No drag, no noise

A few weeks after his first experience driving an electric car, AMA(SA) Councillor Dr Shriram Nath is a committed convert.

When my wife and I decided it was time for a new car, we test drove petrol vehicles and hybrids. Having chosen a Toyota hybrid, we discovered we’d have to wait a year to collect it. So, we kept looking – and broadened our search to include electric cars.

During COVID-19, I had heard of the BYD brand, an EV Chinese company with what appeared to be an excellent compact SUV. One day, driving along Main North Road at Menindie, I saw a sign advertising the BYD-experience Centre.

My wife’s first question was about the European New Car Assessment Programme (ENCAP) rating of the car. When persuaded it has a 5-star Australian New Car Assessment Programme (ANCAP) rating, she was ready for a test drive.

We went and saw the car in the BYD experience centre. On initial inspections, we were impressed by the interior finish of the car and the boot space was adequate. We booked for a test drive the following weekend.

It was a new experience for us. We had never driven an electric car. But the instructions were simple, so we decided to head for the (Adelaide) Hills.

The first thing we noticed that there is a touch-screen display screen which we communicated with the car. The absolute essential buttons like answering the phone were on the steering wheel.

My wife was the initial driver and pushed the pedal from 60 km to 100 km on M1. The feeling was enthralling – there was no drag, no noise suggesting the car struggling to go up the hill.

During that drive, the car sold itself. Two weeks later, we picked up our own new EV.

It has been a big steep learning curve (but joining the BYD owners’ Facebook pages for Australian and local owners has been very helpful). A new owner has to undergo a range anxiety (how much the car will go on a single charge) which we’ve learned usually lasts for about a month. To break the range anxiety in the second week, we decided to take a long drive over the weekend to a town we’ve never before visited, Kaniva in the South East.

You can’t jump in an EV and expect a destination charger to be present in every town like a petrol pump station – at least, not yet. We were advised to download the ‘plug share app’, which tells us where we can recharge our car). As with petrol cars, the range claimed by the manufacturer is never the same as the car delivers.

We learned to consider what drains the battery – not just driving, but air conditioning, seat heating, the radio. Climbing a hill used more energy. Regeneration occurs when the car breaks and feeds back to the battery.

Kaniva is about halfway to Melbourne, just over 300 km from the Adelaide CBD. There was a destination charger in Kaniva and the motel we were going to stay overnight had a trickle charger (when you charge at a slow rate in a three-point AC plug).

We started midday and set the cruise control at 100 km/hour to increase the range. We drove past Murray Bridge, Tailem Bend, Keith and Bordertown; my calculations told me we should be able to reach Kaniva without a recharge. It was nerve wracking - when we reached Kaniva there was 5% charge remaining! But my range anxiety disappeared.

Looking to celebrate on a wintry day, we walked to the local pizza shop for a late lunch.

Kaniva is a rural town in Western Victoria. Grazing sheep are still very much part of a sustainable agricultural future for this area, with efforts to improve both soil health and plant biodiversity.

In 2010, local artist Sharon Merrett inspired a community-led public arts project to celebrate the town's sheep heritage. Now, the Sheep Art Trail that winds along the town’s streets features murals, tours and a wool stencil wall, recording over 100 property wool stencils. All sheep have been painted by local Kaniva artists and community groups, aged between eight and 80. If a visitor has the time, they can count the 57 sheep, four lambs and two sheep dogs.

We’ve learned that it is good manners to log-in to the plug share app while charging so other EV car owners can message you about charger availability or if you need help. No one was waiting, but a lady approached and started asking about the car and what we thought about it. This is common for EV owners, but for us it was yet another new experience.

The next day morning, we took the car to the destination 50 KW fast Evie DC charger. No car in sight meant we didn’t have to wait. Once we’d figured out what to do, it did take some strength to pull the tethered type-2 cable from the charger and connect to the car,

It took about one hour to charge. We walked again, this time past the Kaniva puppet shop where we saw on display the 40,320-piece jigsaw puzzle, which the Guinness Book of World Records has confirmed as the largest commercially made puzzle in the world, both in number of pieces and overall size at that time.

After a sumptuous breakfast, we headed for the Kaniva Silo, where David Lee Pereira has painted the Australian hobby bird, a relatively slender and long-winded member of the Falconidae family, the scented sun orchid (Thelymitra megacalyptra) to its left and the salmon sun orchid (Thelymitra rubra) on the right. The silo art is a tribute to the Little Desert National Park in the Mallee region of Victoria, home to 600 species of native plants, 220 s of birds and 60 native mammals and reptiles.

On the drive back, I could not help noticing the petrol stations I passed. The South Australian Government has provided the RAA with $12 million to work with Chargefox and install fast chargers in South Australia. The aim is that in the next two years, RAA/ Chargefox will install 536 EV charging points at 140 locations to create the state’s first EV charging network. More than threequarters of the sites will be in regional areas. The maximum distance between charging points will be less than 200 km – half the range of a typical EV car battery.

We decided to charge our EV at the Murray Bridge RAA ultra-fast charger. Within 30 minutes, the battery was full.

Paying at these and other EV chargers is through the individual companies’ apps. What did it cost us? I paid $10 for the trickle charge at the Kaniva Motel, and for an hour at the Kaniva charging station, $19.32 (38.646 kWh@ $ 0.50/kWh). At Murray Bridge, 45 minutes cost $21.44 (44.66 kWh@ $ 0.60/kWh, with 20% discount for RAA members included). Total cost $50.76 for a 700 km round trip.

We had recharged ourselves by the weekend trip and it was fun to break the range anxiety phenomenon. We also had the chance to show the car to AMA(SA) President Dr John Williams after our August Council meeting. He was excited sitting in the BYD and recounted his trips to Laos where BYD is popular and says he’s seriously considering an EV journey drive to Adelaide from Port Lincoln.