Consider this brand-new condominium complex in Canada: When residents want to go out, they place an order for an electric car on a smartphone car-share app and, a few minutes later, their ride automatically rolls out of a building elevator like a soft drink from a vending machine.

The buildings are powered by high-efficiency heat pumps and rooftop solar panels, and the windows are triple-paned. Crescent-shaped, stair-stepped structures draw a distinct contrast with the surrounding buildings that sport a more-typical boxy shape. Reasonable guesses for the location of this development might be some internationally recognized gateway city or hip community like Austin, Texas, or Berkeley, California.

The actual location — London, Ontario — probably wouldn't come to mind: "London is not notable for being an early adopter of stuff," said Glen Drummond, senior marketing adviser at project developer S2E. “London has a demographic profile that’s broadly representative of the Canadian population. It is Normalville, Mr. Average Town.”

Even so, that's exactly where the 84-unit EVE Park opened in May, with construction to soon begin on two additional residential buildings. EVE Park — the name EVE stands for Electric Vehicle Enclave — shows how a commercial developer looking to add a bit of architectural flair to a multifamily project can try to infuse buildings with all the latest sustainable bells and whistles and more. Perhaps most ambitiously, the development incorporates the electric vehicles into the project so deeply that they are part of the building, with the ability to double as a power generator.

As automakers rush to design and manufacture EVs, prodded by billions of dollars in government subsidies in both Canada and the United States, commercial real estate developers of varying property types are trying to adapt. Office buildings need EV charging stations for tenants. Retailers want to offer EV chargers for shoppers. And multifamily buildings are perhaps the most affected, as many EV drivers will want to recharge overnight.

There's a significant risk involved in this approach: Electric vehicles are not guaranteed to replace gas-powered cars and trucks. EV sales have slowed over the past year at a time of consumers' concerns about a lack of publicly accessible charging stations and the vehicles' high sticker price, according to Cox Automotive. Ford, General Motors, Rivian and other automakers have delayed or scaled back the construction of manufacturing plants. And Fisker, an early-stage EV manufacturer, filed for bankruptcy in June in a move underscoring the fragility of the new industry.

But for those who still believe in the future of EVs, S2E discovered that London is a fit for the Goldilocks profile they were seeking: not too large, not too small, but just right.

Metropolitan London had a population of 543,551 in 2021, according to the Canadian Census, so it’s large enough to have a market for cutting-edge apartments. But London is not so big that development costs would render the project financially unfeasible for S2E.

"If this was in Chatham-Kent, it wouldn’t work," said Derek Satnik, vice president of technology at S2E, referring to a nearby Ontario city of about 104,000 people.

“But if it was in Toronto, it wouldn’t have worked either” because S2E couldn’t have afforded to acquire the land, or the higher costs of building materials and labor, Satnik told CoStar News during a recent tour of EVE Park.

EVE Park is located at West 5, a mixed-use project on the western outskirts of London that developers Sifton Properties and London Hydro say is the first planned development in Canada to achieve net-zero status, meaning that the total amount of renewable energy created on-site is equal to the energy used.

The West 5 complex includes apartments, townhouses, a 111,000-square-foot office building, a 56,000-square-foot office building and 178,000 square feet of retail and restaurants. But EVE Park is the most striking of all the project’s buildings.

S2E is a St. Jacobs, Ontario-based company that got its start in 2007 as a consultant on commercial solar-panel installations and had little commercial real estate experience before launching EVE Park. One of its early real estate projects was the development of supermarket chain Longo’s first net-zero location in Whitchurch-Stouffville.

But S2E founder and CEO Milfred Hammerbacher had loftier ambitions and wanted to pursue a net-zero residential project, Drummond told CoStar News. S2E reached a deal with Sifton to carve out a piece of West 5 for EVE Park.

EVE Park, designed by architects at Gensler, comprises two crescent-shaped buildings that rise like a staircase from a single level at one end to four floors at the highest level. The exterior is clad with vertical aluminum panels in various shades of gray, sage and brown, interspersed with floor-to-ceiling windows. Within each crescent is an outdoor gathering area with walkways, benches and plantings, all intended to encourage neighbors to get acquainted.

The crescent design combined with ample floor-to-ceiling windows will provide residents with plenty of natural light, said Andrew Colopy, an architecture professor at Rice University who's not involved in the project.

“What’s nice about that housing type is the daylight and natural ventilation from opposite sides” of each residential unit, Colopy told CoStar News.

S2E didn’t need to make the extra effort, or spend the additional money, to hire one of the world’s leading architecture firms to design its first foray into multifamily development, Drummond said. But the striking visual impact is intended to win over potential condo buyers in the London area who might otherwise resist purchasing at such an unusual development.

“We know that the status quo mentality is very important in housing,” Drummond said. “S2E knew from its experience in solar development that there is resistance to solar panels. So they wanted to create something that’s aesthetically resonant.”

The tallest part of EVE Park’s crescents is what sets the development apart. S2E and Gensler designed the building’s edge to be embedded with a vehicle elevator and an automated garage door on the ground level where a driver waits on a car to be delivered.

Each of the 22 slots in the motorized carousel has an electric-vehicle charging station and residents can join a subscription service to use the cars.

From the time when an order is placed on a mobile phone to the car’s arrival through the garage door is only a few minutes, Satnik said. It compares favorably to the time needed to walk from an apartment to a vehicle in a parking deck plus the time it takes to drive the car out of the deck.

“The very worst case, if your car is at the very top of the elevator, it's three minutes to get it down,” he said.

“The real beauty of the car-share being in the tower is that we get the land back so we can put parks and things on it,” Satnik said.

Except for street parking, there are no parking lots on the EVE Park site.

“It’s a soft approach to get folks away from parking in front of their own house,” said Oliver Schaper, a design director for Gensler. “You’re rethinking your personal relationship with your car.”

There’s an additional environmental benefit beyond getting cars off the road. The automotive elevators “can greatly reduce ugly and impervious ground cover on site” in the form of parking lots, Colopy said. “That has real environmental benefits like reducing [stormwater] runoff and contributes less to urban heat environments.”

The cars are also available to play yet another role. Each vehicle, when plugged into its charging station, could serve as the emergency power generator for the complex in the event of a power outage. S2E hasn’t decided yet whether to activate that feature, Satnik said.

EVE Park has more sustainable features. Each building is topped with solar panels. Windows are triple-paned to provide better insulation. Bathrooms are equipped with reduced-water shower heads. The edges of each building will be covered in greenery. Modular building techniques will keep pollen and air pollutants outside the interior living area.

The Canada Green Building Council, an Ottawa-based nonprofit organization, has certified the 100th building under its zero-carbon standards, the Canadian equivalent of net-zero. Properties that received the certification include Oxford Properties Group’s The Stack in Vancouver, Groupe Mach’s Le Phénix, a Montréal office building, and Fiera Capital’s UFA warehouse in Edmonton.

The U.S. Green Building Council has verified 254 buildings as achieving certain net-zero standards, according to the organization. The first U.S. building to be certified as net-zero is the headquarters of renewable energy developer Entegrity in Little Rock, Arkansas.

London is situated halfway between Toronto and Detroit, set along the Thames River and surrounded on most sides by the soybean and corn fields of southwestern Ontario. It's the hometown of "Barbie" actor Ryan Gosling and actress Rachel McAdams. It's home of the original brewery for Labatt Blue beer, still made on Richmond Street. Downtown London has a growing tech industry. The 40,000-student Western University is in north London.

London still probably wasn’t the first place that Hammerbacher considered when he conceived of the idea of a net-zero residential community, Drummond said. It doesn't have the progressive reputation of places like Boston, San Francisco or Seattle.

In fact, consumer-products companies often pick London as the location for new-product tests because of the city’s generic character, Drummond said.

It turns out that London has been receptive to S2E’s unusual housing concept. S2E has sold 27 of its 42 available units, as of May 30. Unit asking prices range from CA$698,000 to $1.19 million.

Even the luxury-level asking price hasn’t turned off buyers, Schaper said.

“You pay a premium for an opportunity to live at EVE Park,” he said.

Gensler is the design architect and Dror is the associate architect. EllisDon is general contractor. Stantec is civil engineer and master planner. Arup is the project engineer. Prestige Brokerage represents S2E on condo unit sales.