Ivy, ABB Bet That Convenience Beats Speed

Ottawa's first retail fast charger hints at a broader shift in how Canadians power their EVs

13 Nov 2025

A grocery run in the Ottawa suburb of Orléans now comes with an extra amenity: a fast-charging port. The arrival of ABB E-mobility C50 chargers at a SmartCentres retail site, operated through the Ivy Charging Network, is modest in scale. Yet it points to a quiet reorganisation of where Canadians expect to power their electric vehicles.

The hardware itself is deliberately unremarkable. Each unit delivers up to 50 kilowatts, enough to add meaningful range during a standard hour of shopping, without the electrical complexity or cost of ultra-rapid systems. That restraint is the point. Compact mid-power chargers can slot into commercial sites that could not accommodate heavier equipment, extending the network's reach to drivers who lack home charging options.

The competitive logic is straightforward. Charging networks cannot yet compete on speed alone, so they are competing on convenience and reliability instead. Ivy's representatives have been clear that infrastructure must fit naturally into daily routines, a view ABB's leadership shares. Winning driver loyalty, in their telling, depends less on kilowatt peaks than on predictable access at familiar destinations.

Retailers and utilities have their own reasons to participate. Foot traffic rises when drivers linger; grid managers prefer the steady, moderate load of mid-power chargers to the spikes that faster systems can create. Early partnerships between charging networks and commercial landlords suggest a future in which a charging bay is as unremarkable a retail feature as a trolley park.

That future, however, is not yet guaranteed. Permitting timelines remain slow, and questions persist about whether 50-kilowatt chargers will satisfy drivers as battery capacities grow and expectations rise. Analysts caution that Canada's charging mix will need higher-powered highway sites alongside urban retail hubs, not one model at the expense of the other.

For now, the Orléans installation is a data point, not a verdict. If the pattern holds and retail deployments multiply, the act of charging may eventually feel as routine as filling a tank. Whether the infrastructure can scale fast enough to meet that ambition is the question the Ottawa pilot cannot yet answer.