Nine days from California to Canada
Doctoral student dishes on living in Edmonton with an electric car
Ryan Stanfield took an unusual journey on his way to starting a PhD at the University of Alberta. Two years ago, it took him nine days to drive here from Southern California in his electric car, but when he heads back there this December, he expects that he can cut his travel time in half. Find out how, and read more about his journey and his thoughts on driving an electric vehicle.
Can you tell us a bit about your trip to Edmonton in your electric vehicle?
I drove my electric car from Southern California all the way up here to Edmonton in December 2014. I’m going to drive it back down this December because the lease is expiring on the car, so I have to return it. I might get another one and drive it back. We’ll see. It’s kind of a crazy trip, though. It’s just a lot of logistics because the current electric vehicle charging infrastructure — it’s getting a lot better, but it’s still not like having a gas car and having gas stations all over the place.
I was super excited to see the electric vehicle charging station that was set up in one of the garages here. I was waiting for that for a while because I was excited when I saw the Nissan Leaf going around campus.
You noticed it?
Yeah, I immediately notice any electric cars in Edmonton. I was really surprised. I didn’t expect the campus to get a Nissan Leaf. I actually ran over to the parking attendant and asked him about it. I thought, “Oh wow, I wonder if there’s a charger on campus.” I heard there is a private one, but now they just opened the public one, so that’s super great.
How far does a charge get you, in your own electric car?
If my battery pack was completely empty, it would usually cost between $5 and $9. At minimum, it would get me about 110 km — if it was in the winter and I was blasting the heater and driving fast. If it’s in the summer and I’m not using climate control and I’m driving pretty slowly, I could get up to 160 km. There’s a pretty wide range, depending on the conditions.
If you’re just driving around the city, how often do you need to charge it? It’s almost like having a cell phone. I plug it in when I get home and then overnight it charges, and by the time I wake up it’s always fully charged and I’m never worried about it. In the city, I never have range anxiety. It’s always full and since the city has low speed limits, it’s not really that much energy to get around.
I like that you have a term for it, though: range anxiety.
Yeah, this is a big thing for electric vehicle owners and for interested and curious people that want an electric vehicle but they’re like, “I don’t know if it’s going to suit my needs.” It’s kind of an expensive car, especially if there aren’t incentives, so people are like “Whoa, is this 140 km going to work for me?” Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. I think it works for the vast majority of people.
If dealerships would get butts into seats, they would sell more of these cars. The driving experience is so good that I never want to drive a gas car again.
What was your decision-making process when you were trying to figure out if an electric vehicle would work for you?
I was inspired by a person that I lived with in California. He was a big electric vehicle enthusiast, and he set up an intentional community that I joined. We had vegetarian meals together five nights per week, house meetings, things like that. It was a very sustainable co-op. He had a solar panel installation company. So I kind of got caught up in this whole kind of lifestyle of sustainability while living at the co-op.
Then I graduated and I started working between two campuses as a part-time community college instructor teaching biology. It was a really big commute and I was driving a truck that was getting kind of old. I just started researching electric vehicles and finding some of the incentives and rebates that are available. I thought, “This is actually pretty affordable.” I’ve been calculating it on a spreadsheet since I started driving the electric car, and I’ve saved about $3,000 in fuel. I’ve had it for about two and a half years now.
That’s impressive. How long were you living in that housing co-op? It sounds very interesting.
I lived there for two and a half years. It was a really great experience for me. I think it made me prioritize being more sustainability-conscious. It was four houses spread throughout a community in Pomona, kind of a suburb of Los Angeles. It was in an older neighbourhood, so some of the houses were about 100 years old. When the houses were originally bought, they had lawns, but they were ripped out and replaced with fruit trees or vegetable gardens. There were six to seven people in each house, so the number of residents was sometimes up to 28. I lived there from 2010 to about 2012 or 2013.
People that lived there would host different talks or workshops related to sustainability. We’d open up to the general public and put flyers in the neighbourhood and on the local college campuses for people to come check it out.
Did you have to give that lifestyle up when you moved up to Edmonton in your electric car?
Now I live in another community house here in Edmonton, part of the Assinaboia Community Housing Cooperative. The format is a little bit different, but in some ways it’s more of a cooperative than the one I was living in. It’s owned by the residents, so once you live there for a few months, you’re made a member and you pay a member share, and then you’re essentially a co-owner.
So why is your electric vehicle an important part of your sustainable lifestyle?
The environmental or carbon footprint is lower in an electric vehicle. Also, since driving an electric car, I’m just a little more energy-conscious. As soon as I turn the heater on, it tells me how much energy I’m using and it’s actually a whole lot of energy just to heat and cool a tiny car. Using the heater or air conditioner could take up 20 per cent of the total battery capacity on a drive. That’s something in a gas car that I think a lot of us take for granted. And I’m also thinking more about where my energy is coming from.
That makes sense. What kind of charging infrastructure would you like to see?
To complete my trip up here from Southern California to Edmonton, sometimes I was having to stop at RV parks for charging. So filling in the infrastructure on the major highways is a huge priority. Putting in fast charging stations is another big one. Using a publicly available charging station, it takes me six to seven hours for a full charge if I’m depleted. If it’s a fast charger, it only takes me 30 minutes. That’s a huge difference. If there’s a huge network of fast chargers, that turns my city electric car into a travelling road trip car.
What does it mean for you as electric vehicle driver to see this kind of infrastructure landing here at the U of A?
I think to me it just shows that the campus is taking sustainability seriously, especially in a province where this is still kind of new. The university is taking a leadership role and showing that this is a new form of transportation that we’re going to implement.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Written by Angela Johnston for the University of Alberta’s Office of Sustainability. Illustrations by Julie Kuhn, currently completing a BDes in Industrial Design.
