Skip to content

Victoria aims to add 650 public electric vehicle charging stations over 5 years

City’s adopted EV strategy pegs expansion cost at $8.5 million, 100 charging ports coming in 2022
28319546_web1_220302-vne-electric-vehicles-chargingstation_1
Rapidly expanding the public charging network in the city of Victoria is key to getting more drivers behind the wheel of an electric vehicle. Pictured is an EV charging station in the city’s Broughton Street parkade. (Don Descoteau/News Staff)

Building about 100 new public charging stations for electric vehicles (EV) this year will ignite the City of Victoria’s vision of supporting less carbon-intensive travel by the decade’s end.

The city adopted the Electric Vehicle and Electric Mobility Strategy last month and aims to have 30 per cent of passenger vehicles be electric by 2030.

The strategy commends the region for already leading the country in EV adoption, but says significant barriers remain in boosting uptake. With 80 per cent of Victorians living in multi-family homes, the strategy poses the key question of where will people plug in and charge their vehicles?

The city plans to spend $8.5 million between 2022 and 2027 on expanding the EV charging network, with 650 new public stations, including 33 fast-charging ports (100 kilometres per 30-minute charge). Senior government funding is expected to account for half of that price tag.

About 95 per cent of those new stations would be Level 2 chargers, which can power a 30-km trip with an hour-long jolt, according to BC Hydro. That might be too long for some, but the strategy said a key asset is that chargers can be anywhere – the goal is to have them available at home, work and in public spaces.

A total of $1.27 million over the next four years will be used to add 5,280 electrified parking stalls to buildings. Those retrofits are projected to significantly ramp up in the second half of the decade. Victoria has also mandated that all new developments include charging capacity.

READ: Greater Victoria’s public EV charging stations need to quadruple by 2030: report

The city hopes a rapidly expanded public charging network will accelerate the transition by making EVs more accessible to those who lack the home-charging option. The city’s 2022 draft budget says private charging station growth won’t meet demand in the coming years, based on the current rate people are switching over to EVs.

Just over half of Victoria’s electric vehicle owners lived in a single-family home in 2020. That year, 13 per cent of the city’s new vehicles hitting the road were electric.

The strategy also says the city should budget $2.1 million over four years to support the burgeoning use of electric bikes, scooters, skateboards, wheelchairs and other modes of transportation.

The strategy promotes the EV shift as a way to help to cut the city’s largest emissions source – transportation – but also as a way to improve the overall urban environment. That would come from improved air quality, from reduced tailpipe exhaust, and from EVs’ relatively silent drivetrains dampening noise pollution.

It also says residents can benefit financially as EVs have less operation and maintenance costs than their internal combustion counterparts. But the upfront cost of EVs remains a barrier, it notes, especially with a smaller pool of used EVs available.

READ: Gas prices hit new high in Greater Victoria


jake.romphf@blackpress.ca. Follow us on Instagram. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.