Tesla Roadster Saskatoon to Vancouver Odyssey

[Doug_G]

I've been helping Sun Country Highway, the Canadian distributors for Clipper Creek, popularize the roll-out of charging infrastructure in Canada.

The beginnings of the electric highway is already in place in Western Canada. To show how it works, company founder Kent Rathwell is driving his Tesla Roadster from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to the Vancouver International Auto Show in Vancouver, British Columbia using public charging stations along the route. That's a distance of over 1,500 km.

I just got a brief update from Kent. Here are a few pictures:



Charging at Kal Tire in Swift Current, Saskatchewan.



Roadster "family reunion" in Okotoks, Alberta.



Heading west from Calgary, Alberta... might be a few hills ahead... and some rather more wintery weather!

[bint2k]

are these charge stations going in the gas stations across the country? i know in Ontario we have "en route" stations, I'm wondering where these public stations will be

[Doug_G]

Yes, the plan is to install them across the country, but gas stations are not the preferred location. Nothing to do there...

En Route stations have been pre-wired for chargers, but plans for the stations have not been finalized to my knowledge.

[Spurkey]

That's awesome. How does one find the location of the public charging stations? Their website doesn't appear to have a list however looking at the comments relating to their trip it sounds like several are already in place. Are there any in Edmonton yet?

[Doug_G]

All these charge points were installed very recently and haven't found their way into charge point databases yet. Stay tuned.

[jcstp]

Please make an "open" database with your chargepoints! This way any chargepointapp can integrate them easily!

[Spurkey]

All these charge points were installed very recently and haven't found their way into charge point databases yet. Stay tuned.

Sounds good. Hopefully they'll appear in these databases around the time of, oh, say 3 months after US deliveries of Model S' start.

[rabar10]

Looks like he made it!

TheProvince - Man drives electric car from Toronto to Vancouver for auto show

[dpeilow]

Another story

Electric Tesla Roadster completes cross-country trek

I'm guessing that's a typo about 7 hours.

[Doug_G]

Another story

Electric Tesla Roadster completes cross-country trek

I'm guessing that's a typo about 7 hours.

At 40A that's a pretty good number; it's even longer at 30 amps.

It turned out to be easier to get 30A charge stations (40A circuits) installed. Electricians routinely have 40A cable, breakers, and other parts in stock. With the very fast turnaround of this little adventure, there wasn't time to get the larger cables, etc., ordered. That made the trip even more of an adventure; that plus some bad weather made it hard to keep up with the planned schedule. Hopefully most of those will be upgraded in due course.

Sun Country Highway is promoting installing higher power, pointing out that if you install a low-power charger now, you're probably going to end up replacing it down the road.