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Tesla Roadster Saskatoon to Vancouver Odyssey

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Doug_G

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Global Moderator
Apr 2, 2010
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Ottawa, Canada
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:

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Charging at Kal Tire in Swift Current, Saskatchewan.

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Roadster "family reunion" in Okotoks, Alberta.

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

I am Roadster #905 on Salt Spring Island, BC. I have sent three emails to SCH; two to the general inbox on the web site and one directly to Kent. I have gotten no responses. I really want to help this effort locally. I realize they are a small young company, but why no response after months?

As others have mentioned, finding out where these chargers are is really essential to popularizing the company, and making best use of the resource. I added the one in Tofino to Recargo myself, but I have no idea where the others are, even those right here on Vancouver Island.

Hope to hear more good news soon! Hoping to help! Hoping to do the reverse odyssey, possibly in September, so I really need to know if it is feasible!

Vincent
 
Coming a bit late to the party. I'm in Victoria, and leading the tiny project for my condo to install two EVCS in two of our available parking spots. We have received approval from BOMA to go ahead with quotes (for their incentive grant), and I sent the purchase/installation quotes in a week ago but haven't gotten that final approval back yet to begin install. These won't be public as they are in an underground controlled-entrance lot, however, I still will add them with notes on the various "most popular" open EVCS databases.

QUESTION: which online databases are your favourites and/or most useful (e.g. SCH, plugshare (plugincars), plugndrive.ca, chargepoint, others?)?

(BTW, we chose Sun Country CS-60's as that was the most our 30-year-old electrical panel would take - I agree with earlier post that if you install smaller, you'll eventually want more - even though I think a Tesla is the only vehicle on the road right now that can handle anything more than 30A (???)).