EV Travellers Need More Than Just Fast Charging

You might say Adelaide to Sydney via Renmark, Hay and Gundagai is a bit of a journey.

So can you do it these days with an EV? I think the answer is yes, certainly.

However there’s also room for improvement to take electric road tripping from just possible to being a most pleasant experience.

To be honest I think “holiday” is a pretty loose description for a`1400km car journey with 3 kids under 8 in the car, but rest assured dear reader, I’m trying to make the best of the situation.

For interest’s sake I’m seeking out the EV chargers in whichever place we stop. This is by no means a comprehensive review, but more of a survey to secure support for a possible future EV purchase.

Plug In Hybrids Are Old Hat

As much as they’re popular, I think you’d have to be a real chicken to buy a hybrid these days. They’re complex, expensive to service and most likely to catch fire. A petrol car with a semi-electric transmission is a turn of the century idea.

Toyota have gone from industry leaders to absolute laggards, while the last Subaru hybrid I looked at was a 1.1kWh joke. They took years to develop about one fifteenth of the capacity of a Mitsubishi.

We’ve enjoyed the experience of a plug in car – there’s much more useful grocery getting range in the moderate sized battery you get with a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV), but a hybrid is sort of the worst of both worlds now.

However after some 8 years pouring petrol on the problem, my better half still wants some reassurance. As an early adopter, we’ve recently made Mitsubishi install a new battery in the 10 year old Outlander. It’s been an excellent car but at 50% state of health the original battery was getting a bit doughy.¹

While they were working on it we had a standard loan car which proved one thing – repeatedly tipping $90 of petrol into it wasn’t well received.

So what better way to demonstrate the availability of charging infrastructure than to force the whole family to do a driveby and get a photo.

Barmera has a useful setup, trailer accessible with CCS and CHAdeMO for the Japanese EV tragic. However, despite the cameras, it’s concealed at the back of the pub, and this might be a dauntingly dark spot.

Charging Should Be Child’s Play

If you’re travelling with kids, wearing them out is a great way to make the car journey quieter – a charger near a playground is a winning combination for road trip breaks.

My Mum has a fond lament about interstate trips with kids, having to stop at every playground that had a spiral slippery dip, but it seems they’re out of fashion these days. Sadly playgrounds have been thoroughly sterilised since I was a back seat passenger with an eagle eye for concentric slides.

And we’re not going to mention Monash, other than to say what’s there is a piss poor imitation, a travesty against adventure and a heartbreak for anyone who remembers the real one.

Flying fox and a spiral slide, what more could you want?

Chargers Must Have Toilets

For years now the authorities have been trying to get the message through about  REST, REVIVE, SURVIVE.

I’ve driven this at 55km/h in a hundred year old car.

While I’m sure many of the diesel diehards insisting on nothing less than 1000km range will reject the road safety people making motherhood statements, fact is we should be stopping every couple of hours. In fact I’ve done a Bathurst trip with a Falcon ute, the V8 was great for overtaking, the thimble sized fuel tank made us stop regularly.

So wherever there is a charger there must be some amenities, but we don’t have to build everything from scratch.

It’s hard to get the whole Hay Plain into a picture, but at least some of this pretty featureless flat landscape has places to pull up and power lines to tap.

Bypassed Towns Can Draw Weary Travellers

Between Hay & Wagga there’s a well worn truck stop at Waddi, but venture just 2km off the highway there’s a lovely little town called Darlington Point that’s dying for an EV charger or six.

If the proprietors of the well reviewed Punt Hotel had half an inkling, they could pull purses off the main drag for a meal, as could the community sports club.

Transport infrastructure was a little simpler when watering the horses was top priority for the Punt Hotel

Wineries have installed cheap & slow Tesla destination chargers to attract clientele for a decade now. It’s about time small businesses qualified for some concessional loans to expand EV access to “the bush” while community clubs could turn a dollar or two selling electricity from their rooftop solar.

Balranald got it right, except like most, you can’t readily access this unit with your trailer in tow.

Gundagai’s Gunna Leave Us Agog

At Coolac there’s a bank of Tesla mega super duper chargers, very fast, very convenient to the Hume Highway, but plastic porta potties aren’t pleasant. While there’s work being done on an adjacent pub, over the road there’s a brand new petrol station.

What simply astounds me is the town of Gundagai already has the perfect location, 375km from Sydney, on the road to Melbourne; with zero chargers.

Imagine a broad but quiet main street, tourist information bureau, public toilet, grassed park, established trees and brilliant playground.

Plus there’s an RSL club serving meals across the road, right next to a motel. Oh and a major supermarket carpark sandwiched between them.

The precinct surrounds the local council office carpark, you simply couldn’t ask for a better spot to stop.

Gundagai has a lot going for it, not least of all angle parking and other amenities

Searching yields a 22kW slow charger at the caravan park, but it’s been broken for years. Someone cares enough to laminate a label, yet “Sorry for the inconvenience” is so weathered, it would be more honest as an erect middle finger.

With these opportunities going begging, you begin to wonder, what is wrong with these people?

Civilised Services

Does anyone remember “Full Driveway Service” at the petrol station? My brother had a job pumping fuel as a youth, so I guess it was close to 40 years ago. It’s still law in the US state of New Jersey.

As petrol recedes, scenes like this at The Dog on the Tuckerbox will become common. We should use the opportunity to repurpose them with EV charging, antique stores, record shops & caffine dispensary.

These days, attendants would pour coffee instead of engine oil, but simply having a person at a well lit petrol station with a charger would make things better for EV owners.

It makes my blood boil when brain dead vandals ruin the one charger you really need, because it’s unsupervised. The last thing you want late on a cold, damp winter’s night is a phone pressed between your ear and shoulder, both hands on a charging lead, speaking to tech support to remotely start your charger session. Been there, done that, made it work thankfully.

Given a battery upgrade our old iMiev would be an interstate contender, but this particular evening was a battle with smashed EV charger screens.

Anxiety Isn’t Just About Range

We’ve already seen some EV households move back to fossils. Not because the vehicles are inferior or the owners don’t love them. Rather it’s simply because when plugged in, your car is immobilised and the locations of some EV charging infrastructure makes women in particular feel uneasy.

Tesla have installed charging but this pub/motel is sadly derelict, so EV owners must hoof it over the road to the brand new petrol station.

Parking down the back in the dark is enough to give people the creeps, and some accessory makers have recognised this fear. For US cars they sell break away adaptors, where you can drive off without unplugging in an emergency.

Coolac petrol station doesn’t include EV facilities

Rolling Out Better Travel

Good friends of mine recently drove Adelaide to Melbourne for a concert. They opted for a basic 15yo petrol wagon over the 2025 Hyundai EV they also owned, because even though route planning is easy and range is plenty for a two stop trip, they didn’t have the confidence to just go for it.

While EV charging is vastly improved over the last few years, with fast chargers installed roughly every couple hundred kilometres along major interstate routes, getting from possible to preferable still needs work.

There should be more pull through charging for trailers. West Wyalong has an adjacent public library, but imagine if your EV charging account would open the doors after hours.

Still when I spoke to the operator at the Euston Servo it soon became apparent that for those running LPG powered cars, range anxiety is going to be a thing soon, if it’s not already. Selling $100 of gas per week made no sense when the bowser repairs were $2000 & pressure testing the storage tank is next.

I’m looking forward to a time when road trips aren’t just about flogging across the country in one day flat. Having nice places to pull up and the expectation to use them will make travel much less dreary.

For all the focus on public EV charging infrastructure, most charging is done at home – to get up to speed read our guide to home EV chargers.