Squamish is the first community in Canada to plug into an electric supercharge highway, connecting San Diego, California, with Whistler.
On Thursday, July 17, U.S. electric car company Tesla Motors opened up its first supercharge station north of the border. Situated in the Garibaldi Village Shopping Centre, the six charging stations complete a green network for the entire west coast of North America, Tesla spokesperson Alexis Georgeson said.
The Squamish facility fills in the gap between Vancouver and Whistler, she noted.
“It’s the prefect place for owners to pull over for 20 or 30 minutes while they charge their Model S, grab a bite to eat, use the restroom, tour the town a bit and get back on the road,” Georgeson said.
The individual systems can recharge the company’s approximately $80,000 vehicle’s batteries to the half way mark in 20 minutes. The cars have a range of approximately 480 kilometres on a single charge.
These stations help open the doors to electric vehicles’ viability, Georgeson said.
“That was sort of the one thing that was holding back the adoption of the electric vehicle was the ability to take a road trip and to venture outside of the range of the battery pack,” she said.
The community is looking forward to the extra traffic the stations may draw into town, Squamish mayor Rob Kirkham said at the grand opening. They are a big addition to the district, he noted.
“We are very far sighting in this community, we care deeply about our environment,” Kirkham said. “We look forward to people coming up with electric vehicles more and more.”
Tesla started producing its Model S two years ago. Today, 30,000 Model S vehicles have been sold worldwide. Tesla recently opened a store in Vancouver. In approximately four years, the company aims to have a new car out with half the Model S’s price tag.
The supercharge stations are designed specifically for Tesla’s vehicles. At the moment only Tesla cars have the ability to use the facility.
