Shark’s electric shock
TV QUIZ KING BRYDON COVERDALE SAYS AN EV FAMILY ROAD TRIP IS SURPRISINGLY EASY
Brydon Coverdale prides himself on having all the answers as The Shark on television quiz show The Chase. But when he purchased a Tesla electric car and within a week decided to drive it 900km from Melbourne to Sydney via the east coast on a school-holiday family road trip, he felt nervous and had only questions about how complicated the trip might be in a fuel-free vehicle.
“We literally got the Tesla the week before and we weren’t sure about it, but thought we’d give it a go,” Coverdale says.
Coverdale, his wife Zoe and children Heidi, 7, Fletcher, 5, and youngest son Avery, 3, packed the car uncertain whether they might find themselves stuck in a remote spot without a charging option within cooee. They needn’t have worried.
“It really wasn’t a problem. Because we were so unfamiliar with it, we used an app called Plugshare gives you a map of all the charging spots pretty much all around the country. There’s different types of charges including what they call the Tesla superchargers, which are super fast ones. Twenty or 30 minutes on those was enough to get us from less than 50 per cent back up to 100 per cent.
“They’re strategically located but then there’s all these other ones along the way as well which might be at hotels or an RACV or NRMA site.”
He says with forward planning “there’s not a lot of places around where you wouldn’t find something”, and for long stretches, it’s comforting to know the car can also charge into a regular wall outlet as a backup.
Here are Coverdale’s top tips for a satisfying EV family road trip:
1 Plan it
Coverdale says people with petrol cars are used to there being petrol stations in every town, so you don’t have to think about it too much.
But with EVs, it’s a matter of planning as different terrains and conditions may result in using more power than expected.
“We would build our plans around the charging points by having lunch in this town where there’s a charger and the kids can play at the playground while we wait. You just sort of fit them into your schedule.”
He recommends using an app such as Plugshare to map the chargers and not letting your car charge get too low.
“Top up where you can so you don’t let the battery get down to ridiculously low levels – and it won’t take you as long to charge next time if you’re just topping up.”
2 Take in the locations
“This is not really a tip, but a definite benefit you should take advantage of. You can get one of the best parking spots around because of the chargers. When we were staying in Bondi, there was a charger in a prime parking spot on Bondi Beach. While we charged the car, we took the kids to the beach! You are not meant to leave it there once fully charged, but you can have an app on your phone that tells you how much the charge has got to go.
“So you can go and have dinner or go to the beach, check the app and find out how much longer it’s expected to take before going back.”
3 Power up as you drive
“The EV I own has regenerative braking, which means that as you slow down you’re actually feeding power back in to the car.
“It’s amazing technology where you’re accelerating out on the highway, and then you come to a hill and on the downhill you take your foot off (the accelerator) a bit.
“The car can still coast at a good speed, but because you’re not pressing the accelerator it is actually physically putting energy back into the battery.”
4 More space
Coverdale says his children enjoyed the trip because having storage at the front of the vehicle and a boot gave them more room in the back without being surrounded by luggage. They also liked having a screen in the car to stream shows.
5 Easy on the wallet
“We didn’t pay for petrol the whole way. You do have to pay for some of the chargers but you’re probably paying less than half of what petrol would cost.”
Since the trip, Coverdale has started using the app Powerpal to monitor electricity usage in real-time.
“What that has shown is that charging the car at home in a regular power-point costs about 60c per hour. For a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent it would probably cost us around $15,” he says.
He estimates two full charges equates to a similar range in kilometres to one $100 full tank of petrol in his previous SUV.