When Jamella Hagen and her boyfriend planned a four-day road trip to bring his new electric pickup truck from Vancouver to Whitehorse, she anticipated challenges.

She knew the gaps between fast chargers in the North, so they planned stops in communities with EV charging stations.

What she did not anticipate were the wildfires.

“Our choice to drive an EV was an attempt to reduce our personal impact on climate change,” she wrote in a CBC first person column. “But on the road, we encountered climate change disasters all around us, and we had to cope with them while learning to use a new and still fragile charging network.”

Some of the routes Hagen planned to take were shut down and redirected to make room for evacuees leaving Kelowna and the Shuswap region.

Knowing the EV truck wouldn’t make a long distance between chargers, Hagen made unexpected stops, like a hotel where a charger was a 20 minute walk away. Hardly unusual, she said, as she often finds EV chargers located in inconvenient places, such as the edges of town or behind buildings.

“If I was travelling as a single woman, I would have found myself missing the comfort of a brightly lit gas station on a lonely stretch of highway.”

Overall, Hagen says she’ll still consider buying an electric vehicle herself while living in the north, but only if her family had an additional, fuel-powered car at the ready.

  • Herding LlamasEnglish
    27•9 months ago

    EVs are great in 999 ways out of 1000, but let’s find one extreme example of how they may not work perfectly in extreme conditions that won’t happen to the majority of people. There are obvious bias things in the article, as with many anti-EV articles as gas companies pour millions every year into anti-EV articles. Do they mention gas stations are turned off around fires for obvious reasons so gas vehicles also have issues - nope. There are simple obvious solutions around this that are simply not presented.

    It just reminds me of an article that I read everywhere about how a tesla blew up. Nearly every article talked about it like it just spontaneously blew up. Nearly no article mentioned that it blew up after it collided into a huge boulder on the road. Nor did they mention that the driver was totally fine as it caught fire half an hour after the accident. Or the obvious, that gas cars can also blow up but they slam into a boulder at high speeds.

    • OtterOPEnglish
      3•9 months ago

      I didn’t really see it as a knock against EVs, but the need to expand the network and make it more robust, specifically paying attention to regional challenges that could impact the network.

      It’s about some of the existing issues that we need to address in order to make the system better, not that we should stay with gas cars. I’m all for EVs, but we can’t make the system better without talking about where we can improve it

      • Herding LlamasEnglish
        12•9 months ago

        Yes and no. It is not in your face anti EV, that would be too obvious and it does not need to be. Answer a few questions for yourself (don’t worry answering them to me).

        Will this article make people want to buy a EV as their only car?

        Is this article mostly for or against EVs? Would you say it’s 80 or 90 percent about the problems of owning a EV?

        Does this article have fair criticism of gas cars and gas Infrastructure in wild fires? Do they even mention the issues with gas cars and fires?

        Will people question the safety of a EV after reading this?

        They address peoples personal safety while charging, specifically for woman (the most likely buyer of a EV). They talk about back areas, poorly lit places where you are alone and they could be dangerous. How will this make women feel when considering their next car purchase?

        The US like everywhere has a history of nearly 100% gas cars and gas car infrastructure. To have a article pointing out that gas car infrastructure is better than electric vehicles infrastructure is shortly said as no shit, how is that not obvious? So then what’s the point of pointing out the obvious? More importantly what’s the cause of pointing this out? More people will consider not buying a EV. When less people buy a EV there will be less infrastructure for them. See where this is going?

        I get it, you feel like we need to talk about the problem to fix them. But do we? Is this not obvious already? Do we all not know that taking a EV into remote areas and wildfires may not the the best of ideas?

        • OtterOPEnglish
          0•9 months ago

          I’m conflicted because this is true, the article might discourage someone that was thinking of buying an EV.

          At the same time, it’s valuable to hear from people’s experiences. Many regional governments want to transition to EVs. Hearing a detailed personal account of the different places this person went, and the issues they faced, is very valuable to addressing the issues. If you want to encourage EVs, and someone shares an experience about the issues they had, you’re more likely to address them.

          It would be nice to also have an article analyzing the issues around ICE vehicles in a forest fire, and if there’s a good one, then I’ll edit it in to the post. However, I don’t think that’s the only content we should be able to share. Sometimes people want to share a personal account, and I think it’s nice that there’s a column for that.

          First Person columns are personal stories and experiences of Canadians, in their own words. This is intended to showcase a more intimate storytelling perspective, and allow people from across the country to share what they have lived through.