Alex Rodionov often takes long distance trips and he did enough research before buying his 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 to realize how significant public high-speed charging is to the experience of owning an EV.
鈥淚 think the availability of DC (high-speed) charging is more important than its cost compared to gas,鈥 said the software engineer, who noticed on longer trips to Montreal that fuelling costs were roughly similar to what friends paid in gas cars.
It鈥檚 a different story south of the border, both on the availability of high-speed charging for his EV and the cost, he鈥檚 noticed.
鈥淚鈥檝e done a lot of trips to the U.S. in the past year, and I found the charging infrastructure better, but the cost more expensive,鈥 he said, with notably lower gas prices in most places in the U.S. compared to near his home in midtown Toronto.
鈥淚 went to Pittsburgh in November, and in my car, I spent $130 in total for charging, whereas in my friend鈥檚 Honda Civic, they spent about $80 on gas.鈥
The increased availability of DC quick chargers in Canada is one of the bright spots for EV drivers so far in 2025.
According to B2B site , the number of quick chargers across Canada has increased by 27.8 per cent as of March 2025.
While charging for EVs is improving significantly, adoption of electric vehicles聽has fallen dramatically. EV sales dropped by 29.8 per cent in the first half of 2025, and that is in a car market that is up 5.8 per cent to the end of July.
September brought lots of good DC charging news. Tim Horton鈥檚 announced it plans to install DC chargers at 13 locations across the country by the end of the year, 50 by the end of 2026, to 100 by late 2028. The province of Newfoundland and Labrador announced 14 new additional DC chargers next year, after committing to 11 to be completed by the end of 2025. Perhaps most significantly, Audi and Porsche EV owners received news in September that their vehicles could finally be charged at most Tesla Superchargers. (If you drive an Audi Q4 e-tron, you won’t be able to access these Tesla DC chargers in Canada yet.)
The Tesla charger extension is a soft launch, which means these EV owners will need the Tesla app to activate the charge at most V3 and newer Tesla Superchargers, but it does open up more than 23,500 reliable charging ports across North America. In more good news on charging, Mercedes-Benz EV drivers may be getting access to Tesla Superchargers this fall. British Columbia is slated to receive by the end of 2025 the first Canadian location of the Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging network, a high-speed DC network that launched in November 2024, which now offers more than 400 charging ports across the U.S.
But reliability of the charging infrastructure is an issue. Adding or updating charging sites brings its own difficulties. It means down time and drivers getting frustrated when they show up and can鈥檛 charge their EVs. Which is what happened to both Rodionov and Paul Mackin, a retired electrical engineer who showed up to an Ivy station in King City, Ont., only to find all chargers out of commission while Ivy expanded its three-year old networks with faster and more reliable DC chargers.
鈥淚鈥檓 rooting for Ivy chargers. I really want to use them,鈥 said Mackin, who drives a Tesla Model Y, referring to the network that runs many busy chargers at ONroute highway stops in Ontario. 鈥淭hey now have a Tesla adapter built in, so that鈥檚 useful, but I鈥檝e never had a truly successful charge there.鈥
Launched in 2022, many of the original Ivy DC chargers placed at ONroute stations have already been replaced, the company says. Said a company statement: 鈥淭he decision to upgrade the units at 11 ONroute locations was an investment to enhance performance, improve the driver experience and ensure the network can meet increasing demand 鈥 the upgrades also introduced dynamic power-sharing, expanding capacity from four to six ports and allowing up to six vehicles to charge at once.鈥
The reliability of DC chargers in various networks has been an issue, more so in some parts of the country than others, said Daniel Breton, president and CEO of Electric Mobility Canada representing electric transportation. 鈥淨uebec has reliable chargers, so everyone trusts them,鈥 he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 partly because it鈥檚 so much more a planned and aligned effort over the past eight years in Quebec for the (Hydro-Qu茅bec owned) Electric Circuit network, and now we鈥檙e adding to it, while in Ontario (and other places), it has been much more fragmented.鈥
Breton notes that the sheer numbers of chargers in Ontario is higher than in its EV-loving neighbour to the east, and that鈥檚 on a per-EV basis, too. Granted, that includes regular level Level 2 charging as well, which stats show is how most EV owners charge, either overnight at, or near, home, or at work, and is much less expensive and easier to install compared to DC charging.
The key value in DC charging is it enables owners of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), that is to say EVs that run solely on batteries, to undertake聽longer trips with confidence, including in more rural or remote locations. Plug-in hybrid owners can just run on gas after their battery charge runs out and not think about range or charging stations. DC stations are also important in urban areas for BEV drivers who do not have access to overnight, or long-term Level 2 charging at work.
Automakers聽cite lack of charging infrastructure for the slow rate of EV adoption, but the main culprit this year seems to be the end of federal EV rebates, which were “paused” early this year.
Since then, plug-in vehicles accounted for 8.6 per cent of new vehicle sales in Canada for the first half of 2025, compared to 13 per cent in the same time period in 2024. That鈥檚 down from a high of 18.3 per cent in the last quarter of 2024, according to the latest StatCan figures.
鈥淭he EV charging industry is investing and expanding rapidly, but (is) doing it on the assumption that Canada is following through on the government鈥檚 EV Availability Standard (EVAS),鈥 said Travis Allan, president of the Canadian Charging Infrastructure Council, an industry group of charging networks formed earlier this year.
That controversial EVAS legislation required 20 per cent of new vehicle sales to be zero emissions in 2026, then 60 per cent by 2030, and 100 per cent by 2035. But this year鈥檚 much lower EV sales numbers led the federal government in early September to scrap the 2026 sales rules. And it is now taking a 60-day pause to re-evaluate the other mandated EV sales timelines.
Rodionov said he鈥檚 found roughly 20 per cent of new DC quick chargers don鈥檛 work for him. This included two Petro-Canada chargers he visited so I could photograph him and his car, after the first DC charger we tried was already in use. Aggravated at the two black screens of nothingness, he said that this was unacceptable and he believed that two gas pumps would not be left like this.
鈥淭he few bad ones (experiences) really make you streetwise.鈥
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