Aussie exposes problem with electric cars after trip from Canberra to Sydney takes an entire day
An electric vehicle owner has documented his trip to Sydney from Canberra in a $71,900 car, only it didn’t go as smooth as expected.
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An electric vehicle owner has documented his trip to Sydney from Canberra in a Hyundai IONIQ 5, revealing the trials and tribulations he faced driving the $71,900 car.
TikTok user Suthocam said it took a full day to drive between the two cities and back again while searching for sparsely-located charging stations.
He said the trip was a reality check for electric car owners who do not have a vehicle compatible with Tesla’s supercharging network.
“The car itself is a great road trip vehicle – it’s super spacious, great seats, great speakers and has a cool big sunroof,” Suthocam said in the video, which has earned more than 190,000 views in four days.
He said the IONIQ 5 has estimated range of 450km and was able to make the trip to Canberra in one charge, but he decided to top the battery up to allow him to drive the car around the city on arrival.
His first stop was a charging station in Goulburn, roughly 200km from Sydney — and the only available port was out-of-order.
The NRMA ChargeFox screen informed him his “station had faulted” and had not been fixed since the beginning of the year. Suthocam said he was forced to wait until an available port opened up.
“Once we got going again we made it … so worth it,” Suthocam said. “It was pretty in Canberra but we had to get back on the road so we had to go find some chargers.
“Finally we found a free charger (in an Ikea carpark) in what felt like a really long time but it was super slow,” Suthocam said.
“I didn’t want to wait four hours to get 100 per cent so I had to find a fast charger.”
He said his search for charging ports added roughly two-and-a-half hours to his round trip.
According to 2019 estimates, electric cars will make up between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of new car sales in Australia by 2030.
While the targets may appear to be unrealistic, they reflect the reality that Australia is behind the rest of the world when it comes to electric vehicles. In 2019, the NRMA warned the country was at risk of being a “first world country with a third world fleet”.
In more electric vehicle developments, US regulators this week expanded a probe into Tesla’s “Autopilot” system, moving the investigation closer to a potential recall of a controversial feature in Elon Musk’s electric vehicles.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating whether “Autopilot and associated Tesla systems may exacerbate human factors or behavioural safety risks by undermining the effectiveness of the driver’s supervision,” according to a summary statement.
NHTSA opened the probe in August 2021 after identifying 11 crashes involving a first responder vehicle and a Tesla in which Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control was engaged, and five additional cases were later found that fit into this group.
Additional forensic data on 11 of the incidents showed the drivers took no action to avert a crash between two and five seconds prior to impact, although they had their hands on the steering wheel.
The automaker has defended the safety of the Autopilot feature, and say when used correctly it reduces the chance of an accident.
But NHTSA said, “A driver’s use or misuse of vehicle components … does not necessarily preclude a system defect” particularly “if the driver behaviour in question is foreseeable in light of the system’s design.”
– with AFP
Originally published as Aussie exposes problem with electric cars after trip from Canberra to Sydney takes an entire day
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