1 Day, 1,000KM EV Road Trip From Melbourne To Coolac
Good morning. Not that you can really see me, but the time has just gone. 5:32 a.m. and you join me in my fully charged Kaniro, just having left my home in Warrenite South. And I’m starting the day early for an arguably fairly pointless drive up the Hume Highway, a sort of one-day road trip. What’s happening is actually my family has been in Sydney cuz they’ve been on a cruise there and they’re getting back today and they’re going to drive back home from Sydney and I was feeling a bit like I was missing out on the road trip. So I thought I will see if I start driving up from home this morning how far to Sydney can I get before I sort of run into them. So, they are planning based on when their ship they get off the ship and everything, they’re planning to leave Sydney at about 9:00 a.m. So, I’m leaving here at 5:30 to try and get a bit of a head start and we’ll see where we meet. So, basically today, I’m just going to this morning anyway, I’m basically just going to try and perfectly optimize every charging stop as good as I can. If you don’t know much about road tripping electric vehicles, all the batteries, different batteries in different cars work slightly differently, but my car will charge at its fastest rate from about 0% to about 55%. So, it’s at 100% charge now because I have a home charger, which I’m very glad to have a home charger. It means I’ve fully charged it overnight without waiting for it at all, and it’s way cheaper. But this is probably the only time in the day the car will be charged up this high. I won’t be charging it up to 100% at fast charges when I stop to charge along the way. I’ll be trying not to go any higher than about 55%. Sometimes I might need to go slightly over if I need to get to the next good charger, but I’ll try to only charge to 55% each time. And I’ll do my best to only use good chargers that are able to deliver the full power that my car can accept because some chargers only do 50 kW. My car can charge it up to 75. 50 kW isn’t as big of a deal. It’s not not too slow, but I’d still rather avoid that and use a full speed charger. So, that’s sort of what I’m doing. And here’s the garbage truck. The things you see when you get up this early. So, the first stretch to the first charger is going to be definitely the longest stretch. I’m aiming to get to a charger in Wonga, which is on the uh Victoria, New South Wales border, which is another 305 km from where I am right now. According to Google Maps, the car is estimating 489 km of range right now because it’s fully charged or I assume 98 99% by now. But it’s been used to me doing local driving and once I’m on the highway, electric cars actually become less efficient on the highway than they are doing local driving. I have about an hour of driving around sort of like this to get to the highway. Based on where I live, this is the fastest way to get to the Hume Highway. So, I have a bit of slightly more efficient driving up my sleeve, but the range is going to drop faster than the remaining distance to go. So, that makes it a little bit difficult to know if I’m going to make it there. I’ve been to Aubry before without charging. That was a fairly big stretch. Wonga’s slightly closer, so I’m fairly confident I can make it. But I do have Glen Rowan North. There’s a charger right on the highway. Good speed and everything as a backup. If I’m at Glen Rowan and it’s looking like I’m not going to make it, I’ll pull off there and plug in for a bit. But I’d like to make it all the way to Adonga to fully make use of that first full charge because I won’t have another full charge again. And then it’ll be shorter legs from there because I’ll only be charging to 55%. And my kind of goal is to get to the new Tesla Supercharger station at the Beehive Hotel Motel just north of Gundy. I think it is. That seems like a fairly reasonable goal to be able to get there and it’s a new station. It should make road trips to Sydney and Cber and places easier in an EV now that that’s there. So, I’d like to try that out. So, as kind of a bit of a goal, I’d like to get there and try charging there. And I think that’s pretty realistic. I could possibly go slightly further, but we’ll see how it pans out as the day progresses. For now, I have another hour, 3 hours, and 14 minutes of driving to settle into. Oh, and this is the first sort of trip I’m doing, having my dash cam installed. So, VOPO have sent me a three camera dash cam to test out. So, it’s more meant for any driving. It doesn’t have to be a road trip, but since I got it installed, it’s sort of a good opportunity to test that out and see how that goes. Really, the main purpose of it is if you get in a crash or if someone even tries to insurance fraud you or something, you’ve got proof of what happens, which is great piece of mind for that. But it I guess I can also use it to get some clips of things that happen, although it’s not as much meant for that, but we’ll see how that goes, too. You might see some dash cam clips, but for now, I should really turn this camera off and see you later. There is an animal on the road. So 2 hours and 194 km in. I actually still haven’t yet gotten on the Hume Highway. It took me through Yay for some reason, which is a perfectly fine way to go, but not the way I’d normally get onto the Hume Highway. But I was just thinking actually when I left home this morning, I drove to Yay fairly often. And as I left home, I was talking to the camera and everything, not paying much attention. Maybe I subconsciously started driving to Yay and then Google just rerouted and went with that. Or maybe it was telling me to go that way. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. Expected arrival time in Wonga is about the same as it was when I left. And I’ve really been sitting on about 100 km an hour for most of the drive. And I’ve gotten fairly decent efficiency, 16.7 kW hours per 100 km. So I was slightly concerned about having enough range to make it to a donga, but I think I will make it perfectly fine. I’m turning on to the Hume Highway in 1.7 km. So then I’ll go up to 110 and it’ll be straighter, flatter roads. I won’t be behind any cars or anything. So the efficiency will get worse then. But it’s only another 112 km to the charter I’m going to in Bonga. And the car is on 51%. So I should make that quite comfortably. So, I think based on where I’ve entered the highway, I um Glen Rowan is quite close now, but I’m not at all concerned about range, so I’m not going to stop there. I’ll push on to Wonga. And so, it’s Aubry Wonga, which is Wonga’s on the Victoria side. Aubry is on the New South Wales side. In that area, there’s sort of three charging options. There’s Baroartha North, which is on the highway sort of just before Wonga. That one’s having issues. I’ve looked on the app. The 350 kW chargers are apparently only sometimes working or sometimes giving slow power. And then there’s also 50 kW chargers which are apparently working fine, but I don’t want to use a 50 kW charger. So, I’m going to the EV station in Wonga is the one I’m planning on going to. Go on the side of the road. And that one has a charger down as well, I believe, from looking at the app. But it has one charger still working and more power than my car can take. So, it’s all good. And it does have two plugs on it. And I was reading last night, even with a car plugged into each plug, it can still give at least 75 kW to each car. My car can only take 75 kW. So even if there is someone else charging there, I can still get full speeds in theory there, even with one of the chargers down. So that’s my plan. The other option would be the Tesla Supercharger in Aubry, slightly further cuz you have to cross into New South Wales, but I think I would quite comfortably make that as well. But there’s sort of no toilet there and I imagine I’ll need one by the time I get there. It’s at the commercial club in Aubry, which if you want to go in and have a meal, if the timing worked out for that, it’s probably a great location for that. But if you don’t, you’re kind of just sitting in this car park with really no amenities around. And the EV1 ina actually doesn’t have great amenities. There’s like a drive-thru coffee place and I think a a closed down burger place and no toilet. But I looked up there’s one a fairly easy walk away. So not great charging options in all donga to be honest. But as far as using the most range I can and charging well that’s going to be the best stop. Then once I’m charging there I have a bit of a choice to make. I could make it from there to the Beehive Hotel Motel Tesla Supercharger, the new one I want to try, but I would have to charge to I think about 70%. And my car would get slower speeds charging up that high. So, it’s not ideal, but I could quite comfortably do it. The only other option to avoid that would be to charge to 55ish or something and go to Takata. Takata has two 350 kW chargers, but I’m not a massive fan of Tarata. It’s fine, but they’ve they have issues. The chargers, especially recently, I’ve been reading reports on Plug Share. Some people have had issues, one of the chargers not working, both of the chargers not working. Someone even had their car like completely broken by plugging into one of the charges. So, they’re not doing great. And it’s a fairly major stop on a fairly major highway. there and there’s only two charges. I think every time I’ve been there, there’s always been one other car there. So, basically always been two cars charging. Fortunately, my car has always been one of those cars, but there could be two cars and then I can roll up and then I’d be waiting. So, it’s not ideal, but I think it’s probably worth the risk to go to Takata to avoid having to charge up too high in Wonga. But, we’ll see how we go. There it is. Rolling south. But 184 of range, 79 for longer. Don’t need it all. The speed limit is dropping to 80. And according to Google Maps, I am 3.3 km 3.2 now kilometers from where I should turn off the highway for the charger. I think it’s sort of like right at the highway exit for the charger. I’ve used this station once, so it’s reasonably easy to access location. It’s just not the best amenities when you’re there, but hopefully it’s fine. So, yeah, done 304 km so far. The car still says 64 km of estimated range remaining. That might still be a bit higher than is actually true. It might still be dropping a bit, but we do have 18% left. So, we’re coming in quite comfortably. It’s only 3.3 km to the charger. 3 minutes. Here’s a sign. Dona exit 2 km. Yes, that’s where I’m going. And it is only 8:40 with an 8:42 predicted arrival time. So, I think I’ve done pretty well to get from Melbourne to Madonga I840. Of course, I just got up earlier. There wasn’t there’s a set drive time basically. Exactly. depends on when you leave. But now getting off the highway here, I think everything’s gone as well as it could have this morning. The average efficiency for the entire drive so far has been 17.2 kW hours per 100 km. So the highway driving is probably going to actually be a bit higher than that because it will be the all the driving I did before getting on the highway is bringing that average down. So, it will probably still go up a little bit more throughout the day, but that’s pretty good efficiency for highway driving really. So, I’m quite happy with that. And the charger is just on the left in here somewhere. Oh, the 7-Eleven. Yes. Yes. So, there is a 7-Eleven here. It said on plug chair there’s no toilet, but if the 7-Eleven has a toilet, last time I was here, I don’t think the 7-Eleven was open yet. So, it’s improved. since then. That was that was over a year ago now. Okay. So, there is a car here. It looks like both charges are working though. So, I’m going to go in this one. Yeah, it says it’s working. The app said one was down, but I’ll plug it in. Give it a go. seems to be working just fine. Good old EV auto charge. Just plugged it in and said activation successful. It still thinks the car’s on 0% though and it hasn’t started yet. And there we go. Started charging. So, plugged in on 17%. So, the battery could be a little bit cold because even though I’ve been driving for a while, it’s sitting on 50 kW. The charger says it can do 75 very much. So, so I think I think it’s just because the battery is a bit cold. So, it should speed up as it warms up. I hope I don’t want to be charging here at 50 kW. Yeah, I’m going to hope that’s what it is. But it is going to hurt the charging session a little bit if we’re only doing 50 kW. There is actually a 7-Eleven right there now. So, I can probably just go in there. There’s also drive-through coffee there that was there last time I was here. And there’s Carl’s Junior’s Burgers, but it looks pretty closed right now. And I have a feeling like they completely closed down. They I don’t think they operate here anymore, but it’s still here. But I don’t know. Car’s getting 51 kW now. So Oh, just dropped back to 50. 51. Yes. I think it might just be warming up a little bit because it seems a bit counterintuitive. I’ve been driving for what 3 hours 15 minutes, done 307 km. You’d think the battery would be completely warmed up, but it’s actually driving is so so little power draw on it compared to what charging does. So, this first charging session will heat up the battery and set it up for reasonably good drive onwards. Most cars will have a battery preconditioning. So, because I got here with some spare power in the battery, it would have actually used that power to preheat the battery so it could get good speeds right away. My car doesn’t do that. I think if it was frozen, it would like defrost itself a little bit, but that’s about it. But anyway, I’ll let it heat up and charge up here and probably go to Takata, but I’ll I’ll look at plug share again and I’ll assess whether or not I do. So, I’ve been here for I don’t know, like a minute or two. I turned the camera off a minute or two ago or something, but it’s up to 21% now, and we’ve hit 72 kW, which is about about the top of what the car usually charges at. I’ve seen it hit 80 once. That’s rare. It can go to 75ish sometimes on some charges, but 72 is pretty good. So, it has heated up pretty quickly, assuming that’s what it is. Maybe it just took a moment to get going properly, but I think it’s probably it’s heated up a little bit and I can actually hear cooling running now. So, it must have been sort of just too cold and now it’s now it’s sort of quite warm and it’s going to run cooling. But that’s perfectly fine. 22% already. I should now go into the 7-Eleven. Yep, they’re very much closed. And the 7-Eleven here does not have a toilet. So, there is actually no toilet here at any time really. So, I think I’m going to go for a walk cuz it’s another hour and a half drive to Takata, if I even do Takata. But that’s the station anyway. Two charges, four plugs. It can do four cars at actually decent speeds. And the other Kia driver is gone now and it’s all fully functional. So I started walking about 800ish meters down that way to where I think there’s meant to be a public toilet. So it’s 800 m there, 800 m back. And I was looking on the EV app monitoring the charge session. And I’m like the it’s going to take me too long to walk down there. The car’s going to be tapered and more full fully charged by then. Well, not full, but at the point where it slows down speed. And yeah, by the time I’ve gotten back to the car, it’s on 51% and it’s just dropped down to 56 kW. As I opened the door, it was still on full speed. So, it’s only just dropped the speed now. But, I think it’s really time to move on. So, I think I’m going to have to do Tarta next. We’re at Wonga now. Takata’s here. I would like to get to this one. Beehive Motel. Hotel. Motel. But oh oh maybe that’s 203 km away. The car says I have 253 km of range but the range estimate as I said is probably not accurate flying here. Get out. Get out. The range estimates probably not accurate with 54% doing 255 km uh is probably not that likely. But I think maybe I’ll head off with the Beehive one beehive hotel motel charger in the navigation and then when I get to Takata Takata’s very well signed and everything’s just turn off the highway. When I see that sign, I’ll assess it there and see if I think I have enough to keep going or not. But yeah, 56 kW. Don’t really want to be waiting here. Might just pull up Takata on Plug Share. Says currently both charges are available and working. There was someone yesterday who said they couldn’t charge, but then the previous few days have been fairly positive. So, I think yeah, if I have to charge at Takata, I will, but I’ll just unplug now and see how I go. Don’t really want to be getting 56 kW trying to be optimized. Oh, one more thing. When I checked the charging progress in the EV app, it said, “You’re charging. Sorry for the inconvenience.” Because it had been saying, “Sorry for the inconvenience. This charger is down.” So, I think the app still thinks it’s down, but then it’s like, “Actually, you’re charging on the charger.” But anyway, I should report that on Plug Share, actually. But I am going to unplug and head off now. So 56% getting 56 kW 21 more minutes to 80. An hour and 12 to 100. But we’re not going to do either of those. I will go and unplug. And I think this is the Murray River. So I think we’re crossing New South Wales. It’s slamming on the brakes for some reason. See, here we are. New South Wales at 9:15. Tar cutter is this exit. But I kind of want to push it. It’s 81 km of estimated range remaining. 67 km to the Beehive Hotel motel charger. So, it’s possible it’s going to be very tight. Unfortunately, I’ve had to turn the air con on because it’s 25 outside and mostly sunny. So, the like the dashboard’s just giving off a lot of heat, but I’m sitting behind this car now slightly under 110. I think I could do it. It seems silly to skip Tata maybe though cuz it could be make it easier. Yeah, maybe I will just give up and go to Takata. Like it’s right off the highway. I can always if if it’s occupied or isn’t working, I can always just move on and try to make it there then. But when I’ve got the option right here, yeah, going to pull off. Okay, which means I could have had cooler air on the whole time. But anyway, Oh, that’s nice. But yeah, I’ll just plug in here for a bit. It makes more sense rather than having to slow down a bit and be uncomfortable with the temperatures and be stressing the whole time when there’s a charger literally right here. I can just uh it is in use. Yeah. You know what? We’re going to going to go for it then. Air con back to warm. 64ks to go. 78ks of range. Yeah. So, in case case that wasn’t clear, there were two cars at it. So, it was completely in use. One of them might have been about to finish. I probably could have driven in and checked, but seeing as I can make it to the Tesla, I’ll do that. This is why I didn’t want to come to Takata cuz um yeah with only two charges on like a major highway on a major sort of rest stop and T cutter is sort of the only good speed charger through this area up until this new Tesla one was installed fairly recently. So get it gets well used but they’re kind of getting more than two charges there now. I I am quite sweaty right now. It’s reminiscent of some of my drives through Northern Australia. Um, but oh, apparently I’m actually turning off the highway in 2.7 km, but the charge is another 7.5 away. I have 19 km of estimated range remaining. I’m actually doing only slightly under 100 ks an hour right behind a truck. 5% state of charge remaining and aircon off. So, it’s quite tight, but I think I will actually comfortably make it in terms of not grinding out. I just am not comfortable. So, I’m looking forward to trying out these new chargers. I’m sure it’ll work just fine, but looking forward to seeing the station and everything. And we just hit turtle mode turning off in 1 kilometer and the range estimate has disappeared now. But I remember there was an okayish buffer. So it’s scary when there’s no range estimate but it’s not actually over the world. I still have 5%. Oh, and if you look at the battery screen on the screen, it says 17 km estimated range. Just on the dashboard, there’s no range estimate. It’s only five to the charger and we’re getting off right here. which will be good cuz then we can slow down even more. And looks like we’re driving into a town which it’ll be more efficient doing town driving. So that’s kind of a good thing. There’s a cattle grid here. Where am I going? But that’s the Hume over there. And we’re over here now. 2.8 km to go. It’s 26° outside. Probably more than that in here. Quite hot. 4% state of charge remaining though. To do 2.5 km should be quite doable. Koulac is the town. Got a cemetery, a store that doesn’t look particularly open. Maybe it’s open. Yeah, I think it’s open. Just the long dead grass near it through me. Memorial Hall. Aha. This is it. Yeah, it looks like there are two cars here already, but there’s a good number of charges here, so that won’t be an issue. A BYD, a Polestar, and a Kia. So, no actual Teslas, but these are good. They’re version four superchargers with the long cables so you can quite comfortably reach them with to the charge port of any car and doesn’t matter which one you use and everything. They’re really quite good. Arrived with 3%. I’d better quickly activate 2B start charging. I didn’t sign up for the membership, so it’s more expensive than it normally would be, but I don’t think I’d get my $9 worth out of savings for this one charge. There we go. Plugged in at 3%. Ramping up slowly. I will turn on the air conditioner. Turn that down to 20°. Ah, lovely. It’s 27 outside now. So, that’s going to be very nice. But, we’ve got up to 67 kW. A little bit low. It might be because the voltage of the battery is a bit low. Well, it might be a little warm, but I think it’s it’s not not that warm outside that it should be tapering from heat. I’ve charged it in way hotter conditions than this before. 69. There we go. So, it’s coming up a little bit. That’s very good. 4%. So, I’ve actually been here for a fairly long 38 minutes and I’m actually not even planning to leave yet. I’ve spoken to my family. They left Golden about half an hour ago and they’re planning to have lunch in Gandai. So, I’m going to I’m just going to charge here quite a lot and then backtrack to Gundu. I could try and push further, but it doesn’t really make any sense to push further. So, in maybe 45 minutes, they’re going to be driving past here. I figure I might as well stay here for the next 45 minutes. The cars on 64% speeds ramp down to 58 kW from its maximum of 75ish. and it would take another hour and 7 minutes to charge to 100%. Or 14 minutes to charge to 80. So, I figure I’ll just stay here, let it charge up as much as it can while I’m here and get as much battery as I can to get a head start heading back down the other way to try and keep up. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s any decent charger in Gundy, so I can’t really charge there, but I have a fairly full charge from here. So, I’ll just hang around here rather than waiting around in Gundy where there’s no charging and then we’ll get to Gundy about the same time. And yeah, apart from that, it’s all going pretty good here. I kind of wish I had paid for the Tesla membership because it’s up to $31 so far for this charging session. Pretty expensive without the membership and with how much it’s $9 something for the membership. with how much I’m going to end up charging from this charger. I probably would have made my $9 back in just this one charging session. So, I should have done it. But anyway, I didn’t know how much I was going to charge here. But it’s a really good station. The toilets are portaloos. It says they’re temporary while the hotel is under renovation. That kind of concerns me with this. It seems like it might be a similar similar to the Aubry situation where if you charge here in the future when the hotel’s back open, it’ll be great when if you want to go in the hotel, but if it’s 11 in the morning and you don’t want a meal or a drink or anything, there’s kind of no toilets or no anywhere to buy anything else or anything. Maybe the hotel’s very happy for you to just come in and use the toilets. Maybe they have some sort of a deal with Tesla or something. But yeah, that’s my only concern. Apart from that, it’s a lovely big station. Works great. Quite a few cars have come in and out. I’ve been here a while. There was the um BYD Seal and Pstar that were here when I was when I arrived. They’ve both gone. Two other Teslas have come and gone at different times. So, it’s fairly well used, but there is no one else around now. So, I’ve now been here for an hour and 10 minutes. So, I was on a great run this morning. covered a lot of distance in pretty little time. I did really well. This has kind of destroyed that now, but I would have been sitting around waiting, not charging if I unplugged. So, it’s actually kind of better than I was doing this morning. It’s actually gaining power when I couldn’t or wouldn’t have been driving anyway, which is ideal. But, I have spent an hour and 11 minutes at this charging stop. The car’s all the way up to 91%. I’ve put 60 kwatt hours from the charger into the car, so it definitely would have been worth me signing up for the subscription. But anyway, that’s cost me $4428 without the subscription, but no issues at all. It’s charged great and there’s there’s been a lot of cars using it. Certainly more than would be able to charge at Takata. So, I think it’s been a really good What is this Corolla doing? I think they’re confused by the concept. Anyway, um it’s been a really good addition to the charging network on the Hume, I think. But anyway, it’s now about time for me to head, I think it’s 30 minutes down to Gandai to have lunch with my family there and then I’ll be driving back home. And if you’re interested, I have done 510 km. It’s going to be hard. 510 kilometers, averaging 16.7 kwatt hours per 100 kilometers, and I spent 5 hours 13 minutes driving. And up until I got here, I’d only done one charging stop. Spent $22 on charging there, spent 25 minutes, and managed to get 510 km, which is not too bad. Just stopped in at Doug on the tucker box cuz why not? Think I’ve still got a few minutes to spare. Yeah, there used to be a charger here, which would be a good spot, I reckon, for like a good charging station, but oh well. Uh-huh. Ah. Heat up. Aha. Yeah. feel. Ah. Thanks to that very long deep charge at the Tesla charger in Quebec, we’ve made it all the way back to Glen Rowan service center at the BP. Fairly standard charger on the Hume. So, back in Victoria now. It’s been quite a long drive back here, but we still have 29 km of range remaining and 9% state of charge. So, got back quite comfortably. And it’s down to 25° now. It’s been around 30 for a lot of the drive. So, the air conditioner’s been working a fair bit, but we had really the perfect amount of charge. And depends how long we stay here. We might get enough here to go home, or we might do a brief top up somewhere else. Uh, there are two vehicles charging. Do we want to take off? Looks like that one is just plugging in. So go one. Yeah, the Mercedes here is on 67 cent. So hopefully they’ll leave soon. So, it looks like we’re actually stealing power from the Mercedes. They’ve been forced down to 49 kW. They were doing like 90 something. So, it’s going to do like a four split 50 each, which I’m not too thrilled about being stuck on 50. And actually, it’s put me on 35. I really don’t like it when they do this. They put put two plugs on one charger. I mean, I guess if they just did one plug per charger, I couldn’t plug in at all right now, but it’s not really adding more capacity. It just makes it kind of pointless. I could go around to the other side, but we’ll we’ll see what we end up doing. Oh, looks like they might be going to leave the other Mercedes. No, maybe not. That’s very annoying. We won’t get any sort of good charging from that. Still stuck on 33 kW at 10%. Hopefully that other Mercedes leaves soon and we get okay power. So this is where we’re at. Plug share. We’re on the southbound one here. That says one of four available. That’s accurate. There’s three cars here, but really it’s it’s five of of two available in my opinion. But anyway, then over at Glenroan North, it says one of three available. So, I don’t think going to that side would be any better. Hopefully, the Mercedes we’re next to leaves soon. Up to 73. What’s the nearest we could get to Ample Avenue? That looks like it’s only 104ks away. We’re going to go in and have an ice cream here. So, we’re going to be here for some time anyway. We’ve got 50k of range now. That’s 111 km drive. So, we need about double plus some buffer for that cuz we’ve got 52 of range now. So, basically protected. Basically, we need the full thing really because the what we’ve got now is really just buffer. Or we could go where is yay down here. I think that’s going to be a similar distance 149. So, that’s actually worse. So, we need at least 100ks of range to get anywhere. So, we’re really hoping that Mercedes leaves. After a fair while eating ice cream and everything, I’ve just moved the car. I clearly made the wrong call. I figured the car that was on 67% would be likely to unplug before the car that was only just plugging in. But I was wrong. The car that was only just plugging in is gone already. And the car that was on 67% is only just now leaving. They charged to 100% giving me terrible speeds. So yeah, I’m still only on 40%. Um, I’d like to make it to yay really, which is about 150 km away. I’ve got 153 km of range now. So really just need to add a buffer. Now actually got good speeds now cuz I’ve finally moved. I really should have plugged into the other one earlier. So would have gone pretty well. We could if if BP Pulse had been able to charge three cars at good speeds at the same time. we’d be on our way by now and have very decent range. And if that other car had left or if I had picked the right time, we could probably be leaving by now as well. But anyway, charge up a bit more here after being here for a while already. And then one more charging. Yay. Then on to home. And not long after, we’ve hit 52%. It’s been charging very well now that we’re on this charger with no one else at it, but I know the speed’s going to taper about 55. We’ve got 200 km of range, so we can comfortably make it to Yay. And I think we’ll head off and do that. We’re now 4 minutes from Yay. 3 km. We still got 44 km of range left and 13%. It’s about 100 km from here to home. So, we don’t need much just to top up in gain. Hopefully, the Tesla charger is not too busy because it is a version two charger. So, the two chargers each are sharing power each with each other. But hopefully there shouldn’t be many people there. It’s not a very common used station. There is an electric car parked in the wrong side charging from it. But that might have been where their port worked out better for because the version twos and threes have cables that are too short. So we have to park something like that reach sufficiently thanks to the terrible parking job. And there’s a Leap Motor C10 there on 13% ramping up now. We really won’t be here for very long at all. Got 51 km of range. So, it’s basically we want to add 70ish to make it home. 71 kW full speed. All good. Definitely should have paid for the Tesla membership though. But anyway, we’re now up to 37% with 150 km of range. Um, and that’s more than enough. Oh, only 82 home. We could have left sooner. We walked to the toilets and back and that was more than enough. Been here 16 minutes. The toilets are actually fairly far away from here, but anyway. Hey, heat. Hey. So, we ended up getting home. We are home now. Got home at drawing a blank on the time. It’s been a long day. It was about 7:50. Got home. Total kilometers for the day was 1,25.1. So, not too bad of an effort considering I spent a fair bit of time not actually driving and or charging at a reasonable rate or anything. Just sort of hanging around. and average efficiency of 17.5 kwatt hours per 100 km which is fairly good. Like I would consider for highway driving like 18 kwatt hours per 100 to be about standard at 110 but I guess I wasn’t doing 110 highway the whole way from basically bananala to home. I was doing 100 and a bit lessish on more sort of country roads rather than full highway. So that probably explains it a bit. It’s down to 15° now, so it’s cooled right down, but it was actually fairly warm for a fair bit of the day. So, air conditioning used a bit as well. And the car was turned on for 10 hours and 44 minutes, not including when it was plugged into a charger. Got home with 64 km of range. So, I really think we overcharged in Yay. But, as I said, we weren’t really waiting. We just walked over to the toilet, granted it was a bit of a walk, and walked back again. And then we were ready to go. and 17% state of charge. So, got here very comfortably. I probably would have charged a bit less if possible in yay because it’s more expensive power and we could have gone home slightly sooner, but that’s not a big deal. And I really only charge the car during the day for solar power. But I will plug it in now and use a bit of grid power to top it up from 17 to like 20%. It’s just a bit better for the battery to sit overnight. But yeah, that’s the one day pointless trip all done. I think it was overall pretty good. I think the as good as the infrastructure is getting, I think the Hume Highway needs more infrastructure based on how many EVs are driving up and down there now. Like there was not a single charging station where I wasn’t charging with other cars and there were some where there were plenty of spots like the the Tesla ones have a great number of spots and that’s great but Takata I couldn’t even use cuz both were in use and then BP Glen Rowan there were two chargers on either side of the highway and all of those had like multiple cars charging on them so that was really busy. be there as well. So, I think more infrastructure would make problems like that a lot less. But thanks for watching if you have been. That’s it for this trip, but stay tuned. There’ll be longer and more interesting trips coming in hopefully the pretty near future.
Join me in my fully electric Kia Niro for a pointless 1 day road trip up the Hume Highway, travelling about 1,000km from Melbourne to Coolac and back. To try out the new V4 Tesla Supercharger station, and do some sightseeing along the way.
