I finally remembered that our Seal has the OEM dashcam installed, so there would be video of our wallaby encounters between Tenterfield and Glen Innes during our drive back to Sydney from Brisbane. They hadn't been overwritten yet so I was able to grab the relevant bits.

The video quality is pretty rubbish but it's better than nothing, and the data overlay is neat.

#EV #EVRoadTrip #ElectricCar #BYD #BYDSeal

Home again. Our road trip from Sydney to Brisbane totalled 2616.9 km over 17 days. I noticed that the media were running their "long queues at EV chargers" stories again over the Easter long weekend so I'll just note that during our entire trip we had to wait for a charger a total of once, for 15 minutes. Most of the times I charged the car ours was the only car charging.

Today's drive from Glen Innes to Sydney went smoothly. We drove to Armidale where we charged and had an early lunch (including, for me, a massive coffee), then drove Thunderbolt's Way through Gloucester to Raymond Terrace where we topped up the car again and had dinner. After that it was just a boring drive down the Pacific Motorway to Sydney.

Minor rant again about the stupid Tesla chargers. Tesla took government subsidies to build these chargers and in exchange had to open them to non-Tesla cars, but they still insisted on placing the chargers between parking bays. The cables are just long enough to stretch across to the other side of the bay for cars that have their charging port on the other side but the main problem is that Tesla makes no effort to make it clear which charger is supposed to be used from which bay. No signage, no markings on the ground, you're just supposed to know. Consequently a lot of drivers of non-Tesla cars who either don't know or don't care just plug in whichever charger is nearest to their car's charging port, and if they use the wrong side then they effectively occupy two spaces. I saw two cars doing this today.

Tesla should put the chargers in the middle of the bay so the cable can easily reach either side and it's obvious which charger goes with which bay, but failing that they could at least put up some signs.

#EV #EVRoadTrip #ElectricCar #BYD #BYDSeal

So far so good. Charged at our favourite AmpCharge before leaving Brisbane, topped up at the awkward wrong-side chargers in Tenterfield, and made it to our motel in Glen Innes in time to go get a chicken parmi at the Railway Tavern.

In hindsight it would have been good to leave Brisbane about an hour earlier so that we'd have arrived in Glen Innes well before sunset. As it was we ended up driving the last half an hour or so during dusk and had several close encounters with wallabies between Tenterfield and Glen Innes. Nothing requiring full on emergency braking fortunately, but at one point we did have to quickly stop due to a group of 3 wallabies just standing in the middle of the road in front of us.

#EV #EVRoadTrip #ElectricCar #BYD #BYDSeal

The drive back to Sydney begins tomorrow. About 1000 km with an overnight stop in a motel in Glen Innes.

We could potentially save about 25 minutes by going back via Gloucester instead of Tamworth. There's some nice scenic bits that way, but more demanding driving and fewer good places to take a break. I'll see how I feel on the day.

#EV #ElectricCar #EVRoadTrip #BYD #BYDSeal