If you are thinking about buying an electric vehicle (EV) at any point in the future, you might want to read this article to get some insight into what owning an EV might be like for you and your family. I have had my EV for over 3 years now and have a pretty good handle what it is like to be a complete novice owning a full electric vehicle … take a look at my journey!
I have turned my Facebook posts for each update into a full article. But I have linked to each post so you can read the comments on each – if you are interested.
Best type of EV for a Brisbane family
First of all, let me give you some background on what car I bought and why! As well as my personal situation.
After 1 month of owning an EV – 19 November 2022 – so exciting!
Post #1 – read and see the comments on Facebook here.
In October 2022 I bought a brand new, red 5 seater, MG ZS EV for $46,600. At the time, this was the cheapest brand new EV on the market. At the time I ordered it in May and it was delivered in October. I am not sure what timeframes are like now?? (Feel free to add a comment below if you know!)
I sold my 7 seater Mitsubishi Outlander (2020) for $34, 000. At the time the Queensland government was offering a $3, 000 EV vehicle rebate (later they offered another $3,000 rebate, so I got a total of $6, 000 in rebates). I applied for the rebate on a Sunday and it was in my bank on following Wednesday. So to upgrade to the EV cost me ~ $6, 000. That made it a lot less painful!!
Some other background about my car/personal situation:
- It has a range of ~ 320kms.
- I live in an apartment – with no charging at home.
- When I bought it, I walked to work/worked from home (unless it was raining) – which means I don’t use it much during the week.
- I’ve stopped watching the price of petrol.
There are many, many other options for families looking for electric vehicles – BYD, Polestar, Kia, Hyundai Ionic.. so many!! Before I bought mine, I joined this Australian EV Facebook group and the people in there are super helpful (because I’m super inexperienced and they are kind!)
At the bottom of this article, I have included a bunch of frequently asked questions – for anything I haven’t covered in my article!
Charging information
When I first got the car, I would ‘trickle charge’ (plug the car in to a normal house power point) when I visited friends and get about 3% per hour of charge. For friends who are on solar, this is free. For friends who aren’t this costs less than $1 an hour and I repay them with tasty treats and my sparkling company. 
But I don’t do that as much anymore. It is so slow and I am not usually at anyone’s place long enough for the couple of % I get!
I was also very lucky that for the first year, I charged FOR FREE at the public charger at the end of my street. This lasted for the first 12 months, then the owners converted it to a ‘paid for’ public charging station.
It takes me ~ 1 hour to charge on a fast charger (super fast chargers are even faster, but I’ve not used one yet!) and I watch something on my phone or scroll or read a book.
I use an app called ‘Plug Share‘ to find out where chargers are, and check-in to let people know that the charger is in use; I have already have learnt to roll my eyes and tsk at people who don’t. 
Below are my updates along my journey over the last 3 years – the good, the bad and the annoying!
After 3 months of owning an EV – 14 January 2023 – so fun!
Post #2 – read and see the comments on Facebook here.
I’ve had my electric car for 3 months now and did my first trip outside Brisbane yesterday.
I took the kids to Dreamworld yesterday.
Although I didn’t NEED to charge, on the way home, I thought I’d have a try of a public charger on the way home (first time ever using a paid public charger 
).
I pulled into the Pimpama Sports Hub just off the M1. I had the electric charging station’s ChargeFox app already installed on my phone so I just chose my charging station (they have 6!) plugged in and hit start. Super simple.
We popped into the sports hub cafe for ice cream for the kids and a coffee for me, (they have a little water play area for the kids in the sports centre that looked cool too!) and the toilets, then the kids hit the outside playground. The photos are above.
I started with 54% battery charge and took 40 minutes to get to 97%. If I was in a hurry (I wasn’t), I would have stopped after just 25 minutes at 80% but the kids were loving the playground and this was literally just an exercise in ‘how does this public charging station thing work?’ Cost $6.96.
Happy to say I nailed it, first attempt. 
So, in case anyone was wondering, Pimpama Sports Hub – 5 stars. Highly recommend.
After 4 months of owning an EV – 26 February 2023 – so fun!
Post #3 – read and see the comments on Facebook here.
If you’ve been following my EV journey with my MG, I went to the Gold Coast on the weekend with the kids and thought I’d give y’all a little update.
Firstly I want to tell you about a button I’ve only just found that switches the car between ‘eco’, ‘normal’ and ‘sport’.
So. Much. Fun!!
Eco means you get better mileage than normal, but sport is for beating other cars at the traffic lights. No petrol car has beaten me off the starting line. My car is very zoom zoom!!
Anyway… the latest trip…
I left home with 90% charge
I use an app called ‘A Better Route Planner’ that showed me my route from home to hotel would be 90%-60% and not require any charge as it was only 79kms
This means I could easily drive to the Gold Coast and back without ‘needing’ to charge.
It was a Friday afternoon and the traffic was AWFUL but EVs LOVE ‘stop/start’ traffic because the regenerative braking charges your battery as you slow down.
As a consequence, I actually arrived at the hotel with 66%.
The hotel I stayed at (Marriott, Surfers Paradise) had only Tesla charging stations 
and they said I’d need to bring my own cable (I researched buying a conversion cable: too expensive) so I didn’t charge at the hotel.
We walked around the Gold Coast so I didn’t use any battery.
On our way home I needed to pick something up from IKEA so stopped in.
I checked PlugShare App and noted IKEA had charging station
I decided to plug-in even though didn’t ‘need’ to charge
Plugged in, connected on the ChargeFox App and went to pick up my purchase, returned to car
51% -> 98% – took 42 minutes. Cost $6.81
Drove home.
I’m still yet to take a super long journey. But since buying my car in October 2022, I still have no regrets.
After 5 months of owning an EV – 1 March 2023 – so annoying!
Post #4 – read and see the comments on Facebook here.
My first a annoying/negative experience while driving my EV car today.
Y’all know I always give honest reviews, and tell it like it is… so here’s my first annoying EV experience.
Yesterday I was super busy. I went to my usual charging station to charge my car (because we were heading to the Gold Coast after school for the Harry Styles concert) and it wasn’t working!! So I couldn’t easily fast charge. Boo!!
I was at around 60% battery so we set off at 3.20pm to go to the Gold Coast. The traffic was AWFUL. Over 2 hours for a 1 hour trip. 
(This actually works in the favour of EV cars because of their regenerative braking systems but it was still super annoying!)
Arrived at the hotel with around 40% battery. I was going to charge at the Broadwater charging station but couldn’t be bothered (and genuinely wasn’t sure how comfortable I felt going there at night by myself).
I also had the option of charging at the hotel (Mantra @ Southport Sharks), but was too lazy to figure it out.
So this morning, I had a meeting at Griffith Uni and then drove back home to Brisbane.
I stopped to charge at Pimpama Sports Hub (again) but the charging station was not working. (Reported it to ChargeFox)
Was going to stop at IKEA to charge there but just before we got there someone else checked in and said they’d be there for an hour using the port I needed, and I had zero interest in waiting for an hour for them to finish!
So I just gave up and drove home (because I knew I had enough battery left to make it!)
Now here are a few things:
- 1) I KNEW I had enough battery to do the whole trip without charging
- 2) I COULD have charged (twice) on the Gold Coast but didn’t (I also had other options but didn’t explore them)
- 3) However, when I WANTED to charge at familiar charging stations, I couldn’t (which is annoying)
- 4) Broken infrastructure sucks!!
- 5) We definitely need more charging stations…. everywhere!!
I got home with 11% battery. So was in no way at risk of getting stranded, but still not how I’d usually want to travel.
EDITED TO ADD: as many people have pointed out, this is more of a review about my inexperience in understanding the availability of and how to use public charging stations than a reflection on the car or the charging infrastructure in SE QLD.
I still have no regrets going electric. 
10 months of owning an EV – 24 August 2023 – so far so good!
Post #5 – read and see the comments on Facebook here.
Last week I had to do a BIG drive (for me) and I was interested to see how I would go in terms of range and charging requirements.
I drove from Kelvin Grove – Gold Coast convention centre – Kelvin Grove – Northgate – Caloundra – Northgate – Kelvin Grove. Approximately 370kms!
I used the app ‘A Better Route Planner’ again to work out where and when to charge. (I didn’t really need it on this journey but nice to know it’s there!)
As I drive a MG EV – with a range of 360km in eco mode when charged to 100%, I knew I couldn’t do this journey without charging.
And I didn’t start the journey at 100%, I was only at 90%.
I decided to charge at Pimpama Sports Hub (my favourite public charging station… (who knew that one day I’d have a ‘favourite charging station’! )) on my way north in the afternoon. The stop added 39 minutes in total to my journey – this was coming off the highway, charging (29 minutes) and returning to the highway. It cost $5.10 and I topped up to ~ 80%.
What I’ve learnt about charging at roadside charging stations is that you don’t need to charge from ‘empty’ to ‘full’. You learn to just charge for ‘requirements’. And on this trip, I just needed a little bit more charge to get me to Caloundra without worrying.
After stopping in Brisbane to pick up the kids, we continued to Caloundra. We arrived with ~ 30% battery. I had booked a hotel for the Tuesday night (Ekka Weds was the public holiday) that allowed EV charging from their mains power – see photo. So I plugged in there overnight and by the time we left the next morning it was 91%. And it was FREE to charge there. 
We drove home (via Rollins Farms strawberry picking 
) with ease.
So, overall a great experience for my first jaunt across South East Queensland.
2 days of driving, only $5.10 and only an additional 39 minutes added to our journey. I’m cool with that.
Over 3 years of owning an EV – 29 December 2025 – so busy!
So life went on as normal and owning an EV has just slotted in as a normal part of our life now. We’ve had lots of holidays in it – all in SE Queensland, so I still have not done a super long journey with multiple charges. I have been using public charging stations for just over 2 years. I have noticed the price of them increasing HUGELY since I started using them. Check out my latest charge at an Evie charging station. This was for 1 hours and 11 minutes of charging!! Compare that to my earlier charges above! 🙁
Earlier this month we went to the Bunya Mountains where there are no public charging stations at all, so I bought a super long extension cord and trickle charged from our accommodation. I also learnt that going up hills (mountains) takes a lot more charge than any other type of driving. And when coming down the mountain you gain power to your battery. (Using the air-con or heating also uses more power too!)
For those interested, you can follow my travels on Instagram. I post about my trips with and without the kids.
Charging when on holidays/away from home
There are tonnes of public charging stations all over Australia now. The Queensland Government has created an electric super highway for the public to use which (at the time of writing) has 54 charging stations. On top of those, there are privately owned charging stations from companies like Chargefox, Evie, Elanga, AMPCharge, Jolt, BP Pulse and others. There are literally thousands of charging stations across Queensland now. You can find most of them on the Plug Share app.
I also look for holiday accommodation now that mentions EV charging is available. Whether that is with a fast charger or even if they allow trickle charging – it makes that kind of accommodation more appealing to me now.
Charging at home
Finally, this month, our apartment building has upgraded our electricity backbone across our building and I have paid $5, 000 to install a charging station in my underground parking spot! I used it for the first time yesterday! Yippeee… I am now living the dream – no more public charging stations when I am local. We are with Origin and our rate is 24.5 cents per KW hour. If I charge from 0% –> 100% (which I never do, but for reference) it costs me about $12. And I need to do this around once every 14 days.
If you live in a house there is no need to buy a fast charger (unless you want to), you can easily plug into your normal wall socket and charge overnight (for the off-peak electricity rate) and wake up to a full car! Good-bye visiting petrol stations ever again!!
I have owned my electric car for over 3 years now and I have ZERO REGRETS!!!
Frequently asked questions
I use the Plug Share app to find public charging stations when I travel. Most of them are in shopping centres or have shops, cafes and toilets nearby.
Yes – mostly. The prices are gone up considerable since I bought my car. I used to pay ~ $15 to go from 20% – 100% and now I pay ~ $28 for the same. A few universities offer free charging. They are often very busy.
Depending on the model you buy, all you need to do is use the ‘A Better Route Planner’ app mentioned above to plan your trip. It will do all the thinking for you about when and where to stop. All you need to do is plug in your destination and your car’s stats and it will tell you where and when to stop to charge. Superchargers charge extremely quickly – 10/20 mins and you’re on your way.
The same thing that happens when you run out of petrol. You stop! RACQ (and equivalent) can offer a charge top-up to enable the vehicle to be driven to the nearest accessible charging station if in range (where available) or towing to an accessible charging station or your destination in line with your roadside assistance entitlements.
Just like an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle you will suck more power when you drive up hills, use the air-con or the heater and when you have fully loaded vehicle.
Regenerative braking is when you take your foot off the accelerator the car’s braking system is automatically applied and it slows you down as if you were gently braking. This actually recharges the battery, reduces wear on your brake pads and means you often don’t need to brake going around corners as you learn when to raise your foot off the accelerator to glide. It’s fun!! It is a bit like a golf buggy or dodgem.
According to my research, the cars with the best range at the moment are:
* Tesla Model 3 Long Range RWD – 750km
* Polestar 3 Long Range Single Motor – 706km
* Polestar 2 Long Range Single Motor – 650km
* BMW iX xDrive50 – 620km
* Mercedes EQS – 631km
* MGS5 EV – 515kms
* Kia EV3 – 603kms
When I bought my car it was the cheapest on the market, but it also had the lowest range – but it was perfect for the driving I do.
As I said above, I joined the Australian EV Facebook group. I highly recommend you do that too! Read the previous posts and search your questions, I bet someone has the same question and it has been asked before. If not, pop your question in the group. They are very helpful!
