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Electric snowmobile visits Whistler

Local tour company backs McGill U. research into zero-emissions machine

Even the creator of an electric snowmobile admits it’ll take a monumental leap beyond current technology for the concept to become a commercial success, if it ever does.

Simon Ouellette, the McGill University engineering Ph.D student who is working on the project with the support of a number of clients, including Whistler-based Canadian Snowmobile Adventures (CSA), said that’s because when fully charged, the 80 pounds’ worth of the best military-grade lithium-ion batteries that run his snow machine contain the energy equivalent of approximately one cup of gasoline.

So if you’re thinking about an excursion to, say, the Pemberton Ice Cap that might include the world’s longest extension cord, you can perish the thought — that is, perhaps, until energy transmission becomes wireless, or until the day solar panels can much more quickly and efficiently convert the sun’s energy into electricity than they do now.

Still, Ouellette — who was in Whistler Dec. 9 to 13 field testing his machine and a separate computer modeling program that can project the machine’s energy output over a given terrain profile — and others believe there are a number of viable applications for an electric snowmobile, CSA’s clientele in Whistler being just one.

“An electric snowmobile is… I can’t say never, but close to never going to be able to replace gasoline snowmobiles,” Ouellette said in a telephone interview on Dec. 12. “You’re never going to be able to use them on powder runs from the top of a mountain or to go on long excursions in the backcountry.

“Electric snowmobiles for the foreseeable future will be limited to applications where they are really needed,” he said. “You really have to design the application around the electric snowmobile.

Craig Beattie, CSA general manager, said the company has donated some $24,000 to the project over the past two years because its owners believe an emissions-free, virtually silent snowmobile is a way to reduce their operation’s environmental footprint and give clients an experience like none other in the industry.

“We all know what Whistler in general thinks about snowmobiling,” Beattie said. “Whistler is not very accepting of what we do, in many ways. Our goal is to continue to operate tours for our clients and just to improve what we do. We want to be as sustainable as we possibly can.”

Ouellette’s prototype machine can go about 16 kilometres (10 miles) on a charge. It has no clutch, so the electric motor is engaged all the time — the machine stops when you disengage the throttle and apply the brakes.

“I’m looking at a snowmobile that needs to get (from the CSA compound near Lot 7) to Crystal Hut and back,” Beattie sad. “Right now this machine is perfect for what I would need on my tour. He’s got it set at 32 km/h, and the machine will not output more than that. That’s the perfect type of snowmobile for me. It’s lightweight and would cover the range.”

Perfect except for the cost, that is. At the moment one machine costs about $10,000, $8,000 of which is for the lithium-ion battery pack, which Ouellette said would probably need to be replaced in four to five years.

The electric snowmobile has been under development for about eight years. Ouellette said a professor at the Université de Québec en Abitibi first started working on the project as a greener way for people in the northern community to enjoy the outdoors. Initially the project was to develop a hybrid snowmobile, but it morphed into an electric one.

The professor was then transferred to McGill where, Ouellette said, “it sort of snowballed from there.” Today the project is supported by CSA, a number of ski hills in Quebec and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).

One of the ski hills has all of its lifts at the base of the mountain, next to a highway, and is looking for a less-polluting way to transport staff and goods from lift base to lift base. Because the lifts all have electricity, workers using the electric model could simply plug in the snowmobile while they’re carrying out their duties so that it’s charged up for the next shuttle trip, Ouellette said.

The NSF has so far found the electric snowmobile an invaluable tool for use at its climactic research station on the ice cap in Greenland, he said. Because some of the research carried out at the station requires that there be no local pollution within a five-mile radius, staff at the station previously had to haul provisions to the station on cross-country skis, a process that often took several days. The electric snowmobile allows them to carry out the same operation in a day, Ouellette said.

“The NSF asked for a range of 10 miles, so we gave them exactly that,” he said.

While Ouellette said the testing of his computer modelling program for the machine in Whistler — i.e. demonstrating whether his terrain/energy usage modelling for the run up to Crystal Hut and back accurately reflects reality — seemed to have been successful, he said he’d have to wait until he got back to Montreal to analyze all the data.

Beattie said Ouellette and CSA co-owner Allen Crawford also showed the machine off to the operations folks at Whistler Blackcomb, VANOC and others. He said that while WB officials were intrigued, the CSA group was told that the machine “needs a bit more tweaking.”

Said Arthur DeJong, WB environmental planning manager, “It certainly has a ways to go to be efficient as part of a ski-area operation, but we’re excited that in the not-too-distant future — and I’m talking years in single digits here — we’ll be operating them.”

As for the potential for CSA to use electric snowmobiles for the company’s tours, “Whistler Blackcomb is very specific and if we could turn it around and run electric snowmobiles on the hill, it would help us extend the longevity of our stay,” Beattie said.

“We’re just trying to figure out where, when and how to do it. Our goal is to have it here for the Olympics, for sure. We’re trying to showcase that technology.”

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