Electric vehicles a growing trend in London despite overall EV sales slump

More Londoners than ever are choosing to transition to electric vehicle (EV) ownership, despite a slump in overall EV sales across the market, according to data from London Hydro.

At the same time, London Hydro officials said they're well-equipped to deal with the extra stress electric vehicles put on the grid.

"What we've seen over the last three years is a steady increase in the number of electric vehicles on our roads each year," said Allan Van Damme, London Hydro's vice president of engineering and construction.

The recognition of that local trend comes as auto companies across North America change gears and delay plans over lower-than-expected demand for battery-powered vehicles.

In April, General Motors announced layoffs and a reduction in production capacity at its Ingersoll-based CAMI assembly plant, citing low demand for the electric van produced there. Last week, Honda announced it was delaying a massive investment it had planned for Ontario's electric vehicle supply chain.

Despite the dip in demand, local numbers show a modest but increasing portion of vehicles on the road are electric. As of March 30, there were 4,550 electric vehicles on city roads. London Hydro said 63 per cent of those were fully electric, while 37 per cent were plug-in hybrids.

That number represents an annual increase of 50 per cent, and that's music to the ears of the people in charge of the city's power supply.

"The increase is probably slightly better [than elsewhere]. The increase is pretty significant, but what we're seeing isn't too significant from a grid perspective," Van Damme said.

London's power grid has plenty more energy to go around, and more is becoming available all the time, Van Damme said.

"We do long and short-term planning to make sure that all Londoners have enough electricity," he said, adding that London Hydro has even enhanced its design standards to future-proof the grid by using larger wires, transformers and other hardware than before. 

Although the vast majority of EV owners do most of their charging at home, Van Damme said the availability of public charging in London could be having a positive impact on the number of EVs in the city.

He said that out of the roughly 4,112 public chargers the Ontario government says are in the province, London is home to about 450 — a significant share for a city that has an estimated census metropolitan area population of roughly 630,000.

It's a picture of where London stacks up in terms of its EV infrastructure that looks similar when painted by ChargeHub, a company that, in part, runs a database of available public chargers and works to make it easier for EV owners to find and interact with them.

"London seems to have a pretty decent coverage from what we've seen," said Simon Pillarella, ChargeHub's head of marketing and business development.

Although the number of chargers available in London by ChargeHub's estimate is different from London Hydro's official count, at 369 within 15 kilometres of the city's core, their counts for similar-sized cities like Hamilton (211 public chargers) and Brampton (287 public chargers) put London ahead of the pack.

In the future, Pillarella said he hopes to see the number of EVs and public chargers increase, but believes governments need to continue to be willing to help pay for the growth of the infrastructure that supports them. 

"We hope that, long-term, governments are going to be there to support the growth for sure," Pillarella said.

According to Van Damme, London Hydro is certainly able and willing to support that growth, even when it comes to individual vehicle owners.

He said Londoners who are interested in installing level two chargers, which have a higher energy capacity, at their homes, can reach out.

"We really want to help our customers adopt clean technologies. Any home can handle a level one charger, but if you're going to install a level two charger, you should contact your electrician or London Hydro, just to make sure you have the capacity."