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An Australian woman has exposed a major problem traveling across the country in an electric car after taking a short road trip to attend a wedding.
Property and stock investor Kristie Hannah drove her Tesla Model Y from Perth to Dunsborough, Western Australia, over the weekend.
Hannah rated the trip overall very highly, but revealed one issue that prevented the three-hour hike from being a perfect experience.
The car enthusiast found herself in trouble while trying to charge her car during the trip home.
Ms Hannah said she had difficulty finding available chargers and when she finally found them, they either didn’t work or had already been taken by other drivers.
Her lack of options meant she was forced to charge her car at Tesla-owned stations, which ended up costing her more than it would have at other generic stations.
Kristie Hannah (pictured), a Perth property and shares investor and proud electric vehicle owner, has revealed a glaring problem with public chargers.
Hannah told Daily Mail Australia that while she “loved her electric vehicle”, a lack of quality chargers prevented them from being reliable in rural areas.
“I think what’s missing at the moment is the lack of charging points… But the other thing is maintenance,” Ms Hannah said.
“It’s really annoying if you don’t time your entry, like if you approach a charging point and it turns out it’s not working and you don’t have much charge, you’re in trouble.”
After finding the only electric vehicle charger in use in Dunsborough, Hannah was forced to drive to the nearby Tesla Supercharger in Margaret River.
A video posted on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, shows his passing as a man stands in front of the charger looking confused.
When she returned to the Dunsborough charger the next day to recharge her batteries for the journey home, she was greeted with a faulty charger.
In another video, Hannah showed the charger screen telling her to unplug the car because it was already charged.
However, the Tesla only had 11 percent battery left.
The low levels caused Ms Hannah to suffer from “EV range anxiety”.
He said it was the lowest charge his car had ever had and he was lucky to have managed to get a working charger.
“I’m lucky because I live in Perth, close to the CBD, so I’m close to chargers or close to my house where I have an outlet to charge it,” he said.
On a previous trip to the area a few weeks earlier, he relied on the Tesla supercharger in Margaret River rather than the RAC network chargers.
Ms Hannah said Tesla Supercharging’s off-grid chargers are often out of service and lack the maintenance or infrastructure to be reliable.
He said he was left with 11 per cent after relying on a non-Tesla charger in Dunsborough, near Margaret River, and could barely reach a working charger for the trip home.
“There seems to be a lack of maintenance on the chargers, the facilities are there but they are out of service unless you are a Tesla guy,” he said.
“People don’t necessarily want to turn to Tesla chargers because they are faster but much more expensive than RACs.”
Despite the problem of finding a reliable charger, Hannah said the future of electric vehicles will remain bright if the right infrastructure is put in place.
“I think once people buy an electric vehicle or try it, their perspective on it will change,” he said.
After posting videos of the experience At its X on Tuesday, hundreds of Australians weighed in to give their opinion on the charger mishap.
‘If a system is complex and people have difficulty using it, people are not a problem. “This looks like horrible infrastructure,” said one user.
Another EV user said he “wouldn’t even think about using anything but the (Tesla) Supercharger at Eaton when going to Dunsborough and back.”
Others said car chargers in the state’s southwest had done more harm than good, noting they were more likely to not work.
Despite the problems with charging outside big cities, Hannah said the future for electric vehicles remains bright if the right charging infrastructure is introduced.
The stretch of 16 DC fast charging locations makes up the Royal Automotive Club (RAC) Electric Highway, built to help connect Perth EV drivers to rural coastal towns.
RAC chargers are produced by Brisbane-based company Tritium, which has been criticized for being unreliable at charging stations across the country.
The company’s CEO, Jane Hunter, responded to the criticism in January.
Hunter said the company had been hit hard by disruption to supply lines during Covid, which meant they were struggling for important parts such as semiconductors.
‘There is no doubt that we would have had a shortage of semiconductors during the worst of Covid. I would say they are getting better and better now,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
“We are more desperate than anyone for it to become a phenomenal user experience because it is our hardware that has negative connotations and we want it to be very successful.”
Daily Mail Australia has contacted RAC for comment.