Up at 6:00 a.m. looking forward to our first leg of the journey around the Great Lakes. Kona had a full charge overnight on the 110v at the inn. Kona says we now have 428kms of range. Beautiful cross country drive on a warm day. Breakfast in Pakenham, 16kms out of our way but great breakfast.
We arrived in Lindsay heading to the rapid chargers at their sportsplex. Not sure why the city thought people would like to spend time in this beautiful city in the middle of a giant parking lot but oh well. No place to eat or pee since nothing was open. I am sure with time the business folks will figure out the advantage of having chargers close to amenities.
ChargeHub app sucks. We put $50 on the app because they say they are accepted at most charge stations. So far we can’t spend our money! Didn’t matter since this charge station (Shell) had a non-functioning connector. After waiting in a parking lot on a phone needing a pee we finally gave up. On top of all of the frustration of not being able to charge and wasting an hour of trip time trying to figure it out, the phone number listed on the ChargeHub app for this station connected to ChargePoint (different app) not Shell! Aaaarrrggg!
A pee and we picked up some lunch and ate it in the Manilla Community Hall parking lot in the shade of a tree. It is now 24ºC. Focus……this is now an adventure with an EV that has 120kms of range left and it is 174kms to our destination in Collingwood! So for starters where is the closest charge? Any charger! Innisfil Beach on Lake Simcoe has 2 Level 2 chargers and if we are going to have to kill time on a slow top up it might as well be at the beach. So off we go with the climate systems turned off to save energy and you can’t open the windows much for fear of blowing the temporary transfer permit off the back window which it is taped to.
Side story, so this is Amy’s day to drive. It’s Friday afternoon on a hot spring day and we are driving through lake country, traffic is heavy. And so is the OPP presence! There are a lot more cops on the roads in ON, and finally one of them pulled us over since we have no plates front or back and a yellowish Quebec permit taped to the back behind tinted glass! Amy just smiled sweetly and handed him our Manitoba paperwork, which was all in order.
We finally arrive at Innisfil Beach, 67kms. of range left and plug in for an hour. Our target is a PetroCan on the north side of Barrie, we could have kept going but would have got there with 3kms in the tank…..to close! So after an hour of charging and a small nap we have another 35 kms of range in the tank. Off we go, and now the north bound traffic is really heavy with TO emptying out for the weekend.
The PetroCan rapid chargers are how all chargers should be, tap your card and fill, simple, easy, no app required. The only catch is that the charge station has to work! One station was down and the other one kicked us out after 11:22 mins of charging and13kWh delivered. Oh well it’s enough to get us to Collingwood and have the AC on.
We are staying at the Livingwater Spa, which is a big hotel/time share place on the old harbour…and they have EV Level 2 chargers in the parking lot, Yeah! But of the 4 chargers one is a CCS, the kind we need and the other 3 are Tesla. And there is a PHEV Tucson currently on the CCS. We ask the front desk to let us know when this guy is done, since the chargers are locked and staff need to unlock them to charge. Oops, they have no record of the car belonging to a guest, so we give up and eat Baskin and Robbins for a late supper….stressful day.
Before bed we are going through the apps trying to find the closest rapid chargers in Collingwood. We would rather be on a Level 2 over night since they are less expensive and seem to give a better charge at the top end. We discover that the CanTire just 900m down the road has both Level 2&3 Flo chargers. So off I go for a plug-in and a late evening stroll.
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