Posted by How practical is it to travel around Tasmania in an electric vehicle in 2026? My answer is that with a little planning it’s pretty simple, but you do need to charge regularly. Read on to for an example of a recent trip I just did to see what it’s like … at least for me.
It’s not like I was watching the clock, and yet I sort of was, so when it hit noon at Friday I had a small jump of joy inside as I brought the meeting I was in to a close, packed up my stuff and practically ran out the door.
It was Friday 19 December 2025 and I now had three and a half weeks leave in front of me.
I was home a bit after 1pm, and by 2.15pm, I had the kayak, bike and all my camping gear loaded in the car and I was on my way to the west coast for 2 or 3 days of exploring. But that will be covered in other posts. This post is about what it’s like to travel with an EV in Tasmania today, so here is the bones of what the trip looked like in terms of travelling in an EV …
I had charged up the car on solar (with a small 40 minute boost, mainly from solar and the home battery, when I got home from work to put back in that small amount of use) so headed off from home with a full battery.
Two and a bit hours and some 180kms later, I pulled into the 50kw charger at Derwent Bridge, and stopped there for 25 minutes (23 minutes charging) putting in 17.16kWh at a cost of $11.16. I had a small problem here with the charger initially not connecting (it showed 90% charge when I plugged in which was not right), but after plugging in a second time it kicked off perfectly.
I could have walked the 450m up the road to the cafe for a coffee, but instead I just had a toilet stop and worked through the 57 emails which had appeared in my inbox since leaving work 4 hours earlier. I unplugged the car when I got to the end of my emails, and continued on. I think I had gone from around 40% to 70% charge.
Another hour and 86kms further on, I pulled into the Queenstown 50Kw charger at about 6.25pm. I was lucky on this one as just as I was coming in Queenstown, a tesla vehicle pulled out in front of me, but for some reason they took a slightly longer route to the charger, and so I ended up getting there and plugged in just before them. If not, I could have been waiting 30+ minutes while they charged.
As it was, I explained to them that I needed to put a decent charge into the BYD as it would be a while before the next charger, and they weren’t too fussed as they were staying in Queenstown for the night and were happy to come back.
So I put the car on charge (ended up being for 37 minutes and 26.32kW = $17.11) as I walked up to the local IGA and did some grocery shopping for the next couple of days, ordered a pizza for dinner, returned the groceries to the car (and put them in the car fridge) and then as no one was there waiting for the charger, I walked back into town and got my pizza. That all took the 37 minutes above, and the car was back up to 93% charge, so I headed off to my planned destination for the night – Lake Macintosh campsite.
I arrived there just before 8pm only to find that I couldn’t actually get to the campsite (or my launch point for tomorrow’s paddle!) as the spillway was flooding and the gate closed.
This was a major problem. I backtracked to Tullah, but Tullah lodge was charging $197 for a room for the night (which was reasonable for this time of year, but a bit rich for me) and so I drove to my backup campground to find it overflowing with people … hmmm.
I backtracked to the local Tullah (slow 22kW charger) and put the car on charge while I tried to figure out what to do (it was about 8.30pm by this stage). I went for a walk (and then ride) around Tullah to see if I could find anywhere to quietly put up a tent, but not seeing anywhere I liked, I ended up heading back to the original ‘backup’ campsite and putting up my tent there for the night in a small spot I had originally rejected. I was on the charger for 40 minutes (14.9kWh. cost $8.18).
Actually got a pretty good nights sleep, but was up fairly early and back at the charger at 6.25am. Didn’t really need to charge as I think I had about 80% charge, but there were also good clean toilets here (just don’t talk to me about getting the App for after hours access to work) and a picnic area behind the complex where I could have a nice breakfast and coffee. Took 35 minutes to fully charge the car (13kWh. cost $7.15) which was pretty much exactly the time it took me to have breakfast and coffee and decide what I was going to do for the day.
Basically headed out for an (unsuccesful) attempt at getting to Harman Falls before returning to Tullah for a late lunch at Tullah Lodge and another top up charge (27 mins 10.3kwH, Cost $5.66) while I tried to figure out what to do next …
Ended up throwing my plans out the window and drove to Sheffield with the plans of paddling up Lake Barrington the next day to visit Forth Falls.
After settling into my hotel, I went into town to grab some dinner, and decided to put the car on charge as th car was back down around 60% and the charger is really well located in the centre of town. However, I ended up grabbing some quick takeaway so was only charging for 8 minutes (3.1kWH, Cost $1.72). This is another slow charger (24kW).
Next morning, I headed back to the Sheffield charger while I had a lazy breakfast at the bakery (48 mins, 18.1 kWh, cost $9.94) and then drove out to Lake Barrington for a great mornings paddle.
Just for the record, as well as registering on plugshare (so if people indicate they are waiting for a charge, you get an alert), I now have a printed piece of paper which I put on my dashboard when doing longer charges which has my mobile number and first name on it and invite people to text or call me if they urgently need to charge.
After the paddle, I had enough charge to comfortably get me back to Campbell Town (this I was on 38% when I got there) where I hit my first charging issue. The Evie chargers are real fast chargers (up to 350kW, but for BYD Atto 3’s they max out at about 89kWhH which is the vehicles maximum charge rate) and there were two cars on the chargers, and one more in line in front of me. Thankfully, both cars moved off within 5 minutes and so the wait to get a charger wasn’t too long. There were however still more cars waiting behind me, and just really goes to show we need more chargers at Campbell Town desperately.
The other big gripe I had here was with the Evie Charger App. I had been using it to check availability and charge on the cars that were charging, but then when I drove to the charger and plugged in to start charging, it then asked me to log in (why couldn’t it have done it as soon as I opened the App?).
Then started the dance of it requiring two factor authentification, so it sent me an email … which never arrived, so getting increasingly flustered as I imagined those in the waiting vehicles scowling at me, I had to create a new account which I tried to link to my PayPal account … but that also wanted to do two factor authentification which wouldn’t work, so I had to back track out of that to use ApplePay which finally worked.
Why, oh why, is it so complex to just plug in a car and charge it!!!
Anyway, I was on the charger for 27 minutes (26.9kW, cost $19.38) which was how long it took me to go to the toilet, wander across to LiveEat to get a wrap and drink and wander back to the car) and was back up to 71% charge, which was more than enough to get me home (still had 39% charge when I pulled into the driveway).
Total driving distance was over 800kms, and other than a couple of random stops at Tullah, most of the charging was easily fitted into normal stops I’d make to shop, eat or go to the toilet.
Sure it probably added an hour or two to the trip than if I had a petrol car, but over a three day period, none of it was a chore, and there was no where along the trip that I felt like I couldn’t make it to the next charger (even with a large sea kayak and bike impacting my range). Just regular, short charging, trying to keep enough charge in the battery in case a charger was broken somewhere along the line.
But, gee it would be good to see more fast chargers (50kwh+) and more of them in key locations.