In May my husband and I began a trip interstate in our EV. We travelled to South Australia then roughly north east across country to just north of Brisbane, and then back down the east coast.
Despite our fears that we would be stranded by either non viable or non existent battery chargers we managed this journey, discovering parts of Australia which give you the sense of how really isolated some of our large and small rural towns are.
Only in South Australia were we forced to rely on friends and relatives to have us stay and charge our car. (The SA government is working on providing more chargers). We found caravan cabins, and motels, even at very short notice, although sometimes we had to go over budget to stay in the ones available. The regional roads were really good – wide and had good surfaces – and where there was road work this was well managed with good signage and plenty of warning. It is absolutely doable.
However, I am anxious that the rush to manufacture more and more EVs is taking our eyes off the main target of reducing emissions. In Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland the bulk of our charging would have been met by using fossil fuels as energy for the battery chargers.
Shouldn’t we be making the reduction of emissions a priority even as we are changing the fossil fuel system to electric?
— Helen Hutchinson
