Tesla in Toronto Advice re:Charging

[Tayzer88]

Hi Guys,

I am considering purchasing a model 3. What is holding me up is living in Toronto (near U of T) and only having street parking. My concern is regarding charging. I don't drive long distances. I drive to work every day (10 km round trip). On weekends i would maybe do 100kms on average.

My concern is that obviously i cannot charge my vehicle at home. Does anyone else live primarily through not charging at home and what is there experience. I would be looking at purchasing the extended range version.

I also go to the gym most mornings and the Hazelton Lanes area where i park has chargers in it. How much battery would that give me in 1 hours time? Is that sustainable for every day charging? Does that cost money to charge? (likely a dumb Q)

On the fence and hoping you guys can help me out with the decision of where to purchase or stick with my gas vehicle.

 

[DMC-Orangeville]

I do have a charger at home. Not relevant to you, but I can answer some of your questions.
The Model 3 SR+ is rated for 402 KM of range - but for battery health should be charged up to 90% = 362 km. This car qualifies for the $5000.00 federal rebate
Long range is rated for 518 KM of range, 90% = 466 KM, and doesn't qualify for the rebate

*most* of the public charging systems are 30 amp 240 volt = 7200 watts. that will give you about 40-45 km of charge for an hour with a warm battery. In spring through fall, a 10KM trip daily, and an hour charge will be no issue. For weekends, make sure that you charge say Wed-Fri.
Some of the chargers are free, but most are tied to a system, where you are charged by the hour/minute. I would suggest getting a FLO and Charge Point account/card, as they are the most common stations.

There are also "vampire" drains on the car. You will lose 2-3% PER DAY by the car sitting idle. More if you leave sentry mode on.

Winter is different. It takes a while to warm up the battery, and short trips (like yours) may take up to double of the range. Also, the battery won't charge as quickly, so you won't get the same range. I suspect you are still okay for this, and for the weekends.

Superchargers are around everywhere, and if you get a referral code you'll get 1500 KM of supercharging for free

 

[rypalmer]

Fellow Torontonian here, familiar with your area. Love Teslas and EVs in general, but if you're going to live where you do, with a commute like that, public transit or cycling are the only reasonable solutions. Mine is 13km round trip and this is what I do. The all-in cost for owning a $58,000 vehicle in the city of Toronto is at least $12,000 per year. To only drive 7,200km per year in it is near criminal. Plus, owning any car in Toronto is a royal PITA, especially if you are stuck parking on-street. Having no good solution to charge it is the icing on the cake. If public transit really doesn't work for you, it will be significantly cheaper to take an Uber to work and back every single day.

Going car-free is a financial life-hack that does not work in many places, but it doesn't get any better than where you are. Take advantage!

 

[RandomRFDer]

If you only have street parking, I don't think that it would be worth it. EVs are great for a large number of reasons, with one of them being the convenience of charging at home and not having to waste time at gas stations.

If you have to go out of your way to regularly charge your car, I don't think that makes it worth it.

 

[mrElbe]

Never mind the potential for vandalism while on street parking.

 

[wayner]

Never mind the potential for vandalism while on street parking.

You sound like an anti-urbanite There must be tens of thousands of people that park on the street in Toronto every night that don't suffer from vandalism - many of them with cars worth more than a Tesla.

 

[yuhong]

*most* of the public charging systems are 30 amp 240 volt = 7200 watts.

More common in cities are 30 amp 208 volt = 6000 watts, even slower (I think 23 miles per hour on a Model 3).

 

[Pescakl1]

Do you have free charging at work / university?
If so, then you are good to go, as good as charging at home.

Otherwise, I would foolow rypalmer advise and get rid of any car: you are in a big city with good public transport, take advantage of it.

You can still rent a car or use share car services when you need a car.

 

[Casmium]

In the winter months with your short trips you'll find the power drains pretty quick, without being able to charge at night I think you'll start to find charging to be quite annoying.

As for cost of charging you can get the plug share app and search cost of charging at stations in your area. Most of the Chargers at parking lots downtown will give you about 8-10% charge per hour,

 

[JamstationP85D]

Hazelton Lanes parking has some EV chargers under ground (my gym is in that building). You will probably get 10% battery increase per hour (buy something in Longos to get the 2 hours free parking). There are no close superchargers other than Eatons Centre parking garage. While the car is so very cool and like driving the future.. Your driving habits dont necessarily warrant it from an economical perspective. I do understand that the desire can out weight that though (as it did for me). Lots of options on plugshare in your area as well.

 

[5_+JqckQttqck]

Where do you work? Is there a parking garage? Most garages will have 120V 15A plugs for power washer and such. Find a spot with a plug and 8 hours at 7km/h is more than enough for your daily usage.

 

[wayner]

I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet, but there is suppsoed to be a Supercharger in the Annex, but not much progress has been made on this, or the other two Toronto urban SCs(Yong&Eg, Liberty Village) since they were announced a few years ago.

 

[cohste]

I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet, but there is suppsoed to be a Supercharger in the Annex, but not much progress has been made on this, or the other two Toronto urban SCs(Yong&Eg, Liberty Village) since they were announced a few years ago.

Pretty sure that the Annex Supercharger is going to be a Destination charger in the Park Hyatt, when the reno is complete...

 

[wayner]

Do you have any insight into that? There may be a destination charger in the Park Hyatt, but that is NOT anywhere near a Supercharger. And the Annex SuperChareger is still on the map. Maybe there will be a full Supercharger in the Hyatt's parking garage, just like the Toronto Eaton Centre and the Ottawa Rideau Centre. There is no reason you can't have both at pretty muich the same location - the Westin in Ottawa is connected to the Rideau Centre which has SC capabilities, but the Westin also has its own destination charging with at least two HPWCs.

But I am wondering if Tesla is rethinking these urban sites as these three urban Toronto locations were announced several years ago with no visible progress that I am aware of.

 

[5_+JqckQttqck]

OP can always seek out an fellow EVer with an home charger on Plug Share and arrange for something

 

[rypalmer]

But I am wondering if Tesla is rethinking these urban sites as these three urban Toronto locations were announced several years ago with no visible progress that I am aware of.

Either way, nobody in their right mind should rely on a downtown Toronto Supercharger for their daily charging needs. This would be a sure fire way to dislike your electric vehicle experience, and negate any potential fuel savings over an ICE vehicle.

 

[5_+JqckQttqck]

Either way, nobody in their right mind should rely on a downtown Toronto Supercharger for their daily charging needs. This would be a sure fire way to dislike your electric vehicle experience, and negate any potential fuel savings over an ICE vehicle.

Maximizing 10% to 70% charge rates, it's still 50% cost of gasoline. However, the time commitment to recharge once/twice a week would make it annoying unless it's already permissible in his/her routine.

 

[rypalmer]

Maximizing 10% to 70% charge rates, it's still 50% cost of gasoline. However, the time commitment to recharge once/twice a week would make it annoying unless it's already permissible in his/her routine.

Are you factoring in the cost of parking at the Eaton Centre while you charge?

 

[X.l.r.8]

I don’t have a home charger, and I have 2 cars. The first thing you should do is look on plug share. The car park next to my work has destination chargers, the parking cost is the same so once a week I park there instead. The same can be SSID of where I shop for groceries, there’s 2 80A chargers there. Even a 15A plug in your work carpark will pick you up the ins travelled to work and back. It’s totally doable with some planing, if you go to sherway to shop there are superchargers there, my wife goes there a lot so she charges there most of the time. I cannot use superchargers but have found a lot of chargers at or close to my destinations to not make a whole lot of difference, I wish I could have charging in the carpark but as of last year it’s 5k to install and the amount of red tape is far to much to even contemplate. If you can find work arounds then you should be fine. It’s like a lot of things, once you start looking you will probably find many more charging places but never noticed them before.

 

[S'toon]

My childhood best friend lives in Toronto and uses public transport or bicycles. He doesn't bother owning a car. He uses a car share service for the few times he does need a car.