We live in Central West Victoria, and last week we had to head across to near Mt Gambier to pick up a new old dog.
(Meet Cassie - 6.5 year old, retired breeding female)
Given all the "horror" stories you hear about range anxiety (which we don't have) and chargers being out of action (which we have seen), we did a bit of pre-planning for the trip. Well I say pre-planning, we got a route plotted out by Google that included charging stations, and headed off first thing in the morning.
Car was fully charged before we left the front door - which is around 420ks. Which "technically" could have meant we could make it to the supercharger site in Mt Gambier, but we were well aware our bladders wouldn't have a bar of that.
So first stop was Dunkeld
where there was a particularly good cafe, and a coffee caravan in the main street. Good loo just near the charger as well. 30 or so minute stop - so a good top up.
Then we stopped in at Dartmoor - charger in this case is positioned right out side the public toilets and was the perfect distance for another driver change and a quick charge top up.
No cafe this time, but we were starting to hit the timeline that we needed to be in Mt Gambier for so we pressed on.
Then into Mt Gambier, and 15 minutes out the other side to collect the dog. Back into Mt Gambier and this time we did a full charge at the supercharger so we could walk her, have another drink and a snack and head for home.
https://www.tesla.com/en_au/findus/location/supercharger/teslasamountgambiersupercharger
(sorry forgot to take a photo....) It's at the OTR - easy to find.
We then stopped at Dunkeld again on the way back to give us all a loo break and because the charger was there, topped up.
In total we drove around 700ks. We charged the car 4 times (three of which were more about our bladders and caffeine addiction than they were about the need to charge the car).
Observations:
If charging apps / sites tell you the charger is coming - check the comments. They are often out of date.
It cost us around $40 in charging costs. Given we normally charge the car at home off our solar system, that was an expensive trip for us....
We worked out that if we still had our previous diesel car the same trip would have been around $100 being generous with the pricing / mileage of what was by then an aging car.
Overall the drive was unbelievably easy. We swapped drivers regularly but given our advancing age, we both got home without any aches and pains and nowhere near as tired as we should have been. And the last hour or so was through heavily populated kangaroo country - which is normally so mentally draining you can arrive home from the local pub with dishragitis.
The dog, by the way, is fabulous. She's interactive, bright, friendly, smart as a whip and has slotted into the madhouse really well in under a week.
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