6 month EV Update; my charging cable broke and i had to treat it like a gas car for a week AHHHH PANIC. also, meet Gord

Well would you look at that. It's now been 6 months with this car, and here's my tracker.

Well well! I promised I’d give you guys the good AND the bad about being an EV owner. Crossed 10,000 km now. I am still doing roughly 50km a day.

The short version of this post: it has been way more seamless than people told me it would be. The longer version involves a broken charger, a week of treating my EV like a gas car, an unreasonable number of charging apps, and a friend who is basically the perfect EV owner.

plugging in at home, L1 charging, had been working perfectly fine. until:

lets' get the bad stuff out of the way at the beginning .. Clutch ( a used car reseller ) gave me an adapter that never should have been used with an EV! Just feeling it randomly I noticed it was hot as heck one day.. the 120v plug was melting. 😫🔥 risk! Great job clutch. Shitty Chinese travel adapter that is NOT meant for sustained 15A draw. If they give that same setup to someone oblivious, it could start a fire. I contacted them, and they offered me $200 compensation. Acceptable!

So I stopped using it right away of course and went and ordered myself a GrizzL-E mini. This is the lowest tier, "worst" EV charging rewards program, but they'll send you a really nice charger for free, which can do Level 1 or Level 2; it has multiple adapters for different outlet types. It's Wifi-connected, and GRIZZL-E is a Canadian Company. I won’t get much rewards to start, but a free $100 a year is still a free $100. and the charger is free, I just pay $30 for shipping. Eventually if I upgrade my garage outlet it’ll work for L2 as well.

But while I had to wait a few days for shipping, what should I do? die?

Oh wait, there's fast chargers and L2 chargers all over the place. This gives me the opportunity to try some out!

The moment it happened I knew this was going straight into a blog post: oh shit my home charger bronk. now I have to treat my EV like a gas car for a week. AHHHH goddd oh noooo panic.

So here's how the week actually went.

Plan A: free and cheap slow chargers

First idea: swing by that Metro near me with the free L2 and hang out for an hour whenever I needed some charge. There's also a charger at the community centre near me that's $2.75 an hour and "fast-ish" at 6 kW. Nice.

I parked at the community centre for the first time while my children were swimming. and then they went to the park after. I was doing 5.5kwh, so pretty decent. It gave me 10+% in an hour and 15 mins, and I got prime parking because it’s the closest spot to the building. This pic compares that speed with my typical home speed. This cost 4 dollars.

Plan B: an actual fast charger, with a lesson

Early in the week I tried a fast charger for the first time. The plug-in, tap-your-credit-card, bing-bang-boom kind, with zero apps. Paying was dirt simple, but it was only giving me about a third of the speed my car can do. I'm pretty sure that was my fault: I drove there on a whim and didn't precondition the battery. That's exactly what would happen on a road trip if you don't plan ahead. (Pro tip: navigate to the charger using the car's built-in nav, even if you know where you're going. It preconditions the battery for you.)

These are called Park N' Charge, which are at Loblaws and Zehrs in Ontario. They do up to 150Kwh. This one charges you more if your car charges past 50kw or past 100. But I spent that 42 mins getting groceries anyway so! two birds one stone.

Plan C: get the full 150 kW (or close)

The next day I drove 282.5 km and ended up at 35%, so I tried the Park n Charge at the Zehrs on Bayfield, which was strangely much cheaper than the one the day before. I was determined to get that full 150 kW once before going back to slow charging all the time. I got 10% in four minutes, and after that initial burst it held a steady 100 kW. Ten minutes later I'd gained 22%, about 100 km of range. That's decent.

I also like that these show the live cost you've accumulated, as all chargers should.

Here is how that speed looks on the graph.

So anyway, for the few days that I had to use public chargers, I had good experiences, they were fast, and they were much cheaper than gas. But the most expensive ones are not cheaper by much. Which is silly!

Anyway, a couple days later, the GrizzL-E Mini arrived.

so yeah it takes a LOOONG time to add 40+% on 1.3 kW. 24, im on track for 28 hours to get from 52% to 90. This charge costs me $4.20 in electricity (blaze it) and I am going to get 96 cents of that back. Haha. If the charger wasn’t free in the first place this would be the worst reward program.

Since I got the charger, I have done 1120 kwh.

My EV charging costs: August–November 2026

Since the end of July, I've charged approximately 1,125 kWh in my Polestar 2 and received $33.63 in Grizzl-E charging rewards. as far as km driven goes, I am one of the lower frequency users; I do roughly 18,000 - 20,000 km a year. my friend who i'm about to tell you about does 47,000km a year, and another person i know does 55,000+ a year in their Acura ZDX. Sheesh!

Using my actual Alectra electricity bill as a benchmark, my estimated blended electricity cost is 17.72¢/kWh, including delivery charges, taxes and other bill components.

Here's how the numbers work out:

• Electricity cost: approximately $182.52
• Grizzl-E rewards earned: $30.94
• Rewards covering my electricity costs: approximately 17%
• Net cost after rewards: approximately $151.58
• Effective cost after rewards: 14.72¢/kWh

In other words, my charging rewards have already paid for roughly one-sixth of my estimated electricity costs. That's a nice little bonus on top of the savings from driving electric.

Meet Gord.

the perfect EV use case: 2016 Focus > 2027 Bolt
180 km / day
all highway
no oil changes!?

So for me, this has all been a fun low stakes car changeover, but what if you drive A LOT? Like a lot a lot. does it make more sense?

my good friend Gordon drove a 2016 Ford Focus until a couple weeks ago. (Fun fact, I also had a 2014 Ford Focus as my first car and put 230,000km on it before it died.)

Gordon has a beefy commute. He drives 180km a day, 5 days a week. 50 weeks a year. His poor Focus had already had three major transmission issues. And one day, it straight up died. It would have cost $5,000+ to fix. So, since he's always wanted an electric vehicle... He made the switch. He got an electrician in to wire up his SWTCH Level 2 Smart Charger, which was free, and you earn back your $300 deposit after you charge 1,500 Kwh. And then you start getting 11 cents per Kwh charged (!!) - For him, he did this in about 2.5 months.

The price of electricity in Ontario, at all rate types, is below. I'm pretty sure Gordon is on the Tiered plan. 11c/kwh is INSANE - ... that's ... well the price is 12c, up to 1000kwh. You do the math!

Back in June, my napkin math said he was spending about $23 a day 😧, $115 a week, $460 a month on gas ❕. Now we have real numbers. He's going from 100% down to about 50% every weeknight, five days a week, and getting 17 kWh/100 km. That works out to roughly 31 kWh a day, or about 153 kWh a week. Past the 1,500 kWh mark, SWTCH pays him about 11¢ for each of those, so around $18 a week back ($70 a month). At my electricity price (11–13¢ per kWh) he'd be spending $17–20 a week on the power, so the rewards cover most or all of it (lets say 90%).

For comparison, gas credit card rewards are like 3%. 😫 !!! What the HELL????

⦁ Maintenance: no oil changes, fewer moving parts. For someone who beats on a car with the sheer frequency of a commute like his, that matters. At his pace he'll blow through a 160,000 km warranty in about three years. (the Bolt's battery and propulsion warranty is 8 years / 160,000 km.) ANY car's warranty would be demolished by that much driving .. so why not get one with 25 vs 2000+ moving parts?? Also, no oil changes saves you ~$650/year right there. (5 changes / yr at $130 each)

⦁ The 2027 Bolt is a whole new car compared to earlier years, with faster charging. On paper, 10 to 80% in about 26 minutes in ideal conditions, where mine takes 35+. Peak around 150 kW.

⦁ A fair warning on rewards programs: the SWTCH charger needs to be on wifi, and you decide whether you're okay with "selling" your charging data. It's not top-secret stuff. It's so utilities know when people generally prefer to charge and long term, can understand more about load to provide us more reliable power. If you want to look into this yourself, search for the Pion, SWTCH and Grizzl-E rebate programs. SWTCH and Grizzl-E are Canadian companies. 🍁

We can easily do some preliminary numbers:

As of November 2, Gord has driven approximately 17,810 km in his EV, averaging 17.2 kWh/100 km.

That's approximately 3,063 kWh of electricity consumed. Using an estimated all-in electricity rate of 17.72¢/kWh, his electricity cost is about $543.

His total rewards are estimated at $165–$178. Now that he is on the higher reward tier, almost all his electricity cost will be covered by the rewards going forward.

After rewards, his estimated net electricity cost is approximately $365–$378 for 17,810 km of driving.

That's an estimated $2,200 in savings already, with his EV costing roughly

7 times less to fuel than a comparable gas vehicle after rewards.

bruh!

Gord's Bad Days

or: what happens when you drive big-ish trips
or: hello, is this the government intervention hotline?
uhhh your "gas pump" needs an "app" to work? EXCUSE me?

Gord's daily commute is the dream scenario. But he also drives a lot of big-ish trips, and he has collected a lot of bad charging stories along the way. He says; "Every trip longer than my work commute is a pain because of how charging stations are a goddamn mess." and I feel you buddy.

⦁ His first fast charge (June): he expected "tap your bank card". instead he had to register on the network's platform, put his card info in, and use an RFID card. The site and the machine both thought it was NACS, but he still needed an adapter. He got roughly 75 kW out of a car that can do 150, and it was the expensive option. This was OnRoute charging.
⦁ Six hours (July): "Ah yes. Fast charging. Six hours." That was Gord after a Park 'n Charge session. He spent half an hour just waiting for the plug to "initialize", and the plug was broken. Too bad, because I only had great experiences with Park n Charge!
⦁ The dead charger (August): a charger near where they were staying had none of its machines on, with tape and ripped paper on the biggest one. On a different trip he was sitting at 37%, which would have gotten them exactly home on a 2 hr 2 min drive. That's braver than I'd be, and they ended up charging an actual amount first.

⦁ The Tesla-spot-and-FLO combo (August): a Tesla was parked in a general charging spot while all the Tesla-only spots sat empty. The charger there still didn't work, so he moved to a FLO charger that charged him fifty cents every time it failed to connect. The routine: plug the adapter into the car first, then pay on the app, then plug the charger into the adapter. (And Tesla's short cords suck.)

⦁ The truck (September): a utility truck was parked diagonally across the only two EV charging spots at a family event. The driver moved when asked, saying he parked there because he'd never seen anyone use them. Imagine parking directly in front of someone's gas station and leaving.

Same weekend: a Tesla Destination Charger said to go find someone at the desk to turn on charging, but it just started charging by itself (nice). An email said the rate was going from $1 an hour to $4 an hour at a certain time of day. And on the drive to Hamilton and back, a charger they used wasn't listed on Google Maps.

⦁ The $42 half hour (October): a charger asked for $42 for half an hour of charging, so they left, expecting to get home with 7%.

To be fair, he also said he's been impressed by how many charging stations there are. But all of this is exactly why I keep saying:
Chargers are fine. The charger network is the problem.

That week I was without a home charger I used plug-and-charge style chargers exclusively, meaning I plug in, tap, and go, with no app. that's how it should work everywhere. Instead, the Canadian charging landscape is a pile of separate networks that mostly want their own app and their own account.

⦁ Tesla chargers are always so good and reliable because Tesla has a big stake in making them so. "Non-Tesla" is really like seven different companies, or more.
⦁ Some chargers bill by the minute instead of by kWh (the park N charge ones I used) Going from 20% to 40% there would be about $5.50 and 10–12 minutes. Interesting.
⦁ When the government announces something like $10 million in EV charging funding, it's nice, but on the scale of a government that's pennies. Quebec is apparently getting half of it, because they're actually on the ball and have a huge charging network.
⦁ My ask is simple: all chargers should have to accept a credit card, no app required, and ideally cash, like gas stations do. Either government forces it, or people only use the Park n Charge type that have no app.

why do these things need the internet at all? Can't a charger just track how much electricity was used and charge a credit card? One hundred percent offline.
we're the semi-early adopters here. This tech has been around forever, and mainstream for at least ten years, and it's still all over the place. Great experiences, but bad ones too. I knew what I signed up for. But it's the part of EV ownership that most needs work.

Six/Seven (6⃣ 7⃣ ) months in: what I'd tell you

⦁ It HAS been seamless. 10,500+ km in 200+ days, and the one real hiccup on my end was the week my charger died. The car itself needs no maintenance .. i've been over this already

• just
• plug it
• in when you get home
• or don't ; most of the time, it won't matter!

⦁ Winter is the real test. My plan is to keep it in the driveway and only use the garage on the coldest nights, and I'm not sure whether level 1 charging can keep up at −20 outside. I'm going to just hazard a guess here that it won't. But gosh darn it if I can barely hobble along on L1 charging, you bet I will. Efficiency is already slipping a lil bit: I only hit 17 kWh/100 km on really good days, and now that it's colder I'm seeing above 20. I'd rather go through my first winter and report back than guess. 🥶

However, the preheating continues to be a game changer. it's so so so luxurious to walk out to a preheated, predefrosted car (without having to go into an app and press a button) because EVs can be warmed on a schedule; ICE vehicles can't due to fumes, I guess there's some sort of law.

⦁ Once you drive an EV it feels weird going back to gas. Especially a beefy V6 ICE vehicle with worn out brakes. Holy moly..

I still love the car itself and the L1 charging has kept up perfectly fine with my lifestyle (50km / day on average)

⦁ If you're near the end of your current car's life, or you're a Gord, do the math.

See you after the first winter. ⚡

Bonus:

I checked my long term battery health several times using an OBD reader and it hasn’t changed in 3+ months. It says I’m at 94.39%. It has said this since August. Reminder: this is a 3-year old car that has been driven 40,000km. apparently, the health curve rapidly declines from 100-90 and then drastically slows down after that. ill keep checking it!

oh and I have my own “bad charging Network” story, but it didn’t affect me.

At the Pearson airport in mississauga, I met a man named Kenan. He was flying in from Britain and he got a Polestar 2 as a rental. This poor guy needs to go 400km and the charger says failed to activate POS device. I’m trying to help him, he doesn’t speak much English. I was at 80%, I charged before I left home.

turns out, He had to get the app to get it working. Paying via the app worked fine. Hypercharge, you suck balls.

Bonus bonus: here is the entire battery level history since I got the car (that nobody asked for)

When you correlate that with "Range": (Range is just a concept, bro)

This shows I always had 100km of "range" available to me, even at the battery's lowest points.

Bonus bonus bonus:

Here is an example of the range meter being the range meter. I was driving so efficiently the range estimate did not go down

oh and here’s the requisite quote section:

"Your skeleton is wet" - queztatlapoca

“take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” - spacey