Are we there yet? When it comes to EVs, we’re not even close

We have been committed electric vehicle owners since 2020. We’re all set up for trickle-charging off the grid, with solar panels and power wall, and we keep a watchful eye on the addictive monitoring app. Our progressive local council has popped a double-sided charge point in a street just around the corner. So it’s all good when it comes to driving in and around Sydney.

The location of EV charging stations, like this one in Crows Nest, can steer you in a different direction. Credit: Getty

As for further afield, well, there’s the rub. Our Hyundai Kona has what sounds like a good range, with its fully charged maximum being around 450 kilometres. That’s certainly a fair distance, in perfect conditions of ambient temperature (around 22 degrees), speed travelled and the hills and dales of the trip.

Rub No.1 is when conditions aren’t optimal. There was the unforgettable winter drive to Canberra of around 300 kilometres. As both we and the temperature went further south, travelling on eco at 110km/h, and shivering without the heater which would have made even more dramatic inroads into the range, we barely had any margin by the time we got to the outskirts of the ACT, with my much calmer husband reassuring me that by going slower we’d build up the range again. We did, and we got to our suburban destination safely. But seeing the kilometrage plummet certainly produced a memorable case of range anxiety.

Rub No.2 is rural and regional driving, with the need to charge the car from time to time. In the day when we were a family with young children, we thought nothing of chucking them in the back seat and spending many hours singing, squabbling, playing eye-spy and stopping variously for a picnic lunch and petrol stations as we hurtled the 800-1000 kilometres between Sydney and Melbourne or Brisbane in one day.

That, no doubt, is still being done by families today. Unless they have an EV, when travelling takes on a whole other rhythm. First, you have to plan your trip around locations of EV chargers. The number of towns that have them along or near main highways is increasing, and that’s a good thing. More remote routes are a different story, but let’s not go there (and probably can’t anyway) for the moment.

Having planned where you’re going to recharge, you have to allow for an hour or more to charge your car, and that’s if you find a charge point that’s free … and working.

You might be surprised to know that we’ve been at a charge point that has had one charger in disrepair for some months. Game-lifting needed in that department!

Depending on the length of your trip, you’ll have to allow for one or more charging stops, and that you might have to wait your turn as well. All of this can put paid to those long drive days that petrol-filled cars have no problem making.

This is not a problem for us, as older drivers who have limited our maximum kilometrage to about 400 a day, and for whom a longer trip is about plotting an overnighter at a town with a charger – and thereby getting to know some interesting places. Tiny Jugiong, for example, is a foodies’ heaven, with the St George Hotel, Long Track Pantry Cafe and local wines at the Wine Cellar.

When you have an EV, planning a trip takes on a different rhythm. Credit: Bloomberg

More sadly, there’s Tarcutta, a dying town dotted with closed shopfronts and a basic but pleasant motel, as well as (smartly) a charge point. It’s a practical halfway stopover on the way to Melbourne, with one very moving claim to fame: the Truck Drivers’ Memorial, marking the deaths of far too many truck drivers on the road, many of them just young men. A salutary reminder that driving is a risky business, in any vehicle, however fuelled.

When it’s by electricity, we can look forward to more efficient batteries and faster charge points in the future, but for now, it has challenges which could and should be overcome.

Dr Anne Ring is a health sociologist, freelance writer, and author of Engaging with Ageing: What matters as we grow older