Fast-charging corridor for electric cars to go up between Quebec and Ottawa by 2017

Electric Circuit, Canada’s first public charging network for electric vehicles, announced yesterday that its proposal to create a “fast-charge corridor” between Quebec and Ottawa, has been accepted by the Ontario government.

This means 14 500-volt fast-charging stations will go up along Highways 401, 416, 417 and 17. The proposal also included the commissioning of eight 240-volt Level-2 charging stations to be built within the city of Ottawa.

Owned by Hydro-Quebec, Electric Circuit has a nationwide network of 624 charging stations, including 31 fast-charge stations. Members generally pay $1 an hour for Level-2 charging, which can take several hours to provide a full charge, or $10 per hour for fast-charging, which generally charges a vehicle in less than 30 minutes.

Electric Circuit submitted the proposal alongside grocery chain Metro, fast-food chain St-Hubert and the city of Ottawa, all of which will host charging stations.

“This initiative reflects the ambitious objective set out in our Transportation Electrification Action Plan 2015-2020, which aims to have 100,000 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on our roads by 2020,” said Jacques Daoust, Quebec’s minister of transportation, sustainable mobility and transport electrification, in a statement sent to MobileSyrup.

Another way Quebec is considering furthering that ambition is by mandating that all new homes in the province be built with Level-2 charging stations, as Daoust recently confirmed.

Related reading: Quebec might require all new homes to be built with electric charging stations

[source]Hydro Quebec[/source]