We drove a small EV from Sydney to Surfers – here’s what happened
It’s been just over a year since we bought our BYD Dolphin and the whole family loves it. So far, it’s been our “around town” car, but with the cost of fuel through the roof and a planned holiday ahead of us, we decided to put the little runabout to its toughest test yet – driving Sydney to the Gold Coast over the Easter holidays.
The takeaways
- Plan your charging stops and scope out a back-up charger near there if your original plan falls through.
- Give yourself more options by taking a type 2 cable with you and not relying on fast DC chargers.
- Don’t expect to get the same efficiency from your EV on the highway as you do around town.
- With some very loose math, we spent about $200 in charging cost but saved approximately $570 in fuel costs if we had taken our Mitsubishi ASX.
- It’s still best to plan your charging stops as they are not always advertised or visible from the road, but there are far more chargers than you may think – especially on a highly trafficked route like this one.
- Road tripping in an EV is absolutely do-able and with the correct planning before, it’s just as convenient as a road trip in an ICE vehicle.
- You don’t need a large EV with a big battery to do an interstate road trip. Our city-focused BYD Dolphin easily coped with long distances.
Home to Nabiac
Readings from the car: 95% (450km) to 13%(61km)
Actual kilometres driven: 271km
At 100% charge, the BYD Dolphin tells you it has 490 kms of driving range available. But highway driving tears through that drastically, so I wasn't about to trust what the display was telling me.
We left very early in the morning – about 2:00a.m – thinking it would allow my four-year-old twins to sleep for the first few hours of the journey. Like all well laid plans, this did not go as intended, so they were awake for the pitch-black drive until about 5am.
We were hoping to make it to Taree but with only 13 per cent left on the battery and the range anxiety creeping in, we took a quick detour to an NRMA charger in Nabiac for a top-up to get us back up to 40 per cent charge, which took about 25 minutes.
From there we drove the road to South Taree and had Maccas for breakfast (standard road-trip fare!) while the car charged from 40 per cent back to completely full – taking no time at all on the fast DC chargers.
Taree to Coffs Harbour
Readings from the car: 100% (490km) to 44% (248km)
Actual kilometres driven: 226km
By the time we’d finished our hashbrowns, it was 7am and we drove on to Coffs Harbour, stopping in at the Big Banana. As well as being a brilliant stop for the family, the Big Banana boasts 16 Tesla superchargers that are open to all EV users.
Again, the car was back to 100 per cent in no time, and we had a good stretch and a frozen banana before continuing the journey.
Coffs Harbour to Ballina
Readings from the car: 100% (490 kms) to 43% (210kms)
Actual kilometres driven: 196km
From the Big Banana, we’d planned one more stop at Ballina and this was the most disappointing. At a huge service station that serves thousands of travellers, there were only two chargers – and one was broken!
My theory is this may have been one of the first places in the area to get an EV charger and they haven't been able to add in more since. However, it resulted in a long queue for the one working charger, with many people deciding to keep moving on and find a different charger along their way.
On top of that, the charger was not easy to use and forced you to download an app. As a seasoned EV driver, I am flummoxed when I cannot simply tap my credit card to start charging.
We decided not to do a full charge as we didn't need to, and there were several other cars waiting – check out our story on EV charger etiquette – so soon enough we were off on the last leg of our journey.
Ballina to Surfers Paradise
Readings from the car: 79% (388km) to 38% (unrecorded)
Actual kilometres driven: 131km
We got to our destination with 38% charge left and finally got to the beach!
At first I was surprised at the lack of chargers available in Surfers Paradise – there didn’t seem to be that many around – but when I looked at a map, there’s just as many public chargers as there are petrol service stations.
During our week holiday, we charged once at Pacific Fair which has fast charging available for all EVs as well as dedicated Tesla chargers. There’s also free level 2 charging available with a BYO cable.
The way back
Doing the trip in reverse to go home reduced some of the pre-planning – I figured we’d simply use the same chargers on the way back – but we did charge at different places.
Instead of Ballina we pulled off at New Italy – a strange and adorable little outpost on the Pacific Highway with lots of undercover fast chargers.
We stayed overnight at NRMA South West Rocks holiday resort so drove to Mackville for a charger on the way there. And the next day we drove home via Taree and Newcastle for top up charges.
