Alberta's electric vehicle owners rally to boost interest

Car enthusiasts gathered on Sunday for the National Drive Electric Week event in Calgary — an event all about showing people that electric vehicles come in all shapes, sizes and price tags.

Attendees saw a variety of Tesla's, Smart Cars and vintage cars converted into electric vehicles on display at Eau Claire Festival Market.

"These vehicles are viable in Alberta," said Andrew Bell, with the Electric Vehicle Association of Alberta. "You can drive them year-round and it's great because you slash your carbon footprint by 40 per cent, even with charging on our grid."

Bell says from what he can tell, Alberta is about five years behind from other provinces, however he has recently seen a surge in interest.

"We don't have to educate people as much as we used to in the earlier years. People already have a grounding of what electric cars are like," he said.

He explains that having events helps get rid of myths and concerns around electric vehicles, for example range anxiety which means the fear of how far the vehicle will be able to go.

An EV enthusiast at the event, Terry Orr was on hand to show off his "baby", a 1974 VW Super Beetle that he recently converted to electric.

"I like the challenge and I like working on cars," he said. "Essentially I've taken this, and got rid of all the nasty gas components and leaky, oily stuff and put in an electric drivetrain."

He said it's the second vehicle he has converted and that it has twice as much horsepower and three times the torque.

"EVs are just great, they're super fun to drive, they're amazing, it's literally the future," he said. "Once you get into an EV and you try it out, you'll see what I'm talking about, you won't go back."

Right now, Alberta has about 2,200 electric vehicles on the road, but the total number in Canada is 100,000.

William York, director for the Electric Vehicle Association of Alberta, says a hurdle that presents itself is the fact that Alberta is truck and SUV country, and what is available in those categories of vehicle isn't pushing people to buy electric.

"There's a mentality here that somewhat naturally opposes EV ownership because they're perceived — whether true or not — as a threat to the oil and gas industry because oil is used for transportation fuels and the EVs don't use that," he said.