We like our EV because it's green. But for escaping wildfires — maybe it's not the best option yet

This First Person column is written by Jamella Hagen, who lives in Whitehorse. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

Dusk gave way to darkness as my boyfriend and I drove up the narrow brushy highway past Prince George, B.C., toward our home in Whitehorse. When I saw a red glow on the horizon to the right, at first I thought we were approaching a town. But something seemed off about the colour — it was too intense. That's when it dawned on me that it was a wildfire — the Donnie Creek fire. How could I have forgotten about it? It wasn't just any wildfire; it was the biggest fire ever recorded in B.C. history. 

As we continued our drive beside the eerie glow of the wildfire, I thought about how fortunate we were that at least our part of the country had avoided the wildfires this year so far. I didn't know anyone who lost a home but watching all of Yellowknife evacuate and parts of Hay River, N.W.T., burn showed northerners like myself that fires are now an ongoing reality for us. My heart went out to everyone whose lives were changed by this summer's wildfires. 

Fatigue prickled at the edges of my vision, and I realized what I needed more than anything was a gas station where I could buy a Coca-Cola to perk myself up, clean my bug-covered windshield, and take a pee. But on this trip, stopping at a gas station didn't even make sense, because I was driving an electric vehicle. 

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Grant and I were on a four-day road trip to bring his new electric pickup truck from Vancouver back to our home in Whitehorse. He works in renewable energy, and earlier this summer when his gas vehicle died, he felt it was worth the financial stretch to switch to electric. I've been EV-curious for a while. But as a single mom who works part-time, I can't afford an EV myself. That's why I jumped at the chance to help him break up the more than 2,500-kilometre journey north and test out driving the EV. 

I knew the drive would have challenges. There are gaps between fast chargers on both highways to the Yukon.

Distances between gas stations in Canada's north can also be quite vast. This time, we couldn't just strap a couple of jerry cans to the outside of our vehicle and go for it, because jerry cans don't help if you run out of charge. So, we carefully planned a trip through the Fraser Canyon and up the Stewart-Cassiar Highway with stops in communities with EV charging stations. Where there were none, we booked RV campsites, which, we were told, have plugs powerful enough to charge an EV at the same speeds as level 2 chargers. 

What we hadn't planned for were fires. Our choice to drive an EV was an attempt to reduce our personal impact on climate change. But on the road, we encountered climate change disasters all around us, and we had to cope with them while learning to use a new and still fragile charging network. 

Before we even left Yukon, our preferred southern highway route shut down due to wildfires, so we decided to take the Coquihalla. But shortly after that, drivers were asked to avoid that route as wildfire evacuees left from Kelowna, B.C., and the Shuswap. In the end, we chose to drive through Pemberton, B.C.

After our flight landed in Vancouver and we started driving north under smoke-filled skies in Grant's new Rivian, we were forced to change our plans yet again because a fire had jumped the Stewart-Cassiar highway near the Yukon border. This last change of routes was the hardest — we had booked at a hotel and two RV sites on our route, and now we had to divert to the Alaska Highway, where we had heard there was an 894-kilometre gap between level 3 chargers (the fastest category on the market). We didn't know how to get through it in time to make it to our work and parenting commitments that loomed two days away. 

In a mild panic, I posted to the Yukon EV Facebook group, asking for information on where to charge knowing we would soon lose cell service on the upcoming stretch of the highway. Thankfully, the community replied quickly with helpful suggestions of where we could get the fastest charges, and their costs, but even still, the trip didn't go as planned. 

MAP | The route Jamella Hagen took between Aug. 25-28, 2023

In Prince George, the level 3 charger was slower than I expected. The charging station also had no windshield washers as most gas stations do, which meant we had to drive the next stretch of smoke-filled skies and reduced visibility with a windshield full of bugs. We ended up pulling into Fort St. John, B.C., in pitch darkness with only 62 kilometres of remaining driving charge.  We gratefully slept while our truck charged, only to find at lunchtime the next day that the Fort Nelson level 2 charger was the slowest yet, and we would have to spend another night after only travelling 381 kilometres. 

We had no choice but to wait for the full charge, because the Rivian has a range of 500 kilometres, and the distance between us and the next level 3 charger at Watson Lake, Yukon, was 513 kilometres on a hilly, windy road. In comparison, the fastest level 3 chargers can charge a truck like ours in under an hour. 

We booked a hotel, plugged the truck into the charger, and then I had to walk for 20 minutes on a road without sidewalks to get back to where we were staying. In fact, this was hardly unusual. In addition to realizing the infrastructure of charging stations in the north was not as robust, I was also surprised to find EV chargers often located in inconvenient places, such as the edges of town, behind buildings, or at the far side of box store parking lots. If I was travelling as a single woman, I would have found myself missing the comfort of a brightly lit gas station on a lonely stretch of highway. 

 We had lunch and then worked on our laptops. We had dinner with friends who happened to be passing through in a fuel-powered car. Unlike us, they could keep driving on the highway after their meal. After breakfast the next morning, we had to let the EV charge for a couple more hours before we could leave. 

All in all, it took 22 hours to charge our truck in Fort Nelson. 

On our final day of travel, eager to get home, I watched as the northern Rockies and fast green rivers gave way to low forested hills of the Yukon. After a brief reprieve in the mountains, the air grew thick with smoke again approaching Watson Lake; yet another fire burned nearby. With the sun dimming in a thickening haze, our EV charge indicator light changed from green to orange to red, and the truck flashed warning messages that we should charge soon or risk running out of energy. 

We made it to Watson Lake with 39 kilometres to spare. As we pulled into another charger, again in another awkward location off the highway, I wondered how long it would take before northern EV drivers could reliably find places to plug in right in the centre of town, in front of a diner or coffee shop with long hours, and a squeegee in a bucket to clear the view of the way forward. 

I'm grateful that I got to test driving an EV as a traveller, not an evacuee. Would I buy an EV after this experience? Yes, absolutely, I would, if I lived in a family with two or more cars. For most day-to-day driving in Whitehorse over the past few weeks, Grant's EV has been great, and as a bonus, public chargers in the Yukon are currently free. But I would not yet buy an EV as the only vehicle in a family as a northerner. I'll be waiting to see how the infrastructure changes and analyzing new chargers based on how many kilowatts hour each one delivers. Because in the north, the differences between them could make travel by an EV a whole lot better and even save lives. 

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