Toronto accountant Ian Edmonds had thought through all the usual objections to buying an electric vehicle. The range was fine. The cost made sense. That left just one problem: their downtown Toronto condo had nowhere to charge it.
"Not being able to charge at home was a major factor," Edmonds says. "The headache we were going to have trying to find public charging was more than we wanted to deal with."
So they waited, moved into a house with a driveway, and bought two EVs. Now Edmonds charges overnight on a standard wall outlet and estimates it costs him roughly four cents per 100 kilometres to drive. "It's dead simple," he says. "It's just plugging into a wall."
That simplicity — so easy for homeowners, so elusive for condo dwellers — is becoming one of the most significant structural barriers to Canada's EV transition
While Canada’s target of 100% zero-emission new vehicle sales by 2035 was scrapped this year, the federal government has still committed billions of dollars to building a domestic EV supply chain. But the existence of a domestic EV market assumes something that currently isn't true for a large share of the population: that Canadians can charge where they live. Roughly 30% of Canadians live in condos, apartments, and other multi-unit residential buildings, and the vast majority of those buildings have zero EV charging infrastructure.
Public charging networks don't solve this. They're more expensive, less convenient, and no substitute for waking up every morning with a full battery. "When you have to go somewhere and sit for 20 minutes to charge, it's just not convenient," Edmonds says. But installing chargers in residential buildings — while often technically straightforward — can be a tedious, years-long process of consultations and squabbling.
Neil Betteridge knows this firsthand. He's a board member at a 325-unit, 36-storey condo tower in downtown Toronto. His building started exploring EV charging about five years ago. The first chargers went live in December 2025 — four years later.
"If I could tell myself something before I started," Betteridge says, "I'd say 'buckle up.'"
