2025 ELECTRIC SASKATCHEWAN GRAVEYARD TOUR
VicEVA Member – Al Wills
Hailing from Saskatchewan, leaving in the late ‘60s, the Southwest Saskatchewan Graveyard tour has been a part of our family lore for decades now. We thought we’d done the last one 5 or more years ago, but with families aging another came upon us. I’m a retired navy guy and have been retired for 25 years. I’m new to the EV world, but still love my hot-rodded truck, that just loves gasoline!
We bought a Mustang Mach-E EX almost a year and a half ago, and while that is plenty of time to become somewhat of an EV expert, I just haven’t gotten into it. We purchased it with no intent to travel anywhere of any distance, so such a trip caused quite a bit of apprehension. Range anxiety is a real thing even when you haven’t driven one any distance. Up until this summer, we’d only ventured to Courtenay twice. We have a Level 2 charger at home and have enjoyed the VERY cheap cost of owning an EV.
I hadn’t paid too much attention to the various chargers as I never really needed them, we found the level 3 in Courtenay, but other than the odd BC Hydro charge to see what it was like, we had no clue, we just drove it.
In the early summer we finally got the promised Ford Tesla adapter, which caused another learning curve. While I thought this might be the panacea for travel, it was a bit disappointing. The lack of chargers here (I live in Colwood) and that they weren’t faster than the level 3 Hydro chargers locally (Duh!). Remember, I’m new at this!
When it comes to planning, Tesla excels with simple destination input and charger identification, while Ford’s network is decent but lacks user-friendly planning features. It soon became apparent that, while we wanted to go to Edmonton at some point in our journey the #1 highway after the Coquihalla was preferable. So, off we went with a quick charge at the Tesla station (some 24 bays) in Hope and a charge stop in Kamloops including lunch, for a 100% charge because of the wait for the meal. Then onto Revelstoke where we’d booked our hotel. First surprise, all Tesla chargers don’t accommodate non-Teslas, once you’ve used the Tesla Supercharger app, you’ll notice it says if that charger is compatible with others or not, I hadn’t noticed that until then! Luckily, there’s another Tesla Bay in downtown Revelstoke.
As it turned out, we ended up using Tesla chargers exclusively as the Supercharger App was just so easy to use, you just plug in your destination, and it points you to where the fast chargers are in that city and then plugs it into your navigation system and takes you right there. As you’re driving away you get an email from Ford with an invoice (paid with your credit card on your Ford account) for how much that charge cost. In total we drove about 4400km and paid about $400.
The Mach E’s charging port is on the driver’s side near the door, which can make it interesting getting close enough to the Tesla charger’s short (1 meter) cable. Many times we had to take up 2 stalls to get close enough. Only once did we have to wait for a charger and most times there were only a couple (or no) cars at the stations. In Calgary we came across the first V4 Tesla charging station where the cable is about 3 metres long (I’ll leave the technical stuff to the experts). Many Tesla stations have stations you can parallel park beside.
Our farm is about 160k from Swift Current, which was to be our last charge at a Tesla base. When we got to the farm, we plugged into 110v there and used their vehicle. There really aren’t that many chargers in the low population areas. To be fair we could have made it to Saskatoon, but the Range anxiety made us start with 100%. We left there headed for Saskatoon, onto Edmonton, back though Calgary and home using the Supercharger app to plan our stops.
We found the charging stops were convenient for coffee, meals, bathrooms etc. we still experience the Range anxiety whenever we got below 50%, but I guess that comes with experience.
I later learned that one doesn’t necessarily need a Supercharger all the time as, most of you know, but I didn’t, the important thing to know is how much power your vehicle can accept from any charger (the Mach-E maxes out at around 100kW). Having said that, the app worked flawlessly for us. The adapter worked flawlessly where non-Teslas were accepted.
It was a most enjoyable road trip, the car is fabulous to drive, comfortable and easy, Ford’s adaptive cruise control can be a bit frustrating, but all in all fabulous!
