Electric vehicle charging in Australia – are we there yet?

Driving from Perth to Sydney every year gives us a useful perspective on progress with charging infrastructure. Although we were not pioneers, when we first did the trip it was almost entirely on AC charging, with a single crowd-funded fast DC charger between Perth and the Tesla charger in Clare, South Australia.

The route is now mostly supplied with DC fast charging which varies in the two key factors in the assessment – reliability and ease of use.

It is not unreasonable to expect that by 2025, charging should be at least as easy as filling up a fossil car, and those organisations that have engaged with consumers, organisations like AEVA and the various wise heads in the EV community have largely achieved this.

The Tesla supercharger network retains the gold star for reliability and ease of use but only covers the eastern part of the route, from Port Augusta in SA. Although it’s an entirely reasonable decision from Tesla, I would dock half a point because much of the network is not open to other EV makes.

The first part of the route in WA from Perth to Norseman is covered by the WA EV network, which was developed with good engagement with the WA EV community.

It is a seamless “plug in, swipe and charge” with options including credit card payment. I only dock half a point because the Chargefox RFID reader at Norseman has been broken for over a year, although it is simple to use the app to start charging. The cables are long enough to reach any charge port and the bays are configured to allow cars with trailers to charge without unhitching.

The next bit to the SA border demonstrates some of the difficulties with EV charging off grid. Three Biofil 50kW DC chargers running on cooking oil have been replaced with WA EV network chargers. The Biofils are robust, reliable and very easy to use, but require regular refuelling from Perth, a return journey of 2,300 km.

Crucially, the Biofil Tritium chargers had been extensively modified by the manufacturer to accept the variable power output from a generator without shutting down, and have also been taken offline so OTA updates could not alter this functionality.

All the new charging stations and the off grid NRMA charger over the border at Nullarbor roadhouse use Tritiums, so it is possible that at least part of the reliability problems experienced and documented on Plugshare relate to managing this issue when the charger is running off a generator from the backup unit or roadhouse.

One newly commissioned charger on this stretch failed to ramp up beyond 11kW. We charged sufficiently to limp to the next charger, connected to the roadhouse power.

This unit oscillated between zero and 48kW for about 30 minutes before completely shutting down with a black screen. This location has a known power problem and was unable to support one of the crowdfunded Delta 20kW DC chargers offered in 2023 to roadhouses on this route.

These reliability issues should be sorted with time, as they have been at other off grid sites in WA. On the positive side, the units are all extremely user friendly with the caveat that there is little or no phone reception at several sites so a Chargefox RFID card is the only reliable way to activate charging.

Over the border in SA the Nullarbor roadhouse NRMA charger has had reliability issues but has worked perfectly for us on every occasion. It will be interesting to see what modifications based on the Nullarbor charger that NRMA make to the charger planned for Border Village Eucla.

RAA were late starters rolling out the SA network, but come through with a perfect score. Their fast chargers, booth layout, ease of activating charging and cable lengths are every bit as good as those in the WA EV network, plus they have a really useful network of BYO cable overnight AC chargers at various accomodation venues.

Our experience with the original NRMA chargers in NSW has been good, with easy activation through either the Chargefox RFID card or app. The cables are a bit short but manageable. We stopped to use the new super fast charger at Euston NSW where there is no RFID reader but instructions to scan and download the NRMA app to commence charging.

No other option was mentioned, although I later saw that it could be activated by the Chargefox app.  From the user perspective this is a massive backward step, a failure to make charging a simple procedure and is baffling considering that NRMA are part owners of Chargefox.

I was aware that the NRMA app is widely considered in the EV community as being the least user friendly of the major networks and chose to not even try the fast charger, reverting to use the slower, older charger.

Even this did not accept the RFID card but started after the third attempt (with inaudible instructions) using a credit card swipe. This was the only functioning charger I swore at on the trip and represents an epic fail.

It is a major concern as NRMA are being funded by the Federal government to roll out national charging infrastructure and appear to be deaf to consumer sentiment about what good charging looks like.

There is an abundance of information available to inform them, including mature policy developed by AEVA through its members, and the excellent models in WA and SA.

Perhaps it is time that those holding the Federal purse strings reviewed NRMA’s processes and the depth of their consumer engagement before we end up with parts of a national charging network that are less than fit for purpose. Ideally some national standards around acceptable charging should be developed from existing knowledge.

So, we aren’t quite there yet but have progressed a long way in 3 years. It is important that we don’t go backwards. I will deal with the contested and evolving area of kerbside parking in a separate article.

We look forward to the trip home in a couple of months.

PS A shout out to RSL motel at Wagga. They blocked off the dedicated undercover EV charging bays for us which gave a solid 11kW, BYO cable, free to overnight guests. We will be return customers.