Jon Edwards and his supporters and co-drivers, who set off from Perth in the Hyundai Mighty electric truck on September 6 for the first lap of Australia in an electric truck, arrived in Canberra on Monday.
The Canberra branch of the Australian Electric Vehicle Association (AEVA) has arranged a greeting, photo op in front of Parliament House and hopefully some more media coverage on September 24 before the truck sets off for Melbourne continue its clock-wise lap of Australia.
For the record (and social media posts), the thing on the truck tray is a 120kWh battery, not a generator, and the truck is carrying a load of around 2.5 tonnes, a bit down on its rated load of 4 tonnes and GVM of 7 .3 tonnes.
It’s a truck. Its battery is 114.5kWh, with the last 20% reserved as a safety margin.
I last reported on their journey as they headed for the far north of WA beyond Broome. As it happened, they turned up at the Horizon Power off-grid charger halfway between Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek to find it just being commissioned, so they plugged in and took 90kWh without flattening the 140kWh battery.
These Horizon Power units look really good.
Sadly, this is where the luck ran out.
The heatwave across far north Australia hit as they reached Kununurra where the Kempower WA EV network charger would charge the On Board (tray) battery (OBB) but not the truck’s battery.
Jon thinks this is an earth fault. Fortunately, at this point they discovered that the manufacturer had upgraded the software for the OBB so that it could take charging at up to 120kW, feeding back into the truck battery at 40kW.
The OBB could therefore be charged directly from DC CCS2 chargers rather than through the complex previous arrangement using a rectifier and 32A/T2 socket.
They had to revert to this arrangement in the heat as CCS2 charging caused the battery to overheat, as did the truck battery unless charging speed was reduced.
Jon has cunningly modified his T2 plug with a resistor that fools any T2 unit into thinking it’s connected to an EV rather than the DC rectifier.
The extreme heat also took out the 24-240AC inverter supplying their Starlink internet and coffee percolator, as well as their laptops while trying to edit video footage. The cooling fan circuit for the OBB also died, requiring rewiring.
The entire trip across the top was done without air conditioning in order to reduce the load on the truck’s systems.
Across the top end after Katherine into northern Queensland the charging was mostly from 32A 3 Phase sockets, charging via the Setec rectifier at 22kW DC overnight.
The ABB chargers on the route could mostly charge the truck but would not communicate with the OBB and could not start a charge meaning that the OBB could only be charged from 32A or a type 2 outlet at 22kW.
The exception was at Three Ways roadhouse where the new NRMA fast DC charger initially failed to start. NRMA were called and were adamant that they had no such charger at that location so couldn’t help. It started on the second attempt and gave 117kW of free electrons.
After sailing unscathed through a herd of buffalo crossing the road pre-dawn, they tackled the longest leg without a charger – 447 km Three Ways to Camooweal into a savage hot easterly headwind at 60 kph. The road wasn’t suitable for much faster, and those trucks that passed them overheated and actually arrived after them.
Although they arrived with 80 km range left, the leg would have been much easier if Barkly roadhouse had allowed access to their 32A socket.
The Hyundai Mighty is based on 800V architecture, is not compatible with 400V charging architecture and requires a minimum of 570V to charge.
The charging network in far north Queensland mostly uses Tritium RT 50 chargers which only run to 500V. This was insufficient to charge the truck but would charge the OBB which requires only 430V.
By boosting the voltage from the OBB, the truck battery could be charged at 40kW. When charging from 32A/T2, the Setec rectifier could run at 1000V and directly charge the truck battery at 22kW.
As previously reported in The Driven, many of these Tritium units are out of order. Tesla superchargers also would not charge the truck as they are limited to 450V. The truck’s 800V architecture certainly complicated charging and required some ingenious solutions.
The journey became far easier once back in fast charger territory, but there were still glitches. Coming down the M1 into Sydney, a long hill at 90kph was enough to push the motor temperature above 150 degrees, causing the truck to switch to “Turtle” mode, requiring a quick roadside cooling down.
The OBB won’t be needed again until the Nullarbor crossing, since the truck battery has sufficient range in fast charger territory.
Despite all the extremes of temperature and loads, the truck’s LFP battery has retained the 98% state of health from the beginning of the trip.
Jon would agree that the trip was far harder than even he expected, with the extreme temperatures, unexpected headwinds and charging variables making constant range recalculations necessary.
The support from a team of co-drivers, planners and wise heads for trouble shooting was essential for the success of the hardest parts of the trip.
We should all celebrate another milestone in Australia’s EV transition.