The latest ice storm is testing the patience of some electric car drivers, who must find a working charging station and wait their turn in line.
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“I’m ready to sell it,” says Diana Trujillo, with a sigh of discouragement. This is the second time in just a few months that she has found herself running to the charging stations for her Tesla SUV, after also losing electricity for several days over Christmas.
“Having an electric car is a nightmare,” she laments, as she waited her turn in front of a dozen charging stations in Boisbriand yesterday. The 43-year-old does a lot of driving and has had to charge her car every day since Wednesday’s storm.
Also for gasoline
Also in line aboard a Tesla, Kyril Maatouk did not mind waiting about fifteen minutes. “My wife had to go to four gas stations to get gas,” he explains.
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Gas station pumps run on electricity and several queues have also occurred there.
“It’s the first time I’ve waited […] I came today to recharge my car because I am on leave”, continues Mr. Maatouk, whose car still had 40% autonomy.
In Mirabel, Éric Coallier also experienced a power outage for the second time in two years. On the other hand, he and his spouse, who each have an electric car, always make sure that one of the two is fully charged so as never to be “badly taken”.
“There are six electric terminals, they are all full and about seven or eight cars are waiting,” he noted Friday morning, near his home. As a precaution, they recharged their Mustang Mach-E, not knowing when they would have power back at home.
You have to be pretty good at math…
Having an electric car means learning to travel differently and to plan your journeys well. And a power outage can mean a few headaches, especially when you’re a journalist who needs to be able to get from point A to point B quickly.
Clara Loiseau, The Journal of Montreal
Because in an electric car, you have to calculate, before long journeys, the energy you will need to go and come back. You must check that there are charging stations at the destination, if possible fast charges, to avoid having to wait 8 hours to be at maximum capacity. And we must also take into account the weather conditions which can affect the autonomy.
So when my boss asked me to go to Chateauguay on Thursday at noon to cover the flooding caused by the power cuts, the first thing I said to myself was: “will I be able to come back home ? “.
Because with the blackout that plunged my neighborhood in eastern Montreal into darkness Wednesday through Friday morning, the battery was far from fully charged.
Terminals… without current
Difficult in addition to counting on the public terminals which were also out of service or stormed by other badly taken electromobilists, like me. And impossible to walk to a terminal to fill a can of electricity either if I break down on the road (laughs).
It immediately reminded me of my first reports with my first electric car which had a range of 117 km in winter and where I sometimes had to recharge myself three times on fast terminals to succeed in reaching all my destinations.
My little car was transformed, as for many journalists, into an office by the time I finally reached the necessary number of kilometers to allow me to go home and find an available terminal next to the house.
Despite everything, it’s clear that I don’t regret driving an electric car, especially when you see the price of fuel and that petrol stations have also had to close due to lack of electricity.