Heather Bailie is tired of driving to Gravenhurst to charge her car.
She hasn't been able to charge her electric car in her hometown of Huntsville as the chargers at the only Ivy station — located at 150 Hanes Rd — needed to be fixed.
"There are two chargers," Bailie said. "The left one has never been operational, and the right one has been down for about five months."
On top of that, loading the car at home is not always an option for Bailie.
"I can't put in a charger at home because I rent," she said. "If I leave the car plugged in at home on a regular outlet all weekend, Friday night to Monday morning gets a full charge."
Ivy stations are essential for drivers like Bailie, who constantly commutes to Gravenhurst to charge her car.
"I work in Bracebridge, so I need to go to the chargers in Gravenhurst, then drive all the way home," she said. "Non-Tesla cars can't use Tesla chargers because they're proprietary. But Tesla cars can use Ivy chargers because they have both types of charging heads."
Ivy Charging Network said it would work on solving the issue soon.
"We apologize for the extended period that the Huntsville chargers have been down," Michael Kitchen, general manager of Ivy Charging Network, wrote in an email Tuesday, Oct. 3. "The Ivy chargers at Huntsville are scheduled for replacement and are expected to be back in service by the end of this week."
On the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 4, workers were on the scene fixing the station.
Julian Orlando Chaves is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with the Huntsville Forester. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
