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West Kelowna now has its first ever electric car charging station.
On Friday afternoon Premier Christ Clark, MLA for Westside Kelowna and the City of West Kelowna Mayor Doug Findlater announced the opening of the west side station.
The new charging station will be the first station travellers will have use of coming from Vancouver or Penticton. Once an electric car is plugged in it will take about 30 minutes to fully charge the vehicle.
For Dave Pitchard, a Kelowna electric car owner he says it’s extremely important that there is a station in West Kelowna.
“We find 98 per cent you’ve charged overnight at home and you don’t need these stations, so you don’t need them every day. It’s when you want to go up and down the valley, you might need it to top up and get yourself your home.”
Pitchard will be driving his son to a soccer game in Coquitlam on Saturday and said he will be driving his Nissan Leaf electric car there and back in one day.
“By going on Highway 3 you go station to station. You stop Keramisos, Princeton, Manning Park, Hope, Abbotsford, and Coquitlam.”
The new station is located at 3678 Brown Road in downtown West Kelowna. Findlater said that there were numerous locations proposed and it took a while to decide on the Brown Road location.
“The electric vehicle charger is a win win for West Kelowna. It is good for our local economy and our downtown businesses. It puts West Kelowna on the green map as we make efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and strength efforts against climate change,” Findlater explained.
West Kelowna will be covering the electricity bill for the station, which will be about $75 a month. The station will be free for electric vehicle owners for the first several months and then it will go to a pay station. The owner will pay the cost of the electricity used, which will be about $6 or $7 for a full charge.
Funding for the station comes from the Government of Canada (50 per cent), the B.C. Government (25 per cent), and BC Hydro (25 per cent).
Pitchard noted that he can drive his Leaf for about an hour and a half at around 130 km per hour before the charge is drained.
The West Kelowna charging facility is the 23rd of 30 stations, which once completed will all be located along British Columbia’s major Interior Highways including 1, 3, 5, 97 and 97A, B and C.
According to Clark, British Columbia has the largest public charging network and the second highest per capita of adoption of electric vehicles. Although British Columbia is leading the way in electric vehicles, Clark herself doesn’t drive one.
“Since I became Premier I drive less, but I think certainly when I get back to private life and I’m driving more I would like to get an electric car,” said Clark.
Just last month $7 million was invested into new charging stations in the province, new incentives for clean vehicles were announced, and all electric vehicle, no matter how many passengers inside are now allowed to drive in HOV lanes.
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