Editor:
Re: “Sechelt sets fee for EV charger,” Coast Reporter, May 13.
The only reason the EV charging stations are under discussion by the Sechelt council is because the previous mayor was in favour of them. Our current mayor disparages electric vehicles and conflates them with the rich and upper middle classes (which, last time I looked, Mr. Mayor, usually includes university professors).
But the irony is, vehicles such as Tesla don’t need local charging stations as much as the more affordable Nissan, Ford and GM models. A Tesla can go to Vancouver and back with kilometres to spare, so why would an owner go to a municipal hall to charge when they can just go back to their garage and plug in?
No one has thought to research the fact that the chargers are there for those tourists who own more affordable models of electric cars. They are the ones who have to plan their trips in order to charge frequently along the way. Driving from Langdale to Earls Cove means that Sechelt is a logical place to recharge.
The previous mayor never used the district’s EV chargers because he didn’t need to, but election campaigns are notorious for misinformation and the last one was no exception.
As for only people with money being able to afford EVs, this has certainly been true of Teslas. Early adopters of Tesla’s new technology paid the big bucks and helped fund research and development so that more affordable models could result. This wasn’t GM or Ford in its early days that easily had research money at their disposal.
But let’s stick with the current mayor’s opinion, which ends up sounding like: Electric cars bad; cheap gas cars good. That’s the kind of politically based thinking that is ruining our planet.
Laura Davis, Sechelt
