Tackling Tasmania: Well first you’ve got to get there!
Before we start tackling Tasmania, we have to make our way down from Sydney and get across Bass Strait. To make things worse, it’s the very first day of the NSW school holidays and the second last day of the Victorian school holidays. Chances are, there’s going to be some traffic.
Given the media hype about the lack of EV charging stations, this leaves me with some anxiety. Is it justified? Let’s see.
We’re packed and ready the night before,, All we need to do is get up early, grab a brew and get on the road. We’re setup for our house sitter and the dogs are fed. It’s 4am and we’re off. We wanted to get ahead of the traffic, if there is any. Kids are asleep not long after leaving the driveway. Our first stop is planned for Suttons Forest. The McDonalds there has had plenty of business from me over the years, travelling to Canberra, the snow fields, or to visit family in Victoria. It’s about 2 hours away. At 52% it will be a little early for a charge stop, but I know there’s a fast charger in the McDonalds car park. The kids will be hungry by then, and let’s face it… I could go a Bacon and Egg McMuffin.
I only plan on charging to 80% maximum at each stop, but set the DC charge limit to 90%. I figure if we’re late getting back to the car then an extra few percent won’t harm our trip. ABRP often recommends lower levels to get you back on the road quicker, so as long as we’re above the recommendation, I can stop the charge whenever I want. If we’re enjoying our stop, I’m not going to rush back to the car if I can avoid it.
Stop #1: Disaster Strikes, or so we thought…
Our first charging stop, and this was NOT part of the plan. The Evie fast charger is refusing to cooperate. “Authentication Error”. I’ve used Evie chargers before, and neither the RFID card nor the app are allowing me to connect. Tackling Tasmania hasn’t got off to the greatest of starts.
Options: I’ve got enough in the battery to make it to Goulburn, or I can call tech support. Not the start I wanted.
I choose tech support and start the call. At about the same time it occurs to me to move to another bay. There are 4 bays and only one other car has arrived since we got here. There are 2 other empty bays. He seems to be charging OK. I’m on the phone, listening to the brief intro message while unplugging and about to move the car when a quite friendly voice gets on the phone. That was quicker than expected. After a couple of minutes, he’s got my car charging by remotely starting the session. He’s also reporting a fault on the charger. The family is coming back with the food and I’m only 4 minutes into what was supposed to be a 15 minute charge.
I’m enjoying my McMuffin and coffee when I realise I’ve gone over the 80% I needed to make my next stop at Yass. I’m at 83%, put down my food and stop the charge. We’re back on the road. Re-trying the charger multiple times and calling tech support cost me about 10 minutes, when I probably should have just moved immediately. At least there was a fault reported though and the charger will get fixed.
I never did get a bill for the charge at Sutton Forest. Maybe Evie gave me a freebie for the inconvenience. I’m not going to complain.
Stop #2 – Yass Tesla Supercharger
We’re hoping for a better stop this time and Yass delivered. It’s a bit off the highway into the centre of Yass, and we leave the main highway for Yass Valley Way. It’s just after 8am and we notice there’s an Ampol around the corner, and a cafe across the main street as we pull into the charger. So we’ve got food, and toilet options. There’s no other cars here and 12 bays to choose from. One other car arrives while we’re charging, a Volvo.
We grab some snacks and the kids decide to buy Uno cards at the Ampol. We use the toilets and 18 minutes later we’ve gone from 49% to 81%. I’ve gone over the 80% needed again. We’re back on the main highway only a few minutes later having gone through the main street of Yass.
It would be great if there were chargers at the big services on the highway. I guess that will come in time.
Stop #3 – Tarcutta Evie at Ampol
Two bays, both empty. We’re yet to experience a single other car at a charge point on arrival. A Hyundai Ioniq arrives mid-charge and is still there when we leave. The Ampol is well stocked and toilets are available. We’re right in the centre of Tarcutta, and there’s a cafe a short walk up the road, but we’re only here for 13 minutes. We go from 46% to 81% and we’re off again. If anything the charging was faster than us.
As we’re rejoining the highway we wave to another EV6 on it’s way in to Tarcutta, we assume the second bay is about to fill up again. While we had no delay, this charging station was getting a little busy with both bays temporarily full. It’s fast, but sometime soon might require expansion as the volume of EVs keeps increasing.
Stop #4 – Albury Tesla Supercharger
The centre of Albury is a little off-track these days, with the bypass in place. Not knowing any better, we opted for the Tesla Supercharger, which is located in a club carpark. While the bowling greens all seemed to be mid-game, the majority of the club seemed to be closed. It’s a 400m walk each way to the botanical gardens for the nearest public toilet.
This was the first time we’d encountered other vehicles on arrival at the charge stop. I say vehicles, not EVs because of the 16 bays, 2 were occupied but only one was an EV. It really didn’t bother us, but had it been busy, the Prado ICEing one of the bays might have caused some annoyance. Especially given there were hundreds of spare spaces in the car park.
The charger is relatively close to the centre of town, so the girls went off in search of a few items they needed. I went to the botanical gardens, which was quite a pleasant leg stretch. 20 minutes later we’d gathered back at the car and were on our way having topped up from 46% to 81%
Overall, not my favourite stop. A bit out of the way, and facilities were not great unless you’re willing to walk some distance. We found a little better stop on the way back, but you’ll need to wait for the final day to hear about that. Honestly, neither of a our stops in the Albury area were great… so if you have better options, please let us know. Albury is capable of much better.
Stop #5 – Ampol Avenal, Evie Charger
The Ampol is well maintained, and home to excellent old fashioned salad rolls. Really fresh brad and fresh ingredients. Toilets are clean and the staff are friendly. In 21 minutes we charged from 32% to 89%. This was one of those occasions where the car was charging far faster than we were moving. We were rushing back to the car to get it off the charger at 89%, our bellies full of lovely fresh salad rolls.
Other ‘useful’ things at Avenal – they have a huge selection of animal themed hats. My 12 year old daughter selected a dinosaur hat that doubled up to keep her head warm in Tasmania, and as a pillow while sleeping in the back of the car. At $17.95, I thought it was a bit high. It’s full value was realised in the ensuing week in Tasmania though. In hindsight, I might have paid double given how versatile it proved to be. She wore it everywhere.
Arrival – Torquay
ABRP recommended another stop at Airport West, but given our increased confidence and that we’d accidentally overcharged again at Avenal, we elected to push through to Torquay.
We arrived at Mum;s house with 32% left in the battery. A full 2% above my contingency for stops along the way. Frankly I was willing to arrive at my destination with less than this, but 32% really boosted our confidence in the car
There’s a 50kW charger in the main shopping area of Torquay with 2 bays. This is walking distance from mum’s house, so I dropped the car off for a charge and walked back an hour later after a home cooked dinner to find the car ready for tomorrow. Once again, no problem getting on the charger. There’s another faster 4 bay RACV charger at the golf course, which was a backup that I didn’t need.
Stats for the day:
Cost: $155.57
kWh used: 222.4 kWh
Distance driven: 982km
Efficiency: 22.6 kWh per 100 km (pretty poor, but we were loaded right up with 2 adults and 2 teenagers plus all our luggage, travelling at highway speed, and I don’t hold back when accelerating back onto a highway).
Cost per km: 15.8c per km. Comparable to Diesel @$2 per litre (based on my previous Kia Sportage which ran 7.6 litres per 100km).
Analysis
Could we have done it quicker and with less stops? Undoubtedly! Have I mentioned this is our first serious road trip? Our previous ‘EV road trip’ was an overnighter to Newcastle, which theoretically could have been done without a charger stop. We’re still very new to road trips in an EV. Confidence is definitely building though.
We had no issue getting on to chargers. In fact, every charger stop we made we pulled right in to empty bays. Even Albury, with 2 vehicles in charger bays, offered 14 options for us to pull in to. Tarcutta, I think we were a little lucky, but still had the choice of either bay. Remember we’re on the first day of school holidays. The early start might have put us ahead of some of the traffic, but we really didn’t expect such a clear run.
We know we can go further on each leg, but found the drive relaxing and calm. We had time to do what we needed at each stop, and found that it was usually us holding things up, rather than us waiting for the car to charge.
When it comes to cost compared to diesel or petrol. Diesel and electricity were almost the same cost over this leg. I’ve used my own experience of driving this same route in a Diesel Kia Sportage and used a reference price of $2 per litre. Petrol is generally more expensive per km compared to diesel, so I can infer a cost saving compared to petrol, but I don’t have personal data for a petrol car having had diesels for my last few cars.
Next Step: Tackling Tasmania begins with Day #2 on the Spirit of Tasmania
