Putting Range Anxiety to the Test: Getting Started

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 completely reliable, but together they do offer great resources for planning a trip of this length in this region – not quite an EV charging wasteland, but still the infrastructure is suboptimal. We created a chart and for each day, we noted km’s at departure and km’s at the target charging station. We made sure that latter number was at least 100km to give us some margin in case the charger was not working. And for each day, we established a “back-up” plan – usually finding a place to stay where we could trickle charge until we had enough kilometres to get to the next known working charger. My intention is to record each the Tesla network. Unfortunately, they have yet to make good on this promise. After consulting with a few knowledgeable folk, I opted against buying an aftermarket adapter. Cautions include the potential to (a) damage the car’s charging system, (b) void the warranty on the day of the trip on this blog and hope those entries may help others who want to make this trip or one like it. I will share it with the appropriate folks in the Ontario government and with Plug’n’Drive in the hopes it can influence improved infrastructure in the north of the province. When we bought our Ioniq 5, Hyundai promised a NACS adapter and access to car, and/or (c) discover that Tesla chargers won’t recognize the car or charge it properly. I look forward to sharing these daily posts and to getting feedback from interested readers.


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