This city councillor drives all summer without buying gas

There are 84 plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in Sault Ste. Marie.

One of them belongs to Ward 4 Coun. Stephan Kinach.

"I believe it is important to separate facts and myths about EVs," Kinach tells SooToday.

"I personally believe in northern Ontario, plug-in hybrids are the superior vehicles for our climate and range we expect out of our vehicles."

The following are remarks Kinach made about electric vehicles at last week's city council meeting:

I believe I'm the only one on council who drives an electric car.

As of the last meeting, I didn't see anybody else in the parking spots with an electric car.

I have a 2019 Ford Fusion plug-in hybrid.

I'd just like to give you some information about my experience with my car, driving it around.

I was able to get the PUC home charger installed before our election in the fall.

That program has been really good because that is one of the biggest challenges for people with electric cars: is getting that charging station installed at home. It's quite a big upfront cost.

The PUC has this plan where you pay over five years. And so that ends up like a rental and like an insurance policy on the unit and if anything happens with the unit, they come and replace it.

So that runs me about $75 a month right now. For five years after that it will be about $35 a month just for the rental and insurance on the charger with my car.

With my car, it's a plug-in hybrid. I get 50 kilometres to a full charge that takes two hours on a fast charger.

I don't see a big difference on my monthly PUC bill with water and electricity. I didn't notice a difference.

With my car I can drive around the city from May to October without filling up my gas tank and I charge probably three times a week. Fifty kilometres range there.

During the winter months, my range drops from 50 kilometres to about 20 kilometres because as soon as you want to heat your car all the energy goes to defrosting your windshield.

Another nice thing about the plug-in hybrid is I get 1,000 kilometres on one tank of gas for highway driving.

And I get an extra five per cent off on my car insurance every year because I drive a plug-in hybrid.

Aside from his 2019 Ford Fusion hybrid, Kinach is also known for Ollie, a Pembroke Welsh Corgi tri-coloured pooch with its own YouTube, TikTok and Instagram pages.

"My wife and I have been posting for five months. We have about 1.8 million views and our top video has over 400,000 views," he says.