Earlier this year Petro-Canada announced their new “Electric Highway”, a plan that would build EV charging stations at 50 of their existing gas stations along the Trans-Canada Highway, allowing for EV owners to drive from coast-to-coast.
Petro-Canada has already constructed and opened EV charging stations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Now the first British Columbia EV station has opened in Nanaimo, with a second in Victoria under construction that will be complete soon.
The Nanaimo EV charging station is located on the corner of Terminal Avenue and St. George Street. The site features DC fast chargers providing up to a 200 kW charge with both CSS and CHAdeMo options. That is enough to provide an 80 percent charge to most electric vehicles in 30 minutes. For now, charging is free, with no word what the cost to charge will be when the free period ends next year. The station is still working out the kinks of the new system, with several users reporting outages in the first weeks of operation.
The Victoria Petro-Canada EV station will be located at 5498 Patricia Bay Highway. Construction began last week and should be complete before the end of the year.
