Entirely Unneccessary Frustration

Using public electric car chargers in Australia

I’m going to start this opinion piece with a list of myths about electric vehicles for you to print, laminate and show to people when they spout ignorant nonsense.

“You have to replace the battery after 3 years.”

The battery will outlast the car. See here.

“They don’t have the range.”

Yes they do. Safe human range is 150-200 miles (240-320 km) and 90% of new electric cars exceed that

“All the batteries will be thrown into landfill.’

No they won’t. They are too valuable. See here

If all cars are electric they will melt the grid.

Crypto currency and AI will use catastrophically more electricity than all the electric cars, trucks, busses, vans, bikes, scooters, rickshaws we will ever need to build. As with variable charging times and speeds, and as V2G becomes the norm, electric vehicles will be a positive boon to the grid. Meanwhile, gambling (often wrongly referred to as Crypto) and clever chat bots that benefit the hyper rich will create an obscene increase in electricity generation without a 2nd thought.

I don’t want to be forced into one of your fascist virtue signalling eco commie boxes.

You can get professional help for anxiety. Consult your doctor. But also, this is a transition, it will take decades, calm down. You children and grandchildren will drive electric cars without a second thought, they will witness combustion engines in museums and they will be intrigued and horrified in equal measure,

The charging network isn’t ‘there yet.’

Okay, now you’re talking my language. However this is particularly relevant to where I am currently residing.

In Australia and New Zealand, I think it’s still fair to say this is a valid and important criticism. The public charging network is not ‘there yet.’

I would argue that in the UK, and particularly mainland Europe, it is to a large extent ‘there now’ and anyone who drones on about it not being ‘there yet’ hasn’t driven an electric car any distance.

I have recently driven around both Australia and New Zealand in electric cars and outside the Tesla supercharger network, (which always, always works, I know, annoying isn’t it) it can be challenging.

When you do a long journey in an EV, I’m talking over 350 km or 200 miles, you might want to use a public rapid charger. You can currently top up your car from 10 to 80% in 30 minutes using the older chargers. However that latest rapid chargers are getting much more rapider, newer cars can absorb that power and now charging 10 to 80% can take 12 to 14 minutes, with some cars even faster.

But here’s the grit in the gears, no. Wait, I’ll modify that metaphor, here’s the landslide of granite boulders in the very delicate gears.

If I want to buy some milk, a can of beans, a banana, a toothbrush I don’t have to download an app, apply for an RFID card, join a special club.

If I stop at a petrol filling station, I can pump the toxic liquid into my tank, walk into the store and pay the cashier in a number of convenient and secure ways. Job done

We all make dozens of these basic, run of the mill transactions every day.

So in the last 10 years a new commercial system arises. It requires investment, risk, technical skill and public education to become accepted. It is backed by national governments and local authorities. It’s the rise of the rapid chargers. It facilitates the use of electric cars over long distances.

A week ago I drove 925 kilometers (575 miles) in a brand new Chinese car, the Xpeng G6. (It’s amazing and I’ll be creating a review elsewhere) It has very impressive range (500 plus kilometres - 310 miles) of 95% highway driving. So it could not be driven 925 kilometers without charging.

We stopped 3 times on the journey but only charged twice. The other time we stopped for the human beings, the car was fine.

Both those charging experiences were challenging but strangely successful. Another explanation, when we stopped to charge, the car wasn’t empty or even near empty, and when we arrived at our final destination, we didn’t want to be near empty. Charging on a long journey is always a top up to get you well past ther next stop.

Now, I should point out for those that don’t know, I have been driving electric cars for 16 years. I have also spent a great deal of time in Australia, my wife is Australian so we are here primarily to see family and friends, oh, okay, and to avoid the depths of a northern hemisphere winter.

I have also driven electric vehicles huge distances in this wonderful country with near zero charging issues. It CAN be done, but every now and then, oh my life, seriously!

It can be stupidly, frustratingly and utterly unnecessarily infuriating. My attitude toward the bozos who set up the systems we poor electric car drivers have had to rely on is nothing short of offensive. They obviously hate us and they are determined to destroy all chances of a fair and just transition away from burning fossil fuel.

Do I exaggerate? To be honest when you are faced with the utter stupidity of the system, no, I’m being kind and moderated.

Okay, here’s a description of what happened in New Zealand. We hired a Polestar 2 at Auckland airport (due to the current exchange rate, very reasonable cost) and drove a couple of hundred kilometers to visit relatives. It was a joy and privilege to be able to do this.

On the way back to Auckland we needed to top up, the car needed an extra maybe 70 kilometers of range, so you’re talking at worst a 10 minute charge. I tried one in the town my rellies live in. Hopeless, you had to use their wretched app. For pities sake, in 2025. Let me pay for electricity you drongos.

So, I tried to get the app. Oh, but I couldn’t download the app because I had a British phone with an Australian SIM, both of which meant I was perma-stuffed.

Wait! I want to remind my dear readers again, all I wanted to do was buy some electricity. I wasn’t trying to launch a bank or set up an online gambling network. How can anyone, in 2025, be so unutterably dumb and lazy as to refuse service to potential customers because of rubbish technical failure excuses on the part of the vendor, it wasn’t my fault, they built the system and it sucks you know whats.

My wonderful niece tried to do it on her New Zealand phone, again, the system failed. This is a public charger company that has received government money to install these chargers and the evil folks behind this are, in my new conspiracy theory, the real lizard warlords who want us to continue to burn fossil fuel so they can control the planet when we’ve all killed ourselves in a post apocalyptic doomscape, or something. Nothing else makes sense.

We drove back toward Auckland planning to try other chargers, stopped at a BP fuel stop where they had a couple of BP pulse chargers. I have the right app, connected to my debit card, all set up. I’ve used it numerous times in the UK.

This, I want to remind you, is BP. A multinational, multi billion dollar company with true global reach. The effing BP pulse app doesn’t work outside the UK. Some over paid scrawny pillock who ‘runs the IT system’ is either so pathetic they can’t run a semi usable system, or it’s deliberate and they’ve set up a stupid system to stymie any chance of people not buying their toxic fuel. We tried everything, we were perma-stuffed once again.

And again I want to point out that all the while we were wasting our lives trying to solve this stupid, pointless charade, normal human beings were buying toxic fuel, walking into the store and just paying for it.

Tell me this BP executives. If you have bothered to try and greenwash the brand by putting electric vehicle chargers on your forecourt, how effing hard would it be to set up a system where I can pay for the wretched electricity at the counter like a normal human? Seriously?

Anyway, two lovely New Zealanders saved us. They rocked up in their Nissan Leaf, they had the right apps and cards and New Zealand phones and SIM cards and lived a life of happy, carefree optimism and they paid for us to charge. I bought them a coffee in recompense.

So, the charger network in New Zealand, from the standpoint of a visitor, is still a bit of an embarrassment.

Now, back to Australia. I think it’s fair to say that due to it being a much bigger country with a much larger population, they are a bit further ahead on their charging infrastructure.

And this next point is as annoying as it is relevant. The Xpeng G6 we are driving is part of the first batch of these cars to arrive in Australia. It has literally been in the country a couple of weeks. It is not yet ‘homulgated’ to be able to successfully charge on Tesla’s open Supercharger network which does exist here. All the other cars we have driven here, including MG’s, BYD’s and Polestars, have been able to charge at Superchargers with zero problems.

Why is this important? Because Tesla superchargers always work, they are really fast and there’s normally a load of them in one location.

So we had to use an EVie charger and a ChargeFox charger. The first one we stopped at after 296 kilometres (183 miles), was an EVie charger. One of a handful of companies that have installed and run Australia’s electric highway public charger network.

The machines had a 2 cars trying to charge when we arrived. A very kind man in a Polestar and a poor woman in a Hyundai Kona, on the phone to the helpline, in the blistering heat with her young son patiently waiting, baffled as to why they couldn’t justr carry on their journey.

We tried to help but it was hopeless, neither car could charge, the poor woman on the end of the helpline just kept apologising. The man in the Polestar drove off to another charger, he was a local who knew the ropes and always had a range buffer so he could deal with annoying situations like this. I showed the woman where there was another charger by the library of a nearby town in the hope she’s make it.

We stood in the shade of a beautiful old Australian Fig Tree discussing what to do when both cars left the scene. I was getting ready to drive to the next charger which we could easily reachbut my wife insisted we try.

I have no idea why but it started right away, no problems and at one point it was charging at 195 kiloWatts which meant it charged very fast.

Our next stop was after another 253 kilometres (157 miles) just outside the coastal town of Port Macquarie. Here we arrived at a ChargeFox rapid charger installed by the NRMA, (National Roads and Motorists' Association) who have been at the forefront of installing an impressive network of chargers aaaand . . . . the people in a BYD Atto 3 using one of the two chargers told us the available one wasn’t working. They had tried to use it 3 times and gave up.

And breath into the pain, let that fury and bitterness float off into the clouds.

But once again, explain me this. We plugged in, used the ChargeFox app to register the charge and click, it all worked for us without a hitch. 125 kilowatts. Nice.

So the absurdity is, both chargers worked faultlessly for us even though they frustrated others. We eventually arrived at our friends house with 36% of battery capacity remaining, which is always part of my master plan.

After a total of 924 kilometres (574 miles) we were relaxed, happy and genuinely not tired. There had been three of us in the car, we all took turns driving, we all had a nap in the very spacious rear seats. It was, all in all, a very low stress and enjoyable long drive

The bottom line is, this technology works, it is getting better, we are still at the very beginning of the electric journey. In 1906, if you were driving a dangerous, unreliable, noisy combustion engine car you had to plan your route via pharmacies where you would buy a can of ‘gasoline’ which was sold as a cleaning fluid.

So yes, the first generation of rapid chargers have made me lose what is left of my hair, but the news ones are better, faster, more reliable and easier to use.