If you’re an electric vehicle skeptic, you may not like what you’re about to read.
The first electric car I drove had a real-world driving range of less than 150km. I had genuine concerns that it wouldn’t make it to and from the office when I took it home that first night. It also had all the charisma of a block of wood. It really was like driving a glorified golf cart. So I understand why there are so many skeptics about electric vehicles (EVs).
But, boy, have they come a long way in a short frame of time. The rapid rate of development across the EV market is nothing short of remarkable. In the past decade brands as diverse as Toyota and Rolls-Royce have entered the market and battery technology has rocketed forward at breakneck speed (as have acceleration times).
But still, the number one remark I get asked whenever I test drive an EV is – ‘it looks fine on paper, but you can’t drive it from Melbourne to Sydney, can you?’
Well, after years of being asked that question, I finally had the opportunity to put it to the test. With some help from Porsche, a plan was hatched to take the German firm’s new all-electric Macan from Porsche Australia HQ in Melbourne and drive all the way to Sydney.
The challenge
The plan itself is relatively simple – drive from Porsche Centre Melbourne to the heart of Sydney. It’s a journey of approximately 870km and one I have driven on many occasions, but never without an engine.
The challenge, therefore, was to work out the real-world range of the Macan and see if there were enough charging stations dotted along the freeway to ensure we could make it all the way. The added layer of difficulty was to add in a detour and do the whole thing in one day, otherwise that would feel like cheating. After all, a petrol, diesel or hybrid vehicle would have no trouble getting it done in a single day, right?
The challenger
My vehicle for this long-distance experiment was the entry-level model in the Macan range, known simply as the Porsche Macan. It has a single-motor, rear-wheel drive powertrain and is capable of making 265kW of power, has a top speed of 220km/h and can race 0-100km/h in just 5.7 seconds.
But none of that is actually important for the purposes of our journey – this is a marathon, not a sprint. Instead, the important specifications are the 100kWh battery and its ability to take the battery from 10-80 per cent in just 21 minutes on a DC fast charger.
The claimed driving range on a single charge is 654km, but that is a laboratory test cycle and doesn’t factor in many of the elements we will face on our drive, including cold weather, consistent high-speed running and the air-conditioning cranked to stay warm.
So, realistically, we’re aiming for around 350-400km between our stops, so we can fast charge and make shorter stops.
At least, that is the plan as we set off…
Off and running
One of the lessons my day taught me was to always start a road trip early. Unfortunately he didn’t explain that to me, he just made me and the rest of the family get up early and jump in the car in order to clear the city limits and hit the highway as early as possible.
It’s a good plan for our road trip, as we’re going mid-week, and therefore will need to skip the morning commuter traffic as much as possible. It was a nice theory, but even a 7am departure isn’t enough to avoid some traffic jams and unfortunately we’re behind schedule by an hour or so before we’ve even left Greater Melbourne.
But this time in Melbourne does give me a chance to enjoy the new Macan. Obviously the switch to electric-powered was controversial and there’s no doubt it is a more expensive proposition. It’s also a better proposition, a better vehicle.
Porsche has retained the elements that made the Macan so beloved – performance, dynamics, compact dimensions – and just flipped the powertrain. It actually offers more performance and does so in a more relaxed and effortless manner.
The lack of a petrol engine will no doubt irk some, but for those interested in the end result and not how you achieve it, it’s hard not to like the new Macan.
A lesson in thermodynamics and aerodynamics
As we begin to leave Melbourne behind the Victorian weather is up to its usual end-of-winter tricks and a cold fog rolls in. The outside temperature drops to low single digits and I notice the ‘range’ on the battery has reduced a noticeable amount.
As a helpful experiment we actually have two Macan on this road trip – a completely standard example and the one I’m driving, which features an official Porsche accessories roof box.
I’m not a scientist or an engineer, but even I know that two of the biggest enemies of EV range are cold and drag. Which explains why my Macan has a lower driving range than its more streamlined sibling.
Even as the time goes by and the temperature rises, it becomes clear that the roof box is causing so much drag at 110km/h it is draining the battery noticeably faster.
Immediately my mind begins to run the numbers and while I’m also not a mathematician, even I can work out the ‘distance-to-empty’ doesn’t match the ‘distance-to-location’ that we planned for our first charge.
But this doesn’t stop me from taking my planned detour off the freeway and into rural Victoria for one of my road trip favourites – a country bakery. I mean, if you’re going to spend all day behind the wheel, it isn’t just the car that needs to be fully charged.
I head for Beechworth and as I do I notice the battery is continuing to deplete at a faster rate than expected, but that actually turns out to be far less of a problem that the naysayers will have you believe.
You see, while the freeway now bypasses almost every small town between the two big cities, there are still reasons to visit these little towns. And knowing that they need something to lure in ‘city folk’ to visit, many of these towns now have EV chargers.
This includes Beechworth, so while I head to the bakery to stock up on snacks, the Macan can be replenished with enough charge to get us back on track.
Plan B, Plan C and Plan D
While obviously unplanned, and in theory isn’t a great advertisement for electric vehicles, there’s a surprising silver lining to this unexpected change of plans.
That’s because this brings up the most important topic around EVs and long-distance trips – range anxiety. The idea that you will run out of charge and be stranded by the side of the road.
Of course, if you run your car out of petrol or diesel you’ll also end up by the side of the road, but there’s obviously more service stations along the Melbourne-to-Sydney freeway. Except, there’s also a lot of EV chargers now too.
There are chargers at many of the same service stations you’d stop to fill up – Albury-Wodonga, Holbrook, Tarcutta, Gundagai, Yass, Goulburn and so on, all the way to Sydney. So the idea of ‘range anxiety’ should be a thing of the past.
Even with the Macan not able to achieve its optimum range because of the roof box, there was never any doubt in my mind that the car wouldn’t make it between any of these stops.
Final stretch
With the question of range sorted and the free availability of chargers along the route, it was time to soak up the kays and watch the stunning Australian landscape roll by the windows.
It may be electric, but the Macan has no trouble ticking off the miles as I get closer and closer to Sydney.
For the final stop we chose the chargers at Sutton Forrest, about two hours south of Sydney. Interestingly, after a day of having no trouble charging both cars wherever we arrived, three of the four bays are occupied now that we’re closer to the urban sprawl.
Even so, the speed of the chargers and the ability for the Macan to take the full complement of electricity means the stops are never that long. Our longest charge is around 30 minutes, but that’s the ideal amount of time to take a comfort break, grab a bite to eat and generally follow the principles of the ‘stop, revive, survive’ safety messaging.
In many respects, the EV road trip is safer, because it effectively forces you to take longer breaks, not just a ‘gas and go’ pitstop. Of course, if that’s your thing, good luck to you, but that just turns road trips into big commutes rather than an adventure.
Lessons learned
As we get closer and closer to Sydney, slowing from 110km/h down to 80km/h on the motorways the range noticeably improves to the point that even with the roof box my Macan has the same kWh usage and the same distance-to-empty as the other Macan.
Clearly a roof box is not the ideal accessory for maximum efficiency and longest range, but even with it adding drag, it didn’t make a dramatic difference to our overall journey – just one extra top up and then it only required the same charging as the other Macan.
Of course, there’s no doubt EVs are best suited to the city but this road trip proves that even in a country as vast as Australia modern electric cars, like the Macan, are more-than-capable of managing these day-long drives.
The idea that Australia is dramatically lacking EV charging infrastructure is hard to argue. The amount of chargers along the highway is now perfectly adequate for the volume of EVs on our roads, so no-one should fear getting stuck if they put in even the basic level of road trip planning.
Would I recommend a Macan to someone doing lots of cross-country trips on a regular basis? Probably not. But I also wouldn’t recommend a Porsche 911 GT3 to someone looking for a family car. It’s a ‘horses for courses’ world we live in today with the volume and breadth of cars available to us.
But I would have no hesitation telling anyone with a Macan, or a similar EV, to take a road trip. Leave the city behind and hit the open road, because like any Porsche, the Macan is made for driving anywhere, anytime.
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