A North Vancouver business is taking a bold step into the future by installing a publicly available charging station for electric vehicles.

Angel Restoration was given permission by District of North Vancouver council Monday to install a station on district land in front of its business at 1484 Rupert St.

President David McLeod told councillors that his work with Cool North Shore inspired him to make his business more environmentally friendly and to look into moving his company's fleet of vehicles towards electric power. While those cars and trucks are not yet on Canadian markets, McLeod wanted to put the infrastructure in ahead of time.

"We're going to have a charging station while we're waiting for these vehicles to arrive," McLeod told council.

The whole intention was to green our business," said McLeod's son, Cameron, also before council. "We don't know what kind of electric vehicles we'll be purchasing for our fleet, but we know when we do we'll need a charging station for them. So we decided to put it out there and share that with the district because if we don't have any vehicles to charge there we might as well not let it go to waste and share it with the public."

The McLeods said their station will be the first privately owned, publicly available charging station in Canada. What's more, they said, they don't stand to make a dime on it.

"Six cents a kilowatt-hour," said David McLeod, "and it takes about five to ten kilowatt-hours to charge a car, so it's basically going to be free to the public. BC Hydro said we could charge them and we will be charging them on their Visa cards, but the amount of money we'll get back is ridiculous."

District staff estimated the station will cost about $8,000 to install. In his written report to council, environmental planning projects manager Ken Bennett said that British Columbia has one of the largest price gaps between gasoline and electricity in North America. The estimated $1,200 savings per year per driver has led BC Hydro to plan for up to 25,000 electric vehicles to hit the streets over the next three years, Bennett wrote.

The Angel Restoration site will have space for two vehicles to park and will support a variety of charging options, ranging from 14 hours to 30 minutes. The station will recharge plug-in hybrids as well as purely electric cars and trucks.

"We'll wait for the production to be delivered locally and see what kind of uptake there is," said Coun. Mike Little, "but I think in the long run these kinds of installations are probably going to have to become commonplace, particularly in retail centres where someone parks for a couple of hours. It's a great way to attract customers to your facility."

"Thank you for putting your money where your mouth is," he said to the McLeods.

Councillors also questioned staff on when the district would field an electric vehicle fleet.

"We are looking at two particular units that are coming on to the market sometime later this year," said chief administrative officer David Stuart. "But right now we're looking at $30,000 for a three-year lease, so we're hoping that the price point comes down so we can have a business case. There's the triple bottom line, but we also have to look at spending taxpayers' money."

"Don't worry," quipped Coun. Lisa Muri, addressing the Angel Restoration delegates. "We won't send all our fleet over to you. Maybe for a while, but then we'll get our infrastructure set up."

balldritt@nsnews.com