Northwestern Ontario network of electric vehicle charging stations complete

Electric vehicle owners no longer have to worry about where their next charge is coming from when travelling through northwestern Ontario.

Ivy Charging Network — which is a partnership between Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation — officially completed the northwestern Ontario portion of its network on Thursday, when it opened a new charging station at Longbow Lake, near Kenora.

"One of the main barriers to electric vehicle adoption is range anxiety," said Theresa Dekker, co-president of Ivy Charging Network. "If people don't feel like they can get a charge wherever they're going, then it's hard to make a decision to purchase an electric vehicle."

The new level three charging station is one of six in Ivy's northwestern Ontario network. The others are located in Atikokan, Fort Frances, Dryden, Upsala, and Thunder Bay, Dekker said.

She said a 20-minute charge at a level-three charting station will allow an electric vehicle to travel about 100 kilometres.

Ivy has installed 26 of its charging stations in Ontario to date, Dekker said.

"We're going to have more than 60 locations by the end of this year," she said. "We're looking to build out from north to south, east to west. We're trying to deploy a system ... where people can go wherever they want to in the province."