Last month we reported on the 1,185 km trip from Brisbane to Canberra in a Volvo FH heavy-duty truck – the only one of its type in the country, and believed to be the longest trip yet in Australia for an electric truck of any sort.
That trip to Canberra took approximately 19 hours to do, including charging time, but as the drivers took time to document on the more leisurely return trip, actually finding somewhere to charge was not so easy.
Because Australia has so few electric trucks – and many of those use swappable batteries – there is no suitable fast-charging charging infrastructure in place. And, because the Volvo FH is a hungry beast, consuming nearly 2 kwh per kilometre, the drivers were obliged to find many usable charging points normally reserved for electric cars.
That worked fine in most cases. At Sutton Forrest for instance, the truck was able to pull up on the other side of the charging bays and plug in without impacting any others. At some, it was obliged to decouple the trailer and park across two charging bays to fill the battery.
“Australia’s EV fast charging infrastructure is not set up for trucks …. but we only had to uncouple the trailer twice,” says Matt Wood, a Volvo Australia spokesman who helped drive the truck to Canberra and back.
“Sutton Forrest was the easiest. At Seven Hills in Sydney we had to park across two charging bays. A lot of people were charging and for the most part people were amazed.
“Seven Hills was the only place where we had any negative commentary, one guy came across from the bowsers to tell us what a stupid deal EVs were.
“I think my favourite bit was when we blocked off the diesel bowsers at Goulburn. I had to nearly jack-knife the truck in front of the diesels, so we could get access to the chargers. The roadhouse owner came out and was amazed . He wasn’t upset at all, he said it was fantastic to see the electric truck.”
Which begs a question: When a fossil fuel vehicle blocks an EV charger it is called ICE-ing. So what do you call it when an EV blocks access to a bowser?
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Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of The Driven, and also edits and founded the Renew Economy and One Step Off The Grid web sites. He has been a journalist for nearly 40 years, is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review, and owns a Tesla Model 3.