Three years ago, I had my first experience with an electric vehicle (EV). It wasn’t a pure-blood EV — it was a muggle, or as they call it in the automotive industry, a ‘hybrid’, a vehicle that uses both electricity and petrol.
That time, I drove two hours from Sydney to stay at a tiny house in the remote countryside (you can read about that tiny house and EV experience here). The experience was organised for a journalist like me to get a good feel of the car. Fast forward to last month, three years later, and I got to do it again — and it was vastly different this time.
For starters, the experience was open to the public — a collaboration with Volvo Car Australia and Into the Wild, available for bookings now, starting at $349 per night. You can book the tiny house, located in the NSW town of Hampton, near the Blue Mountains, on its own or with a Volvo EX30, the brand’s most eco-friendly car.
When I arrived at the tiny house — named Astrid, most tiny houses have names — I found it was similar to the last one. Built mostly from recycled materials, it featured a wooden deck running its length and a Scandi-style hot tub out front. You could park your car right next to it, which made it easy to unload luggage.
Inside was a loft with a bed, windows on either side and, conveniently, night lights on both sides of the bed. Downstairs, it had a lounge area, kitchen (no dishwasher) and bathroom with a toilet you dropped sawdust into after you used.
Like with the last EV, it was hard to tell the Volvo EX30 was even on, it was that silent. The big difference I noticed between the two experiences was the charging — how much more accessible it was now.
The Volvo EX30 promises 413-420km of driving from a full charge. This would have been enough to get me from Sydney CBD to the tiny house in Hampton and back, but I drove it around a bit beforehand, using up some of the battery.
Three years ago, charging stations were few and far between. I didn’t need to charge the car — though I’d used up the electric battery, I still had a full tank of petrol — but I’d just wanted to experience charging. I’d found one on the side of the busy road, pulled over to charge and sat for 10 minutes while the charger added the tiniest amount of battery juice.
This time, the experience was worlds apart. I searched “EV charging station” or “EV chargers near me” on Google Maps and was pleasantly surprised at how many charging stations now came up. They were also labelled — slow, medium, fast and super fast.
I charged the car in the outdoor car park of a shopping area with a Woolies — at a station labelled “fast charge”. I downloaded an app for the charging station brand, Evie, to pay and, like last time, attached the charger like you would a petrol pump. I left the car charging but locked, and went to shop at Woolies while I waited. The Evie app showed me in real time how much charge the battery had.
By the time I’d finished shopping, the car was back to a comfortable charge level, ready for the journey back to Sydney. On the drive back, I thought about how I’d witnessed firsthand the evolution of sustainable travel in just three years.
Sustainable travel is now being packaged up so eco-conscious consumers can easily book. Sydney and its surroundings are getting more infrastructure to support these travellers who care about the carbon footprint. Many tiny houses and other styles of accommodation are now equipped with charging stations. The experience showed me the future is electric and it’s surprisingly smooth.
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