An EV road trip rookie learns fast from a mission to install a remote EV charger

Image: Freepik

The offer by AEVA’s Chris Jones for a day trip to install an EV charger was too good to refuse. Furthermore, it would be my first road trip in an EV and his 2020 Ioniq has almost identical range to the Atto 1 that I intend to buy.

The Ioniq’s 38 kWh Li-NMC battery is slightly smaller than the Atto 1’ s 41 kWh Li-FePO4 unit, but its superior aerodynamics give it an identical claimed WLTP range – despite it being 200 kg heavier.

We left early from our home suburb of Kalamunda in Western Australia to Corrigin and travelled comfortably at the speed limit, charging at Brookton 120 km down the road.

The Ioniq’s 45 kW maximum charge rate tapers off to 20 kW at 70% charge, so it could not utilize the full 150 kW available from the DC fast charger. It took 45 minutes for a top-up from 45% to 100% while we had a coffee. The newer Atto 1 will be quicker to charge, with a claimed rate of 85 kW. My learnings on the trip had begun.

Range when cruising at the 110 kph speed limit is noticeably lower – in fact about 75% of the WLTP advertised range – even in the mild weather and slight tail wind we had that day.

With head winds and cold weather, range may go as low as 50% of WLTP. The WA EV Network charging station in Brookton sports a dual-port 150 kW DC charger with a 7 kW AC unit as backup. In my view this should be the minimum standard for the current uptake of 2% EVs.

I was already beginning to see that reliable 50 kW chargers need to be available at intervals of 120 km and 150 kW fast chargers at 240 km along major routes. If smaller EVs with around 40 kWh batteries arrive at a charger that is not working, they can still proceed to make it to the next one, 120 km up the road.

Why does this matter; why not just get a longer range EV? Well, one obvious reason is that small EV’s cost much less than the large 2 to 3 tonne models with more than 90 kWh batteries.

For example, the BYD Atto 1 costs less than half as much as the excellent but large Zeekr. Even more importantly, it has less than half the carbon footprint. Even if you could afford it, why double your costs and environmental impacts if, like many families you are only two people doing a few road trips each year?

Please take heed Minister Bowen – ensure adequate reliable chargers at 120 km intervals to enable all EVs, including the smaller models, to confidently do country trips. I believe this is essential to achieving your Government’s laudable 2035 targets of 50% of new cars sold to be EVs and 62% – 67% reduction in total national carbon emissions.

We arrived at the wheatbelt town of Corrigin 210 km from Kalamunda at 11 am, and after a detour to pick up the charger from WA grain grower, and Ag Zero Farming group leader, Simon Wallwork who had loaded it onto a Hiab equipped truck.

It took only about 1.5 hours to bolt the used 15 kW charger onto a small prepared slab at the Corrigin Roadhouse. To our pleasant surprise, the Tritium RT50 charger lit up, and even proceeded to charge the car. A few settings need to be updated – the charger still think it lives in Ravensthorpe.

That leads me to my next point – chargers must be well located and properly maintained. Volunteers from AEVA WA have played a crucial role in establishing and maintaining the WA charging network.

In addition to liaising with Synergy and the WA government to instigate the now completed but arguably inadequate ‘WA Electric Highway’, the WA branch of AEVA fundraised and installed two Tritium chargers in Lake Grace and Ravensthorpe making EV road trips to the major tourist town of Esperance possible.

The Ravensthorpe charger was moved initially to Munglinup 80 km down the road, before finally settling in Corrigin. Charging infrastructure is not easy, and an unwilling or sceptical host can make it nearly impossible.

Thanks to Scott Coppen, the proprietor of the roadhouse and pub in Corrigin, some redundancy now exists on the route to Esperance. A network still reliant on volunteers to maintain and report outages is not ideal. A charging station in Bridgetown in WA’s southwest has been out of service for over a year due to lack of maintenance. This situation is far from satisfactory.

A dozen AEVA members who made the trip adjourned for a long lunch at the old but friendly Corrigin Hotel. Jeff Wilson is a veteran of several long road trips with his wife in their Kona EV, including one through Winton Qld.

He showed me the comprehensive capabilities of the Plugshare App, which we downloaded onto my phone in a few minutes. This was my next significant learning; between ABetterRoutePlanner and Plugshare, I can plan all of my EV road trips.

Plugshare will show me details of the chargers along the route, such as their location, power, whether they are operating and, if vehicle details are uploaded, even the time to charge. The usefulness of Plugshare depends on responsible users entering details of their charging experience, in particular whether it was working properly.

On the trip back we had a 30 minute top up at Brookton and got to talking about how the EV charging system in WA needs to evolve. Currently there are 2% EV owners in a state of 3 million. What will it need to look like when there are more than 50% EVs? We agreed on several concluding points:

Inadequacy of the charging system is the main impediment to buying EVs. People want to be confident they can do country trips and many do not want to have to buy a $70,000 large EV to be sure of making the distance between working chargers.
The current system is barely adequate and has many weak links. Government needs to step up and fund one or two fully trained and equipped mobile technicians with parts and spare units to maintain and upgrade it, at least until demand grows enough to make commercial operations viable in remote areas.
Charging in the city is less problematic as much of it can be done cheaply from rooftop PV systems at homes. However, most vehicles are not at home from 9 am to 3 pm, when cheap PV energy is available. Ten or 15 amp trickle power points are needed at public City carparks, Transperth stations and shopping centres to provide cheap or free charging at these times.
A comprehensive plan to locate, build out and maintain sufficient regional fast chargers is overdue. Will the transmission links to the charging centres be adequate, when vehicle charging may more than double a town’s consumption? If not, where will PV arrays, batteries and even wind turbines need to be installed and what capacity will these need to have? Such installations probably cannot be financed by the small communities where they are located.

Recent good news from the Eastern states is the addition of 50 new Tesla stalls in several regional locations, making it possible for any EV to travel from Adelaide to Brisbane using only Tesla chargers.

However, WA and NT are much more sparsely populated, with smaller regional towns and less traffic on many major routes. While there are some Tesla fast charger stations in WA, it will take longer for such commercial operations to supply demand in this state.

It is likely the WA State government will need to continue to step up in this early stage of the EV transition, to maintain and extend the EV charging infrastructure until demand rises enough for commercial chargers to take over.

Ben Rose is a W.A.-based energy and emissions analyst.

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Martin4444 :

14 January 2026 4:43 PM

Totally agree about the need for more regional EV chargers and that they need to be more reliable! Often when there is a regional EV charger it is a single 50kW EV unit. Very frustrating if it is in use or out of order. For some reason, Tesla seems to be almost alone in Australia in recognising the need for multi stall high speed chargers in regional locations.