My Unexcellent Adventure
I have travelled from Kanata, on the Western outskirts of Ottawa, to the Lawrence St. supercharger, without stopping to charge, a couple times recently by using Hwy 7 to reduce my distance travelled. Yesterday (Oct. 7) I set off again with my wife and a full load of tires and other gear for our kids in the Hamilton & Waterloo areas. This time, with wet road conditions and extra load, I could see that I would need to charge on the way. We took Hwy 37 to Belleville with the intention to stop at the Best Western in Cobourg. For some reason, the car's 3G connection died and I no longer had maps. I managed to miss Cobourg and, combined with my male stubbornness about where I thought Cobourg was, by the time I stopped and checked on my iPhone, we were quite a ways past it. That was when I made a fateful decision.
I decided that, since I was only about 20 km short of charge, I would press on and charge at one of the many charging stations ahead. I chose the Quality Inn near Oshawa on the Sun Country Highway map, which indicated a CS-90 charger. On my small iPhone display, I didn't realize that the colour of the marker for that charger indicated that it was not yet installed (the blurb associated with it didn't say that). When we got there, the hotel was closed and under renovation. There was no charger in sight. I found a charger through Plugshare at Durham College (rated at 30A, 240V) on the other side of Oshawa. Unfortunately, the car didn't like the wiring and would only charge at 11 km/hr. Waiting 6 minutes for each extra km of range was torture. Needless to say, my wife was not impressed!
I decided that I would only charge barely enough to get to the Best Western in Scarborough that had a CS-90 according to Sun Country Highway. We got there, having just passed 0 km range a couple of km before, only to find a sign on the charger stating that charging was for guests only and had to be enabled at the front desk. I went to the front desk and told the receptionist that we were traveling, were out of charge, and only needed about 20 minutes of charge (the hotel is only about 12 km away from the supercharger). No charging if you aren’t a guest. I asked if I could get 10 minutes of charge. No. There’s more but I need to finish this.
I found chargers at Centennial College on Plugshare but they weren’t finished installation. I called the Lawrence Ave. Tesla center but they only had the information available on Plugshare. I drove to a local GM dealer, sweating on the way. They were very nice and I was able to charge at 15A, 200V. However, after about 45 minutes, the car still wasn’t showing above 0 km range, making me question whether the car was actually charging. I decided to move on to the next charge station closer to the supercharger and resigned myself to calling for a tow if need be. We got to O’Neil Electric Supply without a problem, so obviously the charging had done something, and were very pleased to find a charger putting out 30A at 200V. The staff were very friendly and were surprised to have me show up since the charger had only been installed a week ago. They didn’t know it was on Plugshare. Charged until the car showed 7 km range and went on to the supercharger, which was only 6 km away.
No problems at the supercharger. To get to 20 km range took 2 minutes as opposed to the 2-3 hours we had just spent. Charged to 200km range and no problem to get to Hamilton other than it was now rush hour. My wife did not agree with me that we should look at this as an adventure.
The moral of the story is never pass up charging at the Best Westerns in Kingston and Cobourg. It is also apparent to me that looking for backup chargers on an iPhone when your car battery is low and your wife is cranky is not an ideal situation. It makes a lot more sense to research backup charging solutions at home beforehand. You also can’t rely just on a cursory review of the information on EV charger websites.
