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kootenay andrew

Andrew is an environmental engineer by day, "youth activity volunteer" by evening, and EV advocate / blogger in his remaining spare time. He is very passionate about the future of energy generation & usage. He prefers bikes & buses to cars, but acknowledges that Canadian cities have been developed primarily with cars in mind, so if we're going to drive, let's make them all EVs!

Clean Energy Vehicle incentive returns

CEV

Well, the Clean Energy Vehicle incentives have returned.  I am slightly bitter, since the program was cancelled ran out of funds in February of 2014 and I couldn’t buy my electric vehicle until at least April.  It was ridiculous of the government to sit on their thumbs for a year and put a few hundred early adopters at a future disadvantage in the used car market; but nonetheless, I think it is a good program to help EVs and PHEVs get on their feet so am happy to see it return.

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Trip Report: Kelowna and Back, Part 2

This is Part 2 of my trip report from Nelson to Kelowna and back. Part 1 can be found here. 

Grand Forks to Osoyoos

As noted in Part 1, my planning seemed to be right on par, but a thought had kept bugging me while I was eating breakfast. My spreadsheet takes into account elevation gains and losses, but it does not differentiate between whether the hills are near the beginning of a route, in the middle, or near the end.Read More »Trip Report: Kelowna and Back, Part 2

Trip report: Kelowna and Back, Part 1

This is Part 1 of what will likely be a 3 or 4 part series on a recent trip from Nelson to Kelowna and back.  Part 2 can be found here.

Preface

A pure electric vehicles (EV) with the range of my Nissan Leaf, coupled with the lack of infrastructure in our region, really makes a road trip greater than the range of your EV an exercise in patience. If you can afford a Tesla right now, then this road trip would have been comparatively simple, as you could fairly easily drive the regular speed in winter and make it between public chargers with range to spare. However, for most of us, a 6-figure vehicle is simply out of reach, so if you need to regularly do trips outside the range of the EV you are looking at, you may want to consider a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) instead. In a few years, when infrastructure has filled in and there are longer-range EVs for a reasonable price (see the upcoming 2017 Bolt), this trip will become commonplace and little different than driving in a gasoline vehicle.Read More »Trip report: Kelowna and Back, Part 1