging into the battery. The Ioniq, however, reached a maximum charging speed of just 236 kilowatts, impressive by any measure but far short of what we’d hoped to see. When we got home, I contacted Electrify Canada and was told the charger was working fine. So I contacted Hyundai Canada and asked why the charging speed had been just two-thirds of what I expected. “This is a good point of clarification,” wrote Jenn McCarthy, a spokeswoman for Hyundai Auto Canada Corp. “We do not advertise that the vehicle is capable of charging at 350kW, just that the approximate 10-to-80-per-cent charge time achievedAt the end of the 3,000-kilometre, six-day journey, the big Hyundai had spent about nine hours plugged into chargers while we waited, and another couple of nights charging while we slept at hotels. Its electric consumption averaged 21.9 kilowatt-hours per 100 kilometres and the final cost for electricity was $370, or just over 12 cents per kilometre. You can compare that to a similar sized, gas-powered SUV cruising on the highway at 10 litres per 100 kilometres, which would cost about 13 cents a kilometre in gas. It’s not an apples to apples comparison, of course. Some charges were free. If you own an EV, most of your charging is probably at home and a fraction of the cost. The lesson learned, however, is that however smug we may be that EVs are the future, it’s an entirely different world once you leave the city. There’s no way that residents of Nakina or Kapuskasing or Hearst will welcome still-alien EVs with the long distances they must drive and the frigid winter temperatures they can now conquer easily with gasoline or diesel. We’re getting there, but like Highway 11 itself, there’s still a long way to go.Charging for the final time in Owen Sound where the Ioniq 9 reached a maximum charging speed of 236 kilowatts, far short of the 350 we’d hoped to see.
Electric Vehicles Road Trip Hyundai Ioniq 9 Charging Infrastructure Ontario
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