Fast EV charger not 'private,' minister says — but public can't use it
Gary Crossman acknowledges other government cars don’t have equal access to charger at his parking spot
New Brunswick's environment minister says he doesn't have access to a "private" charging station exclusively for his electric vehicle — though he admits he's more likely to be able to use it than anyone else.
Gary Crossman was responding to criticism that a fast charger outside Marysville Place, a government office building in Fredericton, should be accessible to the public.
It's one of only four fast chargers in and around the city that can charge non-Tesla EVs quickly.
"I don't have a private charger, that's a fleet charger," he told reporters, saying it was installed for "all government fleet vehicles."
EV
driver Kiirsti Owen was one of several drivers to complain on a website
that maps charger locations that the Marysville Place station is not
available for public use. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)
While Crossman says anyone with a government car can use the charger, it stands directly at his reserved parking spot.
He acknowledged that means he always has access to the charger while other government employees may or may not be able get a spot close enough to use the machine. But he defended the fact that the charger is off-limits to the general public.
"You can't buy gas from the government tanks. You can't buy electricity from them," he said.
Crossman said there are "probably not" enough fast chargers in the province. Fast chargers can fully charge an EV in about half an hour, as opposed to slower chargers that need to be plugged in overnight or all day.
"Not just myself, but other fleet vehicles travel around the province. They don't sit in their office all day, and it's a concern. You need to know you're going to get home the same day you leave and [get] back to work."
He admitted all EV users face the same issue and said "hopefully" they will have access to the same kind of charger someday.
EV driver Kiirsti Owen was one of several drivers to complain on a website that maps charger locations that the Marysville Place station is not available for public use.
The New Brunswick government's goal is to have electric vehicles account for half of all new vehicle sales by 2030.
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Minister's exclusive EV charging station frustrates other Fredericton drivers
Fast charger at government office building ‘for private use only,’ EV drivers told
Everything was looking good for Kiirsti Owen when she pulled into the parking lot at Marysville Place in Fredericton one day last year.
Owen, a doctoral student at the University of New Brunswick, needed a fast charge for her Hyundai Ioniq 5 electric car so she could quickly hit the road to drive home to Miramichi.
A charging station outside N.B. Power's downtown head office was occupied, but the one she located at Marysville Place — a provincial government office building — was free.
She soon realized why.
"I came over here, I pulled up to it, tried to plug in and and it wouldn't let me charge," she said. "It said it was a private charger."
The
charger is directly in front of the parking spot reserved for
Environment and Climate Change Minister Gary Crossman, shown here in a
December 2022 photo. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)
The charger, which N.B. Power says costs about $150,000, is directly in front of the parking spot reserved for Environment and Climate Change Minister Gary Crossman.
"I assume that it means that this charger is being reserved for people working at this office," Owen said. "I'm not sure if it's just a few individuals or the whole building, but it's not open to the public."
Department spokesperson Heather Pert did not make Crossman or anyone else available for an interview but said the charging stations at Marysville Place "are for the use of GNB fleet vehicles only," including Crossman's ministerial vehicle.
Last fall, Crossman, was photographed charging his ministerial EV at the fast charger.
His spot was vacant ,and the charger was not in use during Owen's hour-long CBC interview there.
"I think it's great that they're doing that, that they have electric chargers and electric vehicles," Owen said. "I don't want to take away from that. I just think it would be nice if the public could access this one, too."
The station's exclusivity has become a point of discussion — and frustration — for electric vehicle drivers on PlugShare, a site for sharing charger information.
Tesla drivers have their own charging network, but for non-Tesla owners around Fredericton, there are only four fast stations: at Marysville Place, N.B. Power's head office downtown, a local used car dealership and the Irving Big Stop on the Trans-Canada Highway in Lincoln.
Drivers plug in and tap their credit card. If they try that at Marysville Place, the station rejects their card with the screen display message: "Unauthorized access. For private use only."
When drivers plug in and tap their credit card at the fast-charging station at Marysville Place, this is they message they get. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)
That means a quarter of the fast charging capacity in and around the provincial capital is being hogged by the province's Environment Department — whose climate change plan includes encouraging a lot more New Brunswickers to buy EVs by 2030.
A top government official recently acknowledged that the lack of charger availability is at odds with that objective.
"If we're going to achieve our goals and if we're going to have the ability for EV vehicles to become part of the mainstream mode of transportation in our province, we need to address the infrastructure," Tom McFarlane, the deputy minister of energy, told MLAs.
McFarlane said at a meeting of the public accounts committee Sept. 8 that his department recently conducted a needs assessment for charging stations that will be translated and released to the committee soon.
Jim Gilbert, whose Wheels and Deals auto dealership in Fredericton has one of the three publicly available chargers, said for savvy buyers the scarcity of stations is a key factor in deciding whether to purchase.
"The customer that knows EVs and did his homework, they want to know where these big, fast chargers are," he said.
Jim
Gilbert, whose Wheels and Deals dealership in Fredericton has one of
the three publicly available chargers, said for savvy buyers the lack of
stations is a key factor in their purchase decision. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)
"They want to know if they get to Saint John, they get to Moncton, they get to Fredericton, they want to know they're going to be able to charge up fast."
A fast charger can charge an EV in 30 to 45 minutes. The next-fastest option, Level 2, takes hours and is best used for drivers charging their cars overnight or while at their office all day.
Marysville Place has some Level 2 chargers, but in Owen's mind, the fast charger is unnecessary.
"You shouldn't need to have a super-fast charger that can do it in 30 minutes."
For the same cost, the department could have installed more Level 2 chargers and put the fast charger "elsewhere, where it could have been used by the whole province," she said.
A
government spokesperson did not make anyone available for an interview
but said the charging stations at Marysville Place 'are for the use of
GNB fleet vehicles only.' (Jacques Poitras/CBC)
There are about 3,000 registered electric vehicles in the province now, and the government's goal is to have EVs account for 50 per cent of all vehicle sales in the province by 2030.
That would translate into about 140,000 EVs on the road in seven years, McFarlane told the public accounts committee.
N.B. Power said last week it had been stymied in its push to install more chargers around the province to meet what is expected to be growing demand.
Brad Coady, the utility's director of business development, told the same committee that the Energy and Utilities Board had prevented N.B. Power from getting further into the charging station business because it was outside its mandate.
But Coady said the Crown corporation has a new application before the EUB that it hopes will allow it "to play in the EV space" again soon.
A
fast charger can charge an EV in 30 to 45 minutes. The next-fastest
option is a Level Two, shown here. It takes hours and is best used for
drivers charging their cars overnight or while at their office all day. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)
Owen made it home last December after crossing her fingers and hoping a station in Doaktown — the range her car had left — would be free. It was.
Until more stations come on line, she said, the province should loosen up and make the Marysville charging station available to all.
"Taxpayers paid for this and they should be able to use it," she said.
"It's not like I think that everything taxpayers pay for, we should be able to use. I don't expect to be able to use the minister's office for my own private use. But I just feel like there are so few of these chargers, and there's a need for them."
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Ultimately though, if EVs are to be widely adopted, there needs to be either improvements in home charging systems, or many more public charging stations. And the latter is where private businesses need to step up.
Good luck public person.
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