Testing Range Anxiety:3500 km in Ioniq 5 across northern Ontario

We spent the night in Magnetawan. We arrived with 170km and boosted that to 200km with an overnight trickle charge. We drove 10km to the municipal offices in Magnetawan and used the Lakeland fast charger there - charged to 400km at 140 kwh for 0.62 per kwh. Fantastic. In Sudbury, we pulled into the PetroCanada on Regent Street only to find that the credit card readers on both chargers had been vandalized and were unusable. We called PetroCanada and were put on hold for 20 minutes. So we abandoned that option and headed to the Flo charger at the Southside GMC dealer - slow at 50 kwh, so we headed to the Salute Café across the road and enjoyed a delicious lunch. Charging is pricey at 0.55/min. $37.48 for 50 kwh -an additional 200 km. We left Sudbury with 440km - enough for the 310 km trip to Sault Ste Marie. However, we stopped in Blind River (165 km) to try the Ivy charger at the Tim Horton's. Tim's was under renovation and the entrance was fenced off. However, construction work...

Day 2: Easy Peasy Lots of charging options between Kingston and Lake Cecebe (just south of Parry Sound). Yesterday I left Kingston with 435 km and arrived in Toronto with 170 km. I charged up to 400 km at the Shell station on Richmond St E (3 CCS chargers) in Toronto and went on to Barrie arriving with 275 km. I stayed there overnight, charged to 380 km at Zehr's (Park + Charge: 4 CCS chargers at 0.41/kwh) in the morning and drove to Lake Cecebe. The car has 175 km and I will trickle charge overnight to have 200 km, which is plenty to make the 80 km trip to Parry Sound where I plan to charge to 450 km. I am optimistic that I can make it to Sault Ste Marie (465 km) with a charge in Sudbury. I’ll post an update from Sault Ste Marie.

Day 1: Kingston to Barrie Ontario 350 km We spent many hours developing a detailed route plan. We will take five days to drive the 1700 km – a slow pace with lots of time to enjoy the magnificent landscapes and to create some buffers in case we run into challenges with charging. We assume we can charge to 400+ km at each fast charger on the way and our plan assumes that we can charge when we hit 150 km remaining. In a worst case scenario where the intented charger is out of service, we will book into a motel and trickle charge. We shared our initial blog post with PlugShare who said it was great to see us documenting our EV experience and sharing it with the community. They encouraged us to share our posts on relevant EV forums, Reddit communities, and directly with charging networks like Plug’n’Drive, Ivy, and Flo. They recommend including insights on charging locations, station reliability, and tips for future travelers. Ivy also thanked us and expressed appreciation for our eff...

Putting Range Anxiety to the Test: Getting Ready October 05, 2025 On October 16/25, we are setting out from Kingston in our 2024 AWD Ioniq 5 to drive to Thunder Bay – 1700 km each way. We did as much research as possible to ensure we could find charging stations on a daily basis. We benefited greatly from Carl Duivenvoorden’s blog  https://www.climatereality.ca/blog/learnings-from-driving-across-canada-in-an-electric-vehicle and from a personal conversation with Carl, who was very helpful and generous with his time. As he points out: “The most challenging part of the route is Northern Ontario, where chargers are fewer and further apart. The worst stretch: Sault Ste. Marie to White River, 315 km without a single charger. (On our trip westward, we arrived in White River with less than 30 km range left – phew!).” We consulted the key apps including PlugShare, ChargeHub and ABRP (A Better Route Planner) as well as the main suppliers Flo and Ivy. We learned that none of them is complete...