Shelby Flemming has an electric car, but it’s not doing her much good this winter.
She lives on Mosquito Lake Road, and owns a 2015 Nissan Leaf that has a 70 mile range — but only when it’s warm.
Using the heater in colder weather, it doesn’t have the range to get to her work in Haines and back on one charge and there is no public charging station in town.
A $1.4 million grant from the federal government to the Chilkoot Indian Association (CIA) could change that as soon as this summer, and potentially save Flemming a lot of money next year. If she can charge her car while in town for work, she won’t have to rely on her gas guzzler with gas hovering between $5 and $6 per gallon.
“I’m super excited about that. I hope it happens quickly,” said Flemming.
Details of the charging station are still being worked out, but EV owners, advocates, and tourism officials are thrilled at the possibility of Haines’ first public charging station. A station would open up the possibility of EV-owning Yukoners making the trip down without having to borrow a car, potentially opening up the “Golden Circle” to EV owners. There are free, rapid charging stations every hundred miles or so in the Yukon, and five of them in Skagway. Haines — so far — has been the missing link.
“It’s gonna be great to be connected in that regard,” said Haines tourism director Reba Hylton. “We’re way behind.”
The federal government recently announced $623 million in grants for a nationwide effort to boost EV charging infrastructure that included the CIA grant.
Tribal administrator Harriet Brouillette said she’d been hearing about the need in Haines for a charging station. When the federal government opened up the grant application, it jumped at the chance, especially with Haines being an EV charging desert.
“We have an opportunity to provide the community with the EV charging station at a reasonable cost, so it just makes sense for us to take this step,” she said.
The $1.4 million award includes money to purchase property for the charging station. One idea, Brouilette said, is to develop a space into a small “economic hub” where food trucks and other small businesses could park trailers.
Brouillette said if the tribe is able to act quickly, it could start building late this spring.
Brittany Dunbar with CIA said the goal is to have four direct-current fast-charging plugs at the site, which can charge a car up to 80% battery in as little as 30 minutes. But the tribe is still looking into how much those chargers would cost and whether current electricity supply could accommodate fast charging. An alternative is a 220-volt charging station which can charge a car in a few hours. Dunbar said the tribe is still reeling a bit from the news of the grant award.
“I was pretty excited and shocked, but now is the fun part of figuring it all out,” said Dunbar.
CIA officials said the charging wouldn’t be free, but EV owners in Haines say the cost to run an EV per mile is about a tenth of what the price of gas is.
“I did the math and my Toyota Landcruiser was like 30 cents a mile. The (Nissan) Leaf was 4 cents,” said Haines resident Darsie Culbeck.
Culbeck, who sits on the Haines Economic Development Council board of directors, said he thinks a public charging station would be a big boost for tourism in the area. He pointed to a friend in Haines Junction who has an EV and doesn’t visit Haines because of the lack of a charging station.
There’s no official state registry of electric vehicles in Haines, but Mayor Tom Morphet said 17 people have applied for a rebate for owning an EV from AP&T, the local power company. AP&T president Jason Custer would not corroborate those numbers.
Local usership seems to be growing, in no small part due to the enthusiasm of Bart Henderson. Henderson said he’s owned about a half dozen EVs, and has resold more than 10 in Haines.
He currently owns a Chevy Bolt and a Kia Soul. Working with a friend in Juneau, Henderson imports the cars basically at cost to Haines, where he lets people test drive his own cars.
“My theory is once you drive a real electric car, you get back in a gas car and it seems so clunky and old,” he said.
Still, cold is a concern to battery life, as Hannah Reeves recently discovered during a trip to Haines Junction. The family stopped at the cultural center to charge their Hyundai Ionic, but only for about a half hour, which wasn’t enough time to get them all the way back in the cold weather. They found themselves stranded in the pass. Her husband hitchhiked back to Haines and picked up their Ford F350 diesel and towed it home.
Still, she said, she didn’t have any regrets about the car. It works great to commute from her home at Mosquito Lake and back, and having a charging station in town could make it even better.
“I don’t think I want to go back at all to a standard vehicle. It’s amazing, it’s all-wheel-drive, the handling is way better than anything else I’ve ever driven,” she said.