Can Electric Vehicles Revive the Great Aussie Road Trip? Part 2
For the beginning of the great Aussie road trip in EVs, you need to read part 1.
In Sydney, we stayed with old school friends and demonstrated how we could charge in their garage over the weekend. He is a big fan of Lexus, but they can only offer an EV with 200 km of range, so he intends to wait a little longer till he can get a longer range Lexus to drive.
The town of Berry, our next stop, hosts a slew of Tesla Superchargers at the Silo Winery. There were several cars charging, and over a delightful wine tasting, we shared experiences of EV trippin’. We were starting to notice a pattern. New South Wales is smaller geographically than Queensland but has almost twice the population. We were now sharing charging stations with other cars — a new experience, as on our Queensland trips, we usually have the charging stations to ourselves. Our next stop at Narooma illustrated this point — 80% of the Superchargers were in use with Model 3s, an X, and a Y.
At Eden, we stayed overnight at a caravan park and filled the car to 100% by trickle charge. Eden to our accommodation at Bairnsdale was only 276 km (171 miles). Driving at highway speeds, though, we would need a top-up to get there. There were destination chargers on the way, but our enquiries had shown that they were out of action. There were chargers at Gypsy Point and Marlo, but they were listed as nonoperative.
We decided to try our luck at Orbost — 75 km (47 miles) from our desired destination. The car indicated that we would make it to Bairnsdale, but with only 15 km (9 miles) of range left (6%), so we needed an extra charge to make it to our hotel. We approached the local caravan park and offered to pay for a powered site, but the owner said they had been warned that charging a Tesla would burn out their system. This was patently false, but there was no point arguing. She told us there was a new high-speed charger in the shopping centre car park. There was, but it was so new that it was not yet commissioned. On spec, I approached the owner of the local service station. Turns out his sister owns a Tesla in the USA. He was more than happy to help. Tess sat happily in the driveway plugged into an external power point while we played tourist for a couple of hours.
After a coffee and freshly baked yummies, we found a craft brewery and tried their sampler, walked along the banks of the Snowy River — celebrated in so many poems of our youth — and enjoyed the heady scent of roses in the sensory garden. After the stress of trying to find a place for a top-up, the visit turned into quite a pleasant experience.
With about 20 km of extra range in the tank (we did fill up at a servo, so we can call it a “tank” for a moment), we felt confident that we would reach The Riversleigh in Bairnsdale, Victoria, and their very welcome Tesla destination chargers.
To be continued …
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