Sudbury looking to improve electric vehicle infrastructrue

The City of Greater Sudbury will be looking into accommodations for electric vehicles.

During Tuesday's city council meeting, ward 6 councillorRen Lapierrepresented a motion to increase the number of parking spots for electric vehicles.

The city will come back to council in October with a report with recommendations for electric vehicle parking by-laws, to help ensure that people driving electric vehicles will be able to park at a charge stationif they need to.

"The spaces that we currently have that have charging infrastructure and future spaces that will have charging infrastructure, it'll give property owners as well as the actual charging station owners the ability to make sure that those spaces are free for electric vehicles," said Devin Arthur, the founder of the Greater Sudbury Electric Vehicle Association.

Arthur saidthat currently most Sudburians who own electric vehicles charge them athomeand they don't necessarily needcharging stations around the city.

However, he says those charging stations are used by people travelling into Greater Sudbury and without a by-law in place, those drivers might end up finding non-electric vehicles parked in those spaces.

"Really with this by-law its more so just to give station owners who want to install these in Sudbury the kind of peace of mind that if they spend $50,000 -$60,000on these stations, they'll have the ability to make sure that EV drivers will be able to use them," Arthur said.

Currently most of northern Ontario doesn't have the charging infrastructure in place to make electric vehicles a desirable option for people who have to travel outside of Sudbury often.

Arthur says a hybrid electric vehicle, which uses both gas and electricity to run,might be the better option for those people. But, he saysthe association is hoping that charging options in the north will improve soon.

A research company, Innovative Research, was hired bya group of Canadian charging manufacturers and station owners,will be in Sudbury on April 17. They'll be holding focus groupsto gather information fromlocal electric vehicle owners about the current charging infrastructure in northern Ontario and what can be done to improve it.

"This could have a big impact on how many charging stations the north gets," said Arthur.