Canada EV charging infrastructure from Sun Country

[videovic]

The sun country website has a 100 amp DC charger sponsorship program. You can adopt a charger for only 2 grand. Its only 80 amps so a wee bit slow for Tesla owners but its a start. 60 KWH batteries will charge a bit quicker. I guess you have to arrange for a location, or donate one. It seems a great way for a business owner to have one installed in their parking lot to get the growing business. If i had money i think I would invest in Sun Country. ( no i am not in any way affiliated with them). I am however, excited that someone other that the UK and Elon Musk is intent on "electrifying" our roadways. Another forward looking company that believes the EV is here at last! If i Owned a business with a parking lot i would consider this amazingly affordable program.

not sure about using URLS here so: /products-page/sponsorship-evchargers

It's my opinion that by 2018, the Model E, and EVs in general, will make up a significant new demographic of vehicle drivers and will strain whatever infrastructure is there. The charging locations need to be everywhere. By everywhere i mean at perhaps at the density of existing gas bars and stations now. Too many city dwellers have no place to charge, having no driveway or garage, and will need public charging locations.

Range anxiety is an accepted reality in ICE vehicles, as it is in EVs. But only if the EV can go 250 - 300 mile range on a charge, and the charge is "fast".

Have you never run out of gas and had to walk it to the nearest petrol supply? I sure have, more than i care to admit.

Cheers

 

[dsm363]

Do you mean the CS-100 chargers? Those are 80A AC EVSEs. But they are doing great work, I agree.

 

[Doug_G]

The sun country website has a 100 amp DC charger sponsorship program. You can adopt a charger for only 2 grand. Its only 80 amps so a wee bit slow for Tesla owners but its a start.

"Only"??? That is the most powerful Level II AC power level available, and the maximum that a Tesla with dual chargers can accept. The only thing faster is Superchargers (and Chademo whenever that appears).

 

[PoweredByRain]

The sun country website has a 100 amp DC charger sponsorship program. You can adopt a charger for only 2 grand. Its only 80 amps so a wee bit slow for Tesla owners but its a start. 60 KWH batteries will charge a bit quicker. I guess you have to arrange for a location, or donate one.

It's AC, not DC. It's a J1772 charger. 100A circuit, which means 80A maximum continuous. If at 240V, that would be 19 kW, which will charge an 85 kWh battery empty to full in a little over 4 hours. That's relatively quick. Not Supercharger quick, but not bad.

The speed of charging is the same whether with a 60 kWh or 85 kWh battery, at least until you get very close to fully charged. I've never seen the current ramp down.

Have you never run out of gas and had to walk it to the nearest petrol supply? I sure have, more than i care to admit.

Cheers

Since you asked... actually no, I have never run out of fuel. I've never even come close, in nearly 30 years of driving. I have never understood why anyone would, given the ubiquity of fuelling stations.

But then, I am also a pilot, so the concept of actually checking how much fuel you have BEFORE you go somewhere is self-evident. (The concept of energy being separate from distance is as well; good luck going the same distance with the same amount of fuel against a big headwind as you'd go with a big tailwind. This notion of a battery having A range, a single number, drives me batty. It just doesn't. It has a certain ENERGY storage capacity. That's what it has. Sorry, end of rant.)

 

[ecarfan]

Posting here because this is the only thread I could find about Sun Country. Yesterday for the first time I charged at a Sun Country charger in Sequim, Washington and wanted to share my experience.
I found the charger on Plugshare. I knew nothing about Sun Country. I pulled up to the charger, looked at the cable and noted it was a J1772 so got out my adaptor, inserted it into my charge port and plugged in the cable. There were no instructions on the charger, the upper light was green (trying to recall all the details, seems like there was a second light on the charger but do not remember if it was green or not), so I hit the "Start" button. Nothing happened. The car said "check charger power". Clearly the car knew that it was connected to a power source but no power was flowing.
I removed the charger cable from the adaptor and pressed hard on the adaptor to make sure it was seated, reconnected the cable, hit "Start” again, same message from car. No charging.
I know my Tesla J1772 adaptor was working because I had used it the past two days to charge in Seattle.
The charger did not appear to be showing any indication of a problem. I did not know if payment was required, there was no useful information on the charger. There was a symbol of a smartphone with the screen showing a QR code. Did I need to set up a Sun Country account and download a smartphone app and scan the QR code shown on the charger? That seemed unlikely since the charger had absolutely no instructions on it except a "Start" button, but then why show a graphic of a smartphone with a QR code?
So I got out my iPhone, downloaded the Sun Country app, and opened the app. The app had absolutely no information on the charging procedure or payment, it just seemed to be a way to find chargers. I went to the Sun Country website, but again no information about charging procedures.
Could charging be free? I found that hard to believe. Who was paying for the chargers and electricity? I did some more online research and it appeared that the money funding Sun Country was from the Canadian government. But then why was there a charger located in the U.S.?
I called the Sun Country help line number shown on the side of the charger. I got a voicemail message in French. I left a message -- in English since mon français est très pauvre -- asking them to call me.
I went down the street to get some lunch. I got a call back in half an hour. I explained my situation and was told that "with the Tesla J1772 adaptor sometimes you have to jiggle the cable to get it to connect properly because the adaptor creates more downward pull on the cable". I drove back to the charger, keeping Sun Country on the phone, reconnected to the charger, pressed Start, nothing happened. Hit Stop and Start two more times, then finally on the fourth try the car started charging.
All the while the guy on the phone kept repeating about how I had to "jiggle" the cable. I informed him that I had not jiggled the cable during our conversation but after repeatedly pressing the Start button the car finally began charging. He insisted it was a cable issue. I told him that it seemed like a charger issue to me
I was happy to get 80A charging for free, but found the overall experience rather frustrating, and remain puzzled as to why there are no charging instructions on the charger (and have no idea what the smartphone graphic showing a QR code means).

 

[Jaff]

I am fairly certain that Sun Country has never accepted any government money...there are others here that could verify.

Their charge stations are usually in a very good state of repair ( here in Canada)...Clipper Creek make a very robust unit imo...

 

[mknox]

"Only"??? That is the most powerful Level II AC power level available, and the maximum that a Tesla with dual chargers can accept. The only thing faster is Superchargers (and Chademo whenever that appears).

Yeah, thanks for jumping on that comment. The SCH-100 gives the same 80 amp continuous charge at a Tesla HPWC. There is nothing faster at Level 2. I have a couple of these at my office and I can charge my 85 at a rate of about 1/2 hour for each 10% of battery capacity.

- - - Updated - - -

All the while the guy on the phone kept repeating about how I had to "jiggle" the cable. I informed him that I had not jiggled the cable during our conversation but after repeatedly pressing the Start button the car finally began charging. He insisted it was a cable issue. I told him that it seemed like a charger issue to me
I was happy to get 80A charging for free, but found the overall experience rather frustrating, and remain puzzled as to why there are no charging instructions on the charger (and have no idea what the smartphone graphic showing a QR code means).

I have two of these 100 amp (80 amp) units at my office. They are essentially re-branded Clipper Creek units. I identified a problem with it and the Tesla J1772 adapter that got gradually worse over about a year. I was noticing problems reported on PlugShare and my own adapter became more and more finicky. I found I would have to hold the Tesla adapter in one hand, and the J1772 handle in the other and kind of pull the adapter to handle connection in and out (there is about 1/4" of play) a few times before it would lock and connect. Eventually it wouldn't work at all. Oddy, it worked perfectly on cars with native J1772 sockets. This happened on both of my units.

I contacted Sun Country who referred me to Clipper Creek in California. They were great and worked with me on resolving the issue. I also had Tesla examine my J1772 adapter (no problem found) and even let me use a spare to test things out. Clipper Creek sent me two new cable sets which I installed, and now the Tesla adapters work perfectly again. I sent the old cables back and Clipper Creek were going to analyze them to see what they could find. Haven't heard back yet.

It seems to be specific to the 100 (80) amp units. They have a much heavier cable and handle. It seems that somehow the contacts in the J1772 handle wear down and can't properly connect with the Tesla adapter. Somehow, this doesn't affect how they work with Volts, Leafs etc. that use the J1772 directly.