Installing electric-vehicle chargers in Canada’s growing number of apartments and condominiums persists as a sticking point to wider EV adoption as policymakers and real estate developers work to balance high upfront costs with long-term demands.
Public charging stations are a “survivable” option for EV owners, said Carter Li, CEO of the charging-technology company Swtch Energy Inc., but persuading most Canadians to go electric will come down to convenience.
“Mass adoption really does require the same experience of people charging their cellphones, which is you plug it in at night, and it’s full the next morning,” Li said.
For Canadians moving into new multiunit residential buildings (MURBs), this means a dedicated charger in parking stalls. But it’s a convenience that doesn’t come cheap. Costs run about $5,000 to $7,000 per charger, Li said. That’s roughly in line with federal government estimates in December that accompanied its zero-emission-vehicle sales mandate. Its analysis put per-charger costs at $4,630 to $5,755.
Other stakeholders peg costs both below and above that range.
Studies indicate that developers of new buildings can expect to spend about $1,000 per stall to equip the spaces in their underground garages with the electrical infrastructure needed for EV charging, said Brendan McEwen, a managing consultant with Montreal-based Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors who has worked on MURB charging policy for nearly a decade. The price of the EV chargers increases costs by up to $2,500 per space, he said.
Paul De Berardis, director of building science and innovation at the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON), which represents Toronto-area builders, said costs per stall are much higher at $7,000 to $9,000.
MORE COST FOR ALREADY PRICEY HOUSING
At either the high or low end, however, the figures highlight the uphill climb Canada faces outfitting MURBs to charge EVs, especially as the country grapples with an affordability crunch that has seen purchase and rental prices jump sharply in the past several years.
While costs for charger installations in single-family homes are relatively modest by comparison — ranging from $1,102 and $2,105, according to federal estimates — more Canadians are moving to shared buildings.
According to 2021census data from Statistics Canada, the latest data available, 52.6 per cent of Canadians lived in detached houses, compared with 55 per cent a decade earlier. Conversely, close to half of Canadians lived in some form of shared building in 2021: 18.3 per cent lived in apartments with five or fewer storeys, and 10.7 per cent lived in MURBs with more than five storeys. Other dwellings with at least one shared wall, such as row houses and duplexes, account for most of the remainder.
Automakers have begun pushing governments to address charging availability and cost.
Toyota Canada CEO Larry Hutchinson said in February that the “right to charge at home” should be prioritized over public infrastructure.
“The ability to charge at home is the biggest charging hurdle we face to accelerate adoption.”
MUNICIPAL MANDATES
Some municipal governments in British Columbia, many in the Vancouver and Victoria areas, are tackling are mandating MURB charging. Toronto and certain boroughs of Montreal have done the same.
The city bylaws require that parking stalls for residents in new buildings be “EV ready.” In many cases, this means that the electrical infrastructure and power must be available in every space, but an EV charger is not necessarily required. This gives owners the option of installing one later, relatively easily, without incurring the cost upfront if they don’t currently have an EV.
But for builders, Toronto’s recently enacted bylaw triggered “very challenging” load requirements from a construction standpoint, said RESCON’s De Berardis.
“When you go to 100-per-cent EVs, it actually requires upsizing of transformers and services and feeders that come into the building, so the developer pays upfront for these larger infrastructure upgrades.”
While RESCON recognizes the need for chargers, the association wants to see targets “tailored to demand that actually exists in the market,” De Berardis said.
But for McEwen of Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors, electrifying every parking stall is a way to ensure that new buildings are future-proofed.
Otherwise, building owners are “going to have to do a subsequent retrofit that’s more than likely going to be a lot more expensive than it would have taken in new construction, or [drivers are] not going to have access to that home charging,” McEwen said.
Numerous other Canadian cities without EV-readiness rules are at various stages of consultation.
INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT
The upfront cost of charging infrastructure will also raise building values long term, McEwen said, as renters or buyers will be less interested in residences that don’t provide charging. Considering that parking stalls in Toronto MURBs costs buyers $80,000 or more, the added burden of a charger is relatively modest, he said.
Li from Swtch agrees that tackling the charging challenge upfront is cheaper than adding EV infrastructure to buildings after the fact.
He anticipates that over time, per-stall prices for new-building EV chargers and the associated infrastructure will fall.
“In the future, it wouldn’t be crazy to think it would be around $2,000, including the hardware, especially [with hardware] coming down in prices to a few hundred dollars these days,” Li said.
But De Berardis expects costs for MURB installations to increase as EV chargers and the parallel electrification of water and heating systems in a building add to electrical loads.
“The electrical infrastructure and grid upgrades required to feed these larger buildings is only going to continue to substantially go up.”
