A Trip Across The Pond - My EV Observations

I recently returned from an 8 day trip to London and Paris with my Wife for our one year wedding anniversary. We saw the sights, took tons of cheesy tourist selfies and wined and dined on the Eiffel Tower; but despite the fact it was our anniversary trip I was keeping an eye out for what I could spot that was different in the EV world across the pond. Don't worry, my wife was in on it too, she was "Tesla spotting" and excitingly pointing out anytime she saw a Model S.

In London we didn't notice too much out of the ordinary, but we did spot this amazing on street EV parking. Charging there was an Aixam Mega City EV and a Mercedes C350e plug-in hybrid can be seen in the picture. These on street chargers are part of the very cool "Source London" program. There are over 850 of these charging stations in London in both on street and off street locations. It would be very cool to have on street chargers like this so we aren't tied down to private lots in the downtown core of Toronto.

If you want to learn more about this service their website is neat and informative.

Next we have this very cool electric car sharing service spotted in Paris called Autolib. Think Car2Go like we have in Toronto but all electric. I personally think this actually makes more sense than Car2Go because just like Car2Go they are short term, billed buy the minute rental cars that are often only used for in-city driving and are always parked at designated locations. And because they park at designated locations its easy to have charging there. So as long as the car is waiting for someone to rent it, it can be charging.

I would bet it would be very rare that you would get into one of these cars and find it not fully charged or at least with enough range to get what you need done (these cars, "Bluecars" as they call them, have between 150 to 250km of range fully charged). It would be great to see Car2Go whenever they have to swap out their fleet charge their Smart Cars to Electric Drive Smart Cars and take a page out of Autolib's books.

You can learn more about Autolib here.

Next, and again in Paris I spotted this advertising for the Hyundai IONIQ electric on the back of a bus. Well actually I spotted dozens of these ads but this is the one that I got a good picture of. This is something we really don't see enough of in Toronto; that being manufactures getting behind their vehicles and pushing them through actual mass market advertising.

If Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, Chevrolet, Ford or Mitsubishi could get behind and push one of their cars like this, it could have a great impact on EV adoption in the city. Currently if you aren't already considering an EV purchase in this city, you need to be steered towards it through word of mouth or you need to see an electric car and do your own research. Its unfortunate, but we won't see a big uptick in EV sales until the manufactures start to put some dollars behind them in advertising like they do for ICE cars today. (Yes I do know Chevy did some TV ads for the Volt and Ford did some for the Focus EV but they were poorly positioned and had a limited run)

Lastly we spotted this awesome Tesla Taxi. Yes I know there are some Tesla Taxies in Canada too, but I have yet to personally spot one, we noticed this one on our second day in Paris. We wished it could have been around when we needed to grab a cab while there, but oh well. I will just have to live without being able to say I got a ride in a Tesla Taxi in Paris. At least one of our Taxi rides was a Prius, not an EV, but better than a full ICE.

So that concludes our European EV vacation.... ahem... sorry; European wedding anniversary trip. Lots of innovative things that would be great to see come to the GTA one day.