At the 450-kilowatt station where the charging speed was only 173 kilowatts.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
When it comes to all-electric driving, I think of the U.K. as being several years ahead of us in Canada. It has ambitious targets for EVs and was one of the first countries to set a deadline of 2035 for all new non-commercial vehicles to be powered solely by electricity. The current government is considering bringing that date forward to 2030, but hasn’t changed its mind yet.
The U.K. should be an ideal market for electric vehicles. The distances driven by most people are generally short, because it’s not a physically large country. The climate is comparatively mild, with temperatures rarely below freezing or above 30 degrees Celsius – extremes of cold and heat are detrimental to batteries. British gasoline is highly taxed and expensive, costing the equivalent of about $2.80 a litre, or twice the Canadian price. And British energy should be plentiful, renewable and comparatively cheap – much of its power comes from wind turbines and nuclear stations, as well as natural gas from the North Sea just offshore.
So I felt good about spending some time in the U.K. over the Christmas season, driving an all-electric Hyundai Ioniq 6 sedan from the Korean maker’s press fleet. The car was comfortable and powerful and never put a wheel wrong, but keeping it charged at a reasonable cost was a constant consideration.
The experience would be different if I lived there and owned the car. In that case, I’d invest in a home charger and just plug in every night. It wouldn’t be as cheap as here, though. Electricity can be bought in the U.K. through an energy provider for as little as 13 cents per kilowatt-hour when charged overnight, compared with the ultralow overnight cost in Ontario of 2.8 cents per kilowatt-hour.
The view on the Ioniq 6 screen as it charges. The rear-facing view is on the screen for the virtual mirror, something we don't have in Canada.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
The Canadian price varies considerably by province, and by which delivery system you choose – either a flat rate consistent through the day or a variable rate that’s cheaper at night and more costly when demand is higher during the day. Even so, the most costly Canadian rates are about the same price as that cheapest overnight rate in Britain.
In the U.K., the average cost of residential electricity is about 50 cents a kilowatt-hour, which is about what I paid when I plugged in at a regular household outlet. I thought the car would charge in half the time it takes in Canada because British plugs deliver 240 volts, compared with North America’s 120 volts, but this wasn’t the case: actual power delivery comes from amperage, not voltage. The British and European plugs are generally rated at six amps, compared with 15 amps in Canada. So North Americans have low voltage and higher amperage, while Europeans have high voltage and lower amperage.
“This dates back to the early 1900s with the codification of the electricity network and electricity output,” says Moataz Mohamed, an associate professor of smart systems and transportation at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. “Each side of the equation claims they have the better system, but both of them are valid.”
What this meant was that it still took close to three days to fully charge the Ioniq 6 from empty at a regular British household plug, just as it does in Canada. In the U.K., that will cost roughly $40 to travel about 400 kilometres, which is 10 times the Ontario rate but still considerably cheaper than a gasoline equivalent.
This all changes, however, when you need to recharge away from home, at a commercial outlet. The charge for me varied between $1.36 and $1.65 per kilowatt-hour, making the cost about the same as covering the same distance in a gasoline-powered sedan.
The Ioniq 6 I drove is officially rated as consuming 16.8 kilowatt-hours per 100 kilometres (that’s one of the most efficient ratings of any EV on the market). At the most expensive commercial rate in the U.K, that should cost about $28 to travel 100 kilometres. Compare that with the cheapest overnight residential rate in Ontario, where it will cost 47 cents to travel the same distance.
I tried to recharge only at fast stations that offered 150 kilowatts or more, which I could find easily through the Hyundai navigation system. These stations were not as plentiful as I expected, however, and on a 400-kilometre journey north from Cambridge to Sunderland, driving on one of the U.K.’s busiest roads, such stations were often at least 50 kilometres apart. The true fast chargers of 350 kilowatts or more were perhaps 100 kilometres apart.
At the Ionity charger Mark Richardson couldn't access.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
I refuelled at a 450-kilowatt station close to my destination and the experience was almost everything the advertising claimed it should be: I pulled straight into a charger and added about 100 kilometres of charge in eight minutes, though the charging speed was only 173 kilowatts. That cost me about $30. The car had consumed an average of 20 kilowatt-hours per 100 kilometres on the drive up. Then I recharged over the next couple of days at my destination’s household plug.
The return south, however, was a different matter. The road was much busier, and I should have planned to add some charge when I still had at least half my range left in the battery. Instead, I pressed on farther, planning to recharge at a convenient 350-kilowatt Ionity station that I reached with 14 per cent of charge left in the battery, good for 50 kilometres.
When I arrived, all six chargers were in use. If I had an EV charging app on my phone, I would have known this beforehand, but I did not have a WiFi signal to use one. One of the people charging was frustrated that the charger kept shutting down for his Mercedes, but after waiting 20 minutes, a charger came free and I drove up and plugged in. I could not use it, though, without first registering for the Ionity app and I could not do that without a smartphone connection.
I moved on to a 150-kilowatt charger nearby at the same rest stop, but two of its chargers were in use and the third was broken. I pressed on, and finally found a 130-kilowatt Shell charger near my destination. I plugged in with 9 per cent of the battery remaining, or about 30 kilometres, and sat there in the dark parking lot for an hour while the car charged to 80 per cent. I had another journey to make the next day, so I couldn’t just recharge at the slow household socket. The charger roared away at 98 kilowatts, but this dropped in half as soon as another car plugged in at the second unit beside me, taking twice as long to charge. In the end, it cost me about $95 to regain 270 kilometres of driving range.
Mark Richardson on a trip through England with the Hyundai Ioniq 6.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
The point of all this is not to recognize that it’s more expensive to drive in the United Kingdom than it is in Canada. It’s to recognize that Canadians usually follow the British example for energy use and conservation, and if that’s the case here, then in a few years, when we’re at the same point in our thinking as the U.K. is now, commercial EV charging will cost at least the same as commercial gasoline refuelling. And it will still be a hassle of line-ups, waits and broken chargers.
All of these challenges disappear when you charge your EV at home, provided the residential rates don’t increase as demand increases and supply stays static. But for many of those who live in downtown condos or in houses with only street parking, this option simply doesn’t exist.
As more electric vehicles take to our roads and commercial charging becomes more of a necessity than an optional luxury, we should ensure there are price caps on the cost of commercial electricity. If we just leave it for the market to decide the price, it’s going to get very expensive, very fast. And then we’ll yearn for the good old days of pumping gasoline at the corner station.