My family often drive from Sydney to the Gold Coast around Christmas time. We enjoy taking it easy and stopping at different towns along the way. Typically we do it with a 1 or 2 night stop over in Port Macquarie (or thereabouts) along the way there and back.
This year we did it in our new BMW IX3. We’ve had it for 3 weeks now and we were excited but a little worried about charging along the way. The 3 big questions we had were:
- How long would we have to wait at charging stops while charging?
- Would we arrive at the charging stops only to find a long cue of cars and have to wait hours?
- Would the electric range decrease at highway speeds?
We had planned to leave Sydney at 8:00am. I knew from past experience this was going to be optimistic for us, but I was still disappointed that we didn’t leave until after 10:30. I wasn’t worried about the drive, I just wanted to be in Port Macquarie early enough to enjoy the day there. A direct drive to Port Macquarie would normally take a little under 4 1/2 hours. Leaving at 8:00 would mean we could enjoy lunch and spend a bit of time around the waterfront before settling in for the night.
Being just under 400km, we could theoretically almost do it non-stop in the BMW. BMW claims 460km WLTP, which I’m told is about 380km of real-world driving. The reality is, that in the 3 weeks of ownership prior to this trip, we had never seen the trip meter show us above 300km – actually we rarely see above 220km. This is because BMW recommends not charging above 80% for regular driving to conserve the battery life and also because we generally drive many short trips as opposed to few large ones (90% of our lives is within 5km of home). These short trips seem to reduce range quite significantly. Our average consumption is 22.2kwh/100km which is significantly higher than the 18kwh/100km I see quoted by other drivers. Additionally, we’d want to have a full charge when we leave in the morning.
Seeing as we were going to have to charge on-route, I did some research into trip planning and was recommended an app called ABRP or A Better Route Planner. Jumping into this app and planning the route, had us stopping at Karuah for a 10 minute charge, then off to Thrumster where we’d get the car up to 80% before settling in at Port Macquarie and ready to start driving again the next morning.
With the plan set, we jumped into the car and set the navigator to Karuah for a charge. We started off by heading towards the M1 keeping a close eye on the trip meter and battery level to see how much range we have left. We did almost the entire drive in Eco Pro mode which conserves battery life by doing things like running the AC and even headlights at 80%. I was quite surprised to find that at around 70km into the trip the car was indicating that we had around 350km or range. I was really expecting it to go down at highway speeds, but it wasn’t the case at all.
Being a family trip, we of course could drive too far without a stop for lunch, so we made our first stop at the Wyong Service Centre. No EV charging here but we were able to get some food and have a toilet break. I didn’t log the exact time that we arrived, but I can see that we paid for food at 11:47 and I know we stayed around 1 hour all up.
After this we continued on to Karuah and arrived at 14:44. We got there only to find that all the chargers were taken, but someone soon approached us and let us know that 2 cars were about to leave and they were next in line. In retrospect, I’m not sure if she was being friendly or minding her space in the queue 🤣
About 15 minutes later we were ready to start charging. Before we could charge the car however, we needed to activate the charger through the app. Sounds simple enough – except Karuah is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The mobile phone signal was very weak and so we couldn’t get a strong enough signal to start the charging process. Finally I found by pure luck, that when I leant into the car I was able to get a strong signal. I don’t know the physics behind this but at least I was able to start the charge.
And this is what we found to be the biggest problem with the charging process. It wasn’t that we had to wait 30-60 minutes – we’d probably do that anyway. It was that the chargers are not in any of the major service centres. They’re always in some out of the way location where there is nothing to do. I now understand why Tesla’s come with a Netflix app. I overheard a couple of truckers chatting – “that’s the problem with electric cars, imagine having to spend hours in Karuah waiting for the car to charge.
Speaking of waiting times, we were lucky enough at this stop to only have to wait 15 minutes for an available charger. Another BMW driver cam in 2 minutes after us and wasn’t able to charge until we left. So he was waiting 45 minutes before a charger was available.
At this stop I ran into a lovely gentleman who was a BMW fanatic and we got to have a long conversation about our BMW’s. I told him all about my recent road trip on my Mercedes Benz 380sec and how I’m a member of the Mercedes Benz Club. Turns out he’s an active member in the BMW club and suggested I join.
We kept the car plugged in for about 30 minutes. This took the charge from 52 – 94%. It made more sense to us to do a long charge where we could in case the next stop was really busy or faulty etc, since we really didn’t know what to expect. We also have a 12 month Chargefox subscription, so the more we could charge the car here, the better as the next location was a Tesla charger that would have a cost associated.
We left Karuah at 15:39 and headed to Thrumster. We made a call however to skip this stop since it was only a few minutes from our hotel and we spoke with the hotel who told us that they have an EV destination charger.
We arrived at Port Macquarie ant 17:45 with 52% left in the battery and found a street parking space right in front of the hotel entrance, but decided to pay the $10 for car park access since they had a charger. The hotel staff told us that a staff member was parking their car in the space but they would move it for us when they find the staff member. We decided to unload the car and settle into our room while we wait.
I was getting impatient so decided to head down and chat with reception. It turns out they were calling our room as I was heading down and was informed that the staff member had moved their car and I should head down quickly before someone else takes it. I drive into the car park and can’t find an EV charger anywhere, so I call reception – “oh, it’s not a charger it’s just a power point and it’s located on the bottom level”. I paid $10 for this? I locate the space only to find a that a Ram pickup truck had parked in this space. I gave up and headed for a regular space when I spied another power point out in the far corner of the car park. I decided that it was better than nothing and at least we could go to Thrumster in the morning and have a slightly shorter stop. Some mental arithmetic in my head had figured that it would be charged to around 75% by morning, so it wasn’t all bad after all.
The next morning by the time we got our selves ready and had breakfast (the kids couldn’t agree on a place to eat) it was 10:30 and we had 81% battery charge level. This meant we didn’t need to backtrack to Thrumster and could just move on to Coffs Harbour where we were planning on stopping at the Big Banana.
ABRP had suggested that we stop at the BP in Coffs Harbour for a charge and so that’s what we did. There were 2 chargers and 1 was available. We plugged in and went for a walk. We were about 3.8km away from the Big Banana but decided to stay near the car and explored some of the nearby shops. 45 minutes later we had gone from 51-84% (at a cost of $16.04 for 29.164Kwh) and moved on to the Big Banana where the kids wanted to explore.
My wife had read online that there was a Tesla Supercharge at the Big Banana and we considered charging there if we could. We figured it would be busy so didn’t want to rely on this charger if the BP was available. When we got there there was no charger. The charger was 800m away at the shopping centre so it was lucky we avoided it.
1 1/2 hours later we moved on from the Big Banana and headed on to Maclean where we were planning on our next charge. We went to the address that the ABRP app sent us to, but found nothing there. The address pointed us to somewhere on the highway which turned out to be the wrong address. We looked up the location of the next charger since we didn’t want to turn back and found we could quite easily make it with around 35% left when we get there.
That next location was the Macadamia Castle which is now an animal sanctuary. Last time we did this trip we stopped there and bought tickets, but it started pouring rain on us, so we got a refund and left. This time round, we got there at just after 5:00 and the place was closed. I was really hoping to have a toilet break and get a coffee before the final leg, but that wasn’t the case.
When we arrived, there were 2 or more chargers available so there was no waiting. We simply drove up plugged in (downloaded and configured the app) and started charging. Shortly after we arrived we saw another 2-3 cars come along, but I don’t think anyone was waiting more than about 10 minutes to plug in.
We did get quite a few looks charging our BMW at the Tesla charger and even some head shaking. I’m not sure what was behind that, but I assume they were annoyed that Tesla had opened up the chargers to other brands as I have seen people complain about this in some of the online Tesla groups I joined before buying this car.
We plugged in and waited with nothing to do. With just over 1 hour of charging we went from 35-99% and an indicated 347km of range. This of course wasn’t free as it seems we were in the peak period and were charged $46.75 for 55KWh of energy.
We were then planning on heading to the Gold Coast where we would do a top-up charge to get us through the week. We were pleasantly surprised to find we arrived with 77% of charge available, so we headed straight for our hotel, parked the car and went out for dinner.
What this trip has taught us, is that the car itself is magnificent. The driving aids on the highway really does make the drive less strenuous adjusting speed to the traffic and following the road without any driver input required. The problem is the infrastructure is still not mature. It’s not an issue with the charges, but with the location of the chargers. We would be making regular stops on a trip like this anyway, but the fact that the chargers are often in out of the way locations and not in the service centres makes it so much more difficult.
Hopefully it won’t be too long before EV chargers are more readily available at the major service centres along the route, but I do question the practicality of this. It’s one thing to have half a dozen cars coming into a charging station to charge at once, but I don’t see how the logistics of this would work when there 20-30 cars or even more at peak periods that each need to charge for 30-60 minutes. I imagine it would look like a massive car park full of chargers but the infrastructure to make this work on the grid would be crazy. I truly hope this get sorted because in every other way driving an electric car has been fantastic.
Here’s a summary of the stops we made along the way:
| Leg Distance | Location | Battery on Arrival | Battery on Departure | Total Distance | Arrival Time | Departure time | Charging Station Power | Indicated Range on Arrival | Indicated Range on Departure | Notes | Charge Cost | kWh Purchased |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Home | 100% | 0 | |||||||||
| 132.8 | M1 Wyong northbound | 73% | 132.8 | |||||||||
| 96.2 | BP Karuah Chragefox | 52% | 94% | 229 | 14:44 | 15:39 | 150kw max. 96 then 46 by the end. | Waited around 15 minutes for a charger. Another bmw arrived 2 minutes after us and had to wait 45 minutes. | ||||
| 190.1 | Mercure port Macquarie | 52% | 81% | 419.1 | 17:45 | 10:36 | 1.7kw | Mercure said they had an ev charger. Turned out to be a regular power point. | ||||
| 154 | No pulse Coffs harbpur | 51% | 84% | 573.1 | 12:45 | 13:29 | 55kw | 200’ish | 344 | 2 chargers. No waiting. Was a car here that left as we arrived. One charger free | $16.04 | 29.164 |
| 3.8 | The big banana, Coffs harbour | 86% | 84% | 576.9 | 13:40 | 15:05 | N/a | 334 | 338 | They said there was a Tesla supercharger here, but it’s 800m away at the shopping centre. | ||
| 221 | Macadamia castle Tesla Charger | 35% | 100% | 797.9 | 17:08 | 18:17 | 130kw | 122 | 347 | Plenty of chargers on arrival. 10 minutes later all taken. | $46.75 | 55 |
| 95 | Broadbeach | 77% | 892.9 | 18:44 | 337 |
