On Thursday I started charging from around 75% up to 100%. And of all the days this week it was the most cloudy, with the least amount of solar.
Why was it lowest on Thursday 😒
Lunchtime on Friday and I started packing, managed to get almost everything in the boot. It definitely has more space than my Subaru, but I managed to be taking far too much stuff with me. I told the car I wanted to head to my hotel in Albury. It said I would arrive with -22% charge and it gave me route with a stop in Tarcutta - almost exactly 2 hours out of Canberra. It thought I would only need 15min in Tarccutta to get to Albury with a decent margin.
The first estimate of range while I was making my way out to the Barton was I would arrive in Tarcutta with 28% charge.
I passed a sign that said it was 263km to Albury and I had 290km of range. But I was always going to stop in Tarcutta.
The next estimation was 33% charge in Tarcutta, then 37%.
43% remaining
I got to Tarcutta with 45% charge remaining and hooked up to one of the fast chargers. Swiped the RFID card. And the charged whirred into life. After just a moment it was replenishing the battery at 150kW or over 500km / hour. I waited 20min, which was around 30kWh, disconnected, and was on my way again.
I then played the game of watching the estimated charge remaining at my destination increase the closer I got.
Just outside of Albury an almighty storm blew through. A few folks had decided the rain was too heavy and intense to drive in and had pulled off to the side of the road. I am now very confident the car has no leaks at all.
That was rather intense
I got the hotel, one I had selected because they had EV charging. I had called ahead to check what type of charging they had, and had been told the ‘proper charger’ wasn’t available, but there was a plug. The rain was still teeming down after I checked in, so charging with the standard AC cable wasn’t an option. I wouldn’t have minded leaving it plugged in over night to charge, but it was not safe to do so in an uncovered carpark with driving rain.
45% remaining on arrival in Albury
I checked for chargers close by where I could leave my car and get something to eat. There was a NSW Gov public charger in a multistorey carpark close by. This was the first time using my CCS2 - CCS2 cable. The chargers were relatively slow, only 7kW. I wandered off to eat. I was hoping I’d be gone long enough to get up to maybe 50 or 60% charge, but 7kW was quite slow, and I didn’t hang around for ages eating. I can see these being a great option if you were to leave your car there for a couple of hours while shopping, but I really wanted to get more of a charge before the morning.
Car connected to a slow BYO-cable public charger
Down the road in Wadonga there were a couple of DC fast chargers so I headed off to find one. It was another Evie charger in a carpark. This one was ‘only’ 50kW, but that is a lot faster than running off AC. I plugged in, swiped the RFID card and all the relays in the charger and the car made the appropriate clunk noises.
While I was watching a TV show on phone a Nissan Leaf pulled into the bar next to me. There was only one charger, but it had two plugs, and the Nissan Leaf just happens to be basically the only other vehicle in Australia to use the other type of plug. When they plugged in their car the charging rate halved on my car to 25kW. I was only a few minutes away from the end of the TV episode I was watching, and around 90% charge.
Humming along at 50kW
I noticed a new icon on the main infotainment display - swiping down the notification shade there was a software update. I love software updates. I want to install the software update! But maybe halfway between home and Melbourne was not the best time nor place to install it. That will just have to wait.
I unplugged, and headed off back to the hotel in Albury - booking a hotel for EV charging was a good idea, maybe. But not a necessity, and I think on the return journey I wont bother - I’ll probably just spend the 25min topping up the battery before going to a (cheaper) hotel.
My last few trips to and from Melbourne I have split over two days, leaving Canberra in the afternoon and arriving before lunch the next day. Breaking the drive means when I get to Melbourne I am not completely wiped out and am able to actually do things as soon as I arrive. It does make the drive a lot more relaxing.
After spending a pleasant afternoon in the C40 I can say it is wonderful for longer trips. Very comfortable, and quiet, and easy to drive. I enjoy having my media up on the main screen (either CarPlay or just Bluetooth) and the navigation on the instrument cluster in front of me.