Canada awards millions to charging network at pit stops
The Government of Canada is awarding $4.6-million to Suncor’s Petro-Canada subsidiary for building 92 electric vehicle fast-chargers. Suncor that specialises in synthetic crude from oil sands thus becomes part of Canada’s effort to install a coast-to-coast charging network.
Petro-Canada is Suncor’s gas station and retail arm. The first completed electric car charging station, in Stewiacke, Nova Scotia, will be part of a network of more than 50 Petro-Canada locations, each with two charging units on site.
A similar move had been announced before with Petro-Canada promising to install more than 50 EV chargers along the Trans-Canada highway at strategically situated gas stations from Nova Scotia to British Columbia. The Trans Canada Highways (TCH), Route Transcanadienne in French, span the vast country. The motorway system travels through all ten provinces of Canada from the Pacific Ocean on the west to the Atlantic on the east. The main route runs 7,821 km across the country.
The new funding for Petro-Canada is part of the Government of Canada’s $182.5-million investment to build a coast-to-coast charging network for electric vehicles. More than 500 fast-chargers are built or planned this year, with hundreds more expected over the next two years. Through this Electric Vehicle and Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Deployment Initiative (EVAFIDI), the Government supports not only charging stations for electric vehicles but also natural gas stations along key freight corridors and stations for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in metropolitan centres. This investment also includes support for the demonstration of next-generation charging technologies, as well as the development of binational (Canada and the United States) codes and standards for low-carbon vehicles and infrastructure. More so, Canada operates a sales target of 100% zero-emission vehicles in 2040 with interim goals of 10 per cent by 2025 and 30 per cent by 2030. The iZEV subsidy scheme is detailed here.
Petro-Canada is not alone in its approach. Volkswagen’s US-American diesel-gate redemption subsidiary Electrify America wants to take a piece of the cake as well. The company founded another subsidiary construct an EV charging network called Electrify Canada reportedly. The plan is to set up a DC charging network. For starters, 32 charging stations, some of them capable of high power charging, will be installed near highways and in metropolitan areas around British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec with four charge points and performance between 50 and 350kW on average.
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