BC Hydro is rethinking its charging stations to meet the needs of present day mobility-impaired drivers as well as the trailer-towing electric SUVs and trucks of the near future

When mobility-impaired EV drivers pull in to use public charging stations, it takes no time at all to see that their needs have not been factored into the design of many of those stations.

“It hits you like a punch in the gut to see how difficult it is,” says Monika Curman, customer experience program manager for BC Hydro.

The matter came to BC Hydro’s attention through conversations with members of the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association (VEVA), most notably Jacques Courteau, who is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair for mobility. Courteau owns a Tesla Model 3 that has been modified to accept acceleration and braking inputs through hand controls, and the challenges he describes in accessing public charging stations demonstrated a clear need for action.

“BC Hydro was making a presentation to VEVA on new charging stations that they had planned,” Courteau says. “On all of the slides that they showed, I would not have been able to charge at any of those chargers.

“I raised my hand and said, ‘Do you understand this?’ [The presenter] opened his eyes for the first time to that particular issue. And I said, ‘We have to talk.’

First-hand insights

To Courteau’s delight, they did more than just talk. Instead, Curman and a team of associates arranged to ride along with Courteau to watch him use four different charging stations in the Lower Mainland.

The experience was illuminating. Witnessing Courteau’s experiences first-hand gave them insights they could never have gleaned from behind a desk — insights that BC Hydro now plans to incorporate into the design of all future charging station installations.

“There are published accessibility documents out there, but rather than just rely on that, we really wanted to practice empathy and get as close as we could into the shoes of our users,” Curman says. “If you’re stuck in your cubicle, you’re going to have cubicle-shaped thinking. You’ve got to get out there.”

This approach contrasts with the way many charging stations are currently designed, with the priorities of engineers and technicians given precedence over that of users. As a result, factors such as proximity to a transformer tend to take priority over functionality.

Applying design thinking

“We work very closely with engineers when it comes to the design and picking the location of charging stations,” says Christopher Trigardi, BC Hydro’s program manager for electric vehicles. While that won’t change, he says they’re now being more deliberate about having a customer focus as well as satisfying their technical requirements.

After riding along with Courteau, Trigardi says multiple factors came to light. Many are simple things, he says. “A grade, if there’s uphill before one of our machines. Even the curbs and the bollards that we have protecting our machines were a hindrance to Jacques. He wasn’t able to even reach the charging station itself to activate it.

“Seeing that visually, it was enough to say, ‘Okay, we’ve got to keep that in mind when we’re doing our design of these stations and, wherever we can, make it easier from that standpoint.’”

Room to manoeuvre

Providing more room at some chargers is another important addition, Trigardi says, so that those who require it to manoeuvre will have it available. Where BC Hydro’s original two-charger station configuration had two standard-size stalls for charging use and a third for a driver in the queue, the revamped design does away with the waiting area and uses that space to double the size of one charging stall to make it accessible for mobility-impaired drivers. 

“[At present,] when we do have two stations side by side, you can’t open your door [wide to] get your wheelchair out,” he says. “If you have canes or crutches or you just need more space around your vehicle, we want to provide that for our customers.”

Another concern that’s being addressed, Curman says, is ensuring that the surface of each parking space is paved and level.

“We have one station that’s on gravel,” she says. “Even if Jacques could get onto the curb, which he can’t because there’s no ramp, it’s gravel, so he can’t manoeuvre. So, it’s making sure that the surface is paved and that the machines are on grade.”

Heavy lifting

The weight of the charging cables can also be a concern for those who may not have free use of both arms at once, especially as the newer 350 kW charging stations begin to come online.

“Jacques has to put the cord between his knees and wheel away from the machine so he can plug in his car,” Curman says. “But the further he has to go, just from the physics, the heavier the cable gets.

“You can imagine what it’s going to be like with these stronger [fast chargers]. Those cables are really heavy. So, we have to think about the cables, and we have to think about where we put those bollards that protect the equipment.”

Pull-through charging

The expected influx of electric pick-up trucks and large SUVs over the coming years has BC Hydro thinking ahead. An anticipated need for pull-through charging stations to accommodate truck-and-trailer combinations is already being considered, particularly along tourist corridors.

“We are really pushing the pull-through design, especially in the more southern and northern areas of our province where we feel that there’s going to be an influx of pick-up trucks that will be towing boats, towing campers, towing trailers,” Trigardi says. “Within the next couple of months, we are going to have a couple of pull-through stations in service.”

Trigardi adds that while pull-through stations may appear to serve only this specific demographic, they can be helpful in other uses cases as well.

“The manufacturers didn’t get together and go, ‘Let’s put a charging port on this side of the car,’” he says. “They’re everywhere, on the front and the back and on the side. By having this kind of pull-through, you make it more accessible in terms of how people decide to pull into the station.”

Setting a new standard

Trigardi says that approximately 50 per cent of BC Hydro’s existing charging station network already meets the new standards for accessibility that the utility has set out based on this examination. While retrofitting already-built stations is not feasible, these standards will be incorporated into every single one of BC Hydro’s new builds.

“There are going to be situations where it’s going to be a bit more difficult,” he says. “But our primary focus with these new designs and new construction sites is to ensure they are accessible with the grade of the charger, the height of the charger, the height of the cables, the wider parking stalls, the wider bollard sleeves, the sight lines.”

But one thing that won’t change as these insights are implemented is the addition of signage reserving these charging stations exclusively for wheelchair users — a decision Courteau supports.

“If you make it easy for folks like Jacques in his wheelchair,” explains Curman, “you’re also making it easier for a lot of other people: somebody who’s temporarily on crutches, somebody who has a cane, somebody who’s got a kid on the hip or a stroller.

“What we want to do is bake accessibility into the design so that it serves many more people.”