Electric vehicles: Man exposes glaring flaw in long-distance road trips

A number of Aussies have reported issues in landing a spot to recharge mid-trip in recent months, as sales hit all-time highs Down Under.

Jonathan Ross, a car reviewer, recently expressed his difficulties in finding a charging station in Perth for a $100,000 Kia EV6 electric car.

Ross documented his journey and review of the vehicle for his YouTube channel, Ross Reviews.

In the video, Ross can be seen driving to four different locations before finally finding a suitable charging station where he had to wait for about an hour for the battery to reach 80 per cent after waiting in a queue.

Ross expressed his frustration with the lack of available charging stations and the fact that the cost of recharging is equivalent to petrol.

He also showed his disappointment after driving five kilometres to an inadequate charging station that was only suitable for an electric scooter.

“It’s f***ing. It’s crazy man. This is what you call clown world,” he said in a recent TikTok video.

“Everyone here is waiting an hour and queuing up and waiting for others to charge.

“We’re still going to have to pay, you know, the same as petrol. Clown world.”

Social media users have also expressed their disappointment in the lack of available charging stations and their unwillingness to switch from petrol cars.

This growing frustration is becoming common among electric car owners in Australia, and Tesla drivers have faced similar issues during the Christmas holidays, with long queues at charging stations spotted nationwide.

However, an exclusive brief prepared for News Corp by Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub reveals the popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) surged in the past two years, with EV sales tripling from 6900 in 2020 to 20,665 in 2021.

This includes both Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs).

August, 2022 was a record-breaking sales month, according to the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries.

Tesla alone sold 3397 vehicles in Australia.

In June last year, an electric vehicle owner documented his trip to Sydney from Canberra in a Hyundai IONIQ 5, revealing the trials and tribulations he faced driving the $71,900 car.

TikTok user Suthocam said it took a full day to drive between the two cities and back again while searching for sparsely-located charging stations.

He said the trip was a reality check for electric car owners who do not have a vehicle compatible with Tesla’s supercharging network.

He said the IONIQ 5 has estimated range of 450km and was able to make the trip to Canberra in one charge, but he decided to top the battery up to allow him to drive the car around the city on arrival.

His first stop was a charging station in Goulburn, roughly 200km from Sydney — and the only available port was out-of-order.

The NRMA ChargeFox screen informed him his “station had faulted” and had not been fixed since the beginning of the year. Suthocam said he was forced to wait until an available port opened up.

The New South Wales government is now pledging to increase the number of electric vehicle chargers in the state from 1,000 to 30,000 as the vehicles are set to make up 50 per cent of new car sales by 2030.