We bought an electric car; not a swasticar, but a Hyundai Kona. We have had it for three months and up until today had only driven it about 1500 km. On Friday we drove to Sydney to see family, and never having driven more than about 20 km in one hit, a drive of some 350 kms was taken on with some nervousness. This was not due to what has been termed ‘range anxiety’ as we knew there were charging stations along the way, one group of which was at Pheasants Nest, where we used to stop for lunch and a coffee when travelling with the eleven-year-old Mazda we used to own. The nervousness was mostly about how the vehicle would handle, and our relative unfamiliarity with it, especially with all the bells and whistles which we are still learning how to use (the vehicle’s user manual is 600 pages!).
On reaching Pheasants Nest we parked in one of the four vacant charging stations, plugged the vehicle in, signed in with the Ampol app on the phone, made sure charging was under way, went into the building, used the rooms of easement, ordered a chicken and salad wrap each and a coffee each and sat down at one of the few vacant tables and munched and sipped away, all the while keeping an eye on how the charging was progressing on the car app on the phone. Everything is monitored by apps these days!
After about 50 minutes, the battery was at 90% charge, which would give us another 360 kms range, so the remaining 125 kms to Sydney was easily managed. We charged the car again in Sydney before we headed off back down the road to Canberra, and topped-up again at Pheasants Nest.