EV Prototype with 1000km range!

 Came across this article about a Mercedes prototype with 1000km range, thought I'd heard about it somewhere!

Give it 2-3 years before it hits the general market, I reckon.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/new-ev-prototype-leaves-range-anxiety-in-the-dust

Final run to Adelaide via Keith for breakfast

 The last leg was quite pleasant, after waking up in the Horsham International Hotel, and heading off around 5am. 

Lovely driving in the dawn, arriving for an early breakfast in Keith BP truckstop around 7:30am Monday morning. 

One issue which I had not come across before was a fault which occurred about 30minutes into charging at Keith, which stopped the charge. Luckily I was on my way back from walking into the town, and was able to reset it. But it could be annoying if one came back after an hour to find this!

It was interesting to hear from the conversation in the truckstop among the truckies about a significant truck accident at the bottom of the South-Eastern Freeway into Adelaide, when the day before, in the afternoon, a runaway truck which had lost its brakes, ploughed into around 9 cars. Whilst there were injuries (sent to hospital), amazingly no fatalities. As I was using that freeway to get back, this was of particular interest as to whether that section was open again.

As it turned out, on my arrival at that intersection, I couldn't see any obvious signs of an accident, such was the efficient cleanup they must have done on the Sunday night. I guess there's been several accidents there in past years to give them enough practice! 

Summary:

This trip, whilst quite tiring given the short amount of time allowed owing to work commitments, was a good challenge and adventure into testing the ability of a relatively new electric vehicle to Australia, the Polestar 2. 

Overall, the driving experience was most pleasant, in particular, the superior acceleration over the vast majority of petrol engine vehicles was very handy for overtaking on highways, and negotiating heavy traffic in Melbourne. 

Trip Manual (TM) on the left shows the numbers for the whole trip (including some driving around suburban Melbourne for 1 day)

The PS2's range of around 450km was adequate for the trip, however, in future, to be able to comfortably make the ADL-MEL trip on one charge would be even better (this would require a battery with around 1000km range, which I believe already exists in an EV prototype).

Home by late Monday morning!

In order for mass uptake of this EV road trip (and pretty much any Australian interstate trip), improvements in the number of charging stations, and particularly, charging time required, will need to happen in the next few years. The Federal and State governments do appear to have plans for this. As to how effective the measures will be, time will tell.

Watch this space for rapid developments in the next few years! 

Horsham International Hotel opposite the Chargefox charging station

 I chose the Horsham International Hotel to stay Sunday night as it is literally across the road from the charging station.

That way, I could plug the car in, and walk across to my room and watch TV in comfort while waiting. This way, I could also use the slower charging station (cheaper at 40c per kWh, compared with 60c per kWh), as it could be left there overnight if necessary. 

As it turned out, I had finished charging to 100% by around 11:30pm, needing about 2 hours charging.

Arriving pretty late on a Sunday evening, there's slim pickings for dinner in a town like this. Even the reception at the hotel was clothed in darkness, with instructions to get my room key out from a lockbox. Luckily, there was a petrol station open across the road from the charging station, and the attendant there was friendly enough, was probably just glad to see another person that time of day. There were 2 dim sims sitting together in a huge bain-marie which looked pretty dry, so I chose a sausage roll and a pie from the warmer next to it. Fascinating to watch the attendant guy carefully inserting a temperature skewer into these savoury items as if he was performing delicate surgery to check they were warm enough before handing them to me. And they were! 

 

Charging at slower rate of 50kW in Horsham overnight.

Horsham Chargefox

After charging, just a hop across the road into the Horsham International Hotel carpark. Incidentally, I noticed 2 Tesla chargers in this carpark, with one Tesla car plugged in. 

View from my hotel room across the road!

The return trip - Mel to Adl with overnight stay in Horsham

 Having attended the family event (christening) on Sunday morning and afternoon, it was time to make the return journey back to Adelaide. 

I was on a countdown clock, to get to Elizabeth (a northern suburb of Adelaide) by 1pm Monday for work.

The only way to do this, given the 12 hour time taken to get to Melbourne, was to break up the trip with an overnight stay in Horsham.

I set off around 530pm Sunday evening, and after escaping the initial 30 minutes of western outbound Melbourne traffic, settled in for a smooth run to Horsham, via another charging stop in Ballarat (for about 45 minutes).

Ballarat Charging Station behind supermarket

Ballarat on a Sunday evening around 7pm.

Ballarat to Melbourne

 About 1 and a half hour drive from Ballarat to Melbourne via the fast flowing Western Ring road, a multilane highway, where the GPS came in very handy to choose which lane to get into.

I finally arrived in Melbourne at my destination in Glen Iris in eastern Melbourne around 3:30pm on the Saturday. So a total of around 12 hours on the road from Adelaide. This includes the charging times in 3 country towns, Keith, Horsham, and Ballarat.

Interesting that the ABRP app outlined only 2 stops (Keith, Horsham) with 14 minute and 43 minute charges respectively. But I wasn't comfortable with arriving in Melbourne with only 10% charge.

Perhaps with more driving, I'd become more comfortable with lower levels of charge.

Horsham charging, to Ballarat

 The Ballarat charging station was a little difficult to find, even despite using the Chargefox app. It was tucked away in a large and busy carpark, behind a Coles supermarket where the truck deliveries are made, and skip bins are!

Was interesting to see a BMW EV, haven't seen many of those around. 

Had some brunch in town, strolled around, and looked at the interesting McDonalds situated on a hill.

Keith to Horsham

 The stretch from Keith to Horsham across the state border was around 2 hours or about 200km. I had charged for longer than the ABRP app advised at Keith, just to build in a bit of buffer, being a newbie and all that. What I've found is that the more familiar you get with the range of the car, the more willing you are to drain it closer to 0%. The closest I've got so far is only around 20%, so I've got a long way to go! I've read an account of a PS2 driver out of Melbourne who found himself at pretty much 0% in country Victoria and discovered that there was still quite a few km's 'in the tank' so to speak, so that he could get to a power point, and avoid a towing!

It was nice to see the signs at the border welcoming me to Victoria. You notice quite a sudden difference in the roads when crossing the border, which of course is quite arbitrary. And the speed limit drops to 100km/h in Victoria, but interestingly, I think the road quality is slightly better on the Vic side!

The Chargefox charger at Horsham was just off the main road, in an empty (at the time) carpark lot, and near a childcare centre I think.

The parking space where I went was a little tight, but not too bad. The one thing as you can see in the photo, you have to plan whether putting the car nose or tail in, depending on where to plug in the cable. Lucky the cable could stretch far enough to reach the other side of the car. 

The Tesla next to me when I arrived at Horsham had gone by the time I came back from exploring the town (around 45mins to 1 hour). EV charging infrastructure will need to take into account the substantially longer time that cars are sitting at the stations compared to petrol stations.