The Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars podcast – Episode # 134 – Electric Charging infrastructure, and the VAN MAN!

Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars — Episode 134

Podcast: Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars
Episode: 134 – Electric Charging infrastructure, and the VAN MAN!
Published: 24 August 2026
Hosts: Trevor Long & Stephen Fenech

[00:00:01] Trevor Long: This is Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars with Stephen Fenech and Trevor Long, thanks to NRMA Insurance and Uniden. Great people, NRMA Insurance, helping Australians protect what matters most for 100 years and many more to come, we're sure. They're also one of Australia's largest insurers of electric vehicles. And Uniden, the great dash cams that'll help keep you a bit of peace of mind on the road. What's happening? What happened?

[00:00:25] Stephen Fenech: Your eyes and ears on the road.

[00:00:27] Trevor Long: You can't just tell your wife what happened.

[00:00:29] Stephen Fenech: Front and rear camera, front and rear, make sure you've got that evidence.

[00:00:31] Trevor Long: Because those rear crashes are some of the most common that occur. Coming up today, we're going to talk to Nick Black again from Ausgrid. We spoke to him, I think, many months ago. But let's talk about the market, the charging infrastructure. We're going to talk about pole-side charging and a range of other things. I'm going to hit him up about vehicle-to-grid.

[00:00:50] Stephen Fenech: V2G. Oh, me too. I'm keen to hear what he has to say about that.

[00:00:55] Trevor Long: And I wanted— I found a little graph on LinkedIn I want to talk you through, Stephen, which talks about the charging, public charging infrastructure across Australia. So we'll talk about that, plus your calls, and we'd love to hear from you. 0477 657 657, right here on Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars.

[00:01:21] Stephen Fenech: Oh, she missed it.

[00:01:22] Trevor Long: Oh, it's Stephen.

[00:01:23] Stephen Fenech: Too slow on the draw, mate. That's all good. That's okay. You can see me in the wide shot.

[00:01:27] Trevor Long: All good. So people can enjoy your entertaining moves. You wanna do some moves now?

[00:01:31] Stephen Fenech: I'm just trying to keep up my energy levels, mate. Here we go. Woo!

Nick Black — Ausgrid’s EV charging & grid infrastructure rollout

[00:01:34] Trevor Long: Woo! Let's go! 0477 657 657. If you wanna have your energy levels boosted by Stephen Fenech, we'll get you on the show. We'd love to talk EVs. Yes. No matter what's on your mind, whether it's a new car you've got, you wanna talk about the dealership experience, you wanna talk about the troubles you've got finding a great car for you, or charging infrastructure, charging ideas, we wanna hear from you 'cause we love hearing what's happening in the real world out there. From real people who are either in the market or in the game already. Now, we spoke once before to Nick Black from Ausgrid about just charging generally and infrastructure and deployment of electricity around the grid, as is an important part of their role. And he's back on the line now. Nick is the head of fleet logistics and electric vehicle charging for Ausgrid. Mate, thanks for joining us again.

[00:02:16] Nick Black: Thanks for having me.

[00:02:17] Trevor Long: Mate, talk to us about the market for you guys as essentially the infrastructure side of our grid, given the huge boom in electric vehicles? Because one of the things I think we talked about before, and it's often used in the mainstream media as being, you know, the grid can't cope or Australia can't cope with all these EVs. Is there any noticeable issue with this influx of EVs since the fuel crisis, as we call it?

[00:02:43] Nick Black: Yeah, I guess that's sort of a mythbuster. That's a myth that there's impact on the grid from these electric vehicles. There's no sort of impact based on anything we've seen, and there's no impact based on all the forecasting that we've done because of diversified nature and the fact that people charge their car maybe once a week means that it's got a minimal increase to peak load or peak capacity, which is what can cause challenges for the grid. So we don't see any of that in any of the forecasting we're doing at this present time.

[00:03:17] Stephen Fenech: So you're saying there's plenty of headroom, mate, is that what you're saying? In the— Yeah, in the grid can handle it all.

[00:03:22] Nick Black: There's plenty of headroom in the grid and the majority of the headroom is in the middle of the day when that solar is pumping in. 1/3 of homes have solar panels. And if you can charge your car in that period, it's good for the grid, it's good for the environment, and it's cheaper for you to charge your car.

[00:03:41] Trevor Long: And let's be clear on that. It's not just because there's a lot of solar, we've got a way to charge a car. It's actually good for the grid because it doesn't— there's not just power being just thrown out there, which then has to be offset by reducing the generation of power in other areas because the grid can only have so much power in it. And so you need to— and the whole economy, of electricity generation needs to account for supply in that way. It's quite a— it's quite a complex system that's going on, a balancing system.

[00:04:10] Nick Black: It is.

[00:04:11] Nick Black: Yeah, it's a balancing system. So if you can avoid when the peak is on the grid, which is sort of between 3 and 9 p.m., and you can get in there at that solar time, you're helping the grid and you're lowering the cost, long-term cost of the grid. And it's also cheaper to charge at those times if you're charging off peak.

[00:04:32] Stephen Fenech: So tell us, you know, we talk every week about people's charging, but, you know, and their experiences, both good and bad. How is the infrastructure rollout looking? Is it— are we meeting the goal, the targets? How are we placed here?

[00:04:50] Nick Black: Yeah, we're still not placed in a good position around those targets. I think if you look at the global average, it's about 10 electric vehicles per public charger. And right now we're still between 35 and 45 across Australia. Australia. So yeah, we're, we're a long way off. And part of what we have been proposing as a distribution network service provider is that we can, we can help and step in and roll out chargers on the curbside, but really roll them out in a way that it's an extension of home charging. So what I mean by that is that they'd be available on the curb, but you'd still have a choice as to who you buy your energy or, or charge from. And that's something that we've been driving forward. But there's been a lot of debate in the public domain around that.

[00:05:36] Stephen Fenech: So we're not quite there yet.

[00:05:38] Stephen Fenech: Do you mean that if I just, so if I pull up at one of these curbside chargers, I can choose to sort of bill it to my home, my home bill, electricity bill?

[00:05:46] Nick Black: Exactly. That's exactly what our proposal is. So yeah, so we own it, maintain it just like we own and maintain the power poles. It would actually be on the power pole, but we wouldn't buy or sell any of the energy. We would leave that to the way the market works today. And yeah, Our goal is that you can bill it to your home bill with the same optionality and same price that you have at home.

[00:06:09] Trevor Long: Well, thank you for making me now understand something that I did see in the mainstream media. I'm not going to lie. It was on the TV news because it came across there. Obviously, let's be honest, the media have a job to do in reporting something and both sides and things. But it came across as being everyone's going to pay for this new thing. So the way I understood the— whether it's clickbait or it's a proper opinion of this, the way I understood it was because there's a cost to doing this rollout for you. And so aren't you going to have to charge the network and the end user to do this? You know, someone's got to pay for the little boxes on the pole. Someone's got to pay for the installation. Is that going to trickle down to every homeowner, even if you don't have an EV?

[00:06:55] Nick Black: I think if we sort of zoom out on this, what we see now is every taxpayer has been paying for these charges. So there hasn't been a single curbside charger that's been rolled out on Ausgrid's network that hasn't been taxpayer funded. And the taxpayer funding is very, very generous. You know, Minister Penny Sharp's been generous in what they've been given. They've given 80% of the capital to deploy these chargers to private enterprise that then own the charger on the street. And unfortunately, customer has no choice. They can't bill it to their home energy bill like we're talking about with our solution. So I guess what we're saying is, yes, there is a charge and yes, you're correct, there would be a charge that would go on on the electricity network, but if you look at the community of people, the people that pay for electricity are the same people that pay for taxes. So you're shifting that payment. And based on our numbers to roll out up to 11,000, or based on our modeling, 11,000 chargers, we believe it'd be about $1.80 per person per annum to begin. But then, as we touched on to begin, we're talking about increased volume. Yes, through the network. We have a revenue, a revenue cap. So the more volume you put through, the lower it is for each piece of electricity that's being put through because you're at a revenue cap. So as you get more EVs on the network, the lower the electricity price, our distribution charge would be. So we believe it actually come down by $12 in the long term.

[00:08:24] Trevor Long: Would this mean that all that money the government's currently putting into this as infrastructure could actually be rolled back, so not rolled back as in reverse, but they would actually spend less in the future, 'cause I'm assuming they're not wanting to spend this ongoing. So it's just a new way of funding these things going forward. So there wouldn't be both the taxpayer-funded thing and the homeowner-funded approach.

[00:08:46] Nick Black: Spot on, spot on. So it's shifting it so that taxpayer funding could be put into schools, hospitals, whatever else they want to spend it on. You don't need to spend in both. So it's a shifting of that expenditure, but it's also an alignment of where the benefits of that expenditure occur. Curb, which is on the electricity grid.

[00:09:03] Stephen Fenech: You mentioned, just to go back to the curbside charging, do you see that? I can see there's a lot of customers who, or potential EV owners who maybe live in, they don't have off-street parking and they're living in the inner city where they've only got street parking. Could this be kind of the silver bullet that helps sort of get them over the line to perhaps entertain the thought of an EV in those areas?

[00:09:28] Nick Black: Yes. I mean, that's exactly the reason we want to, want to get it out there, get over that psychological barrier of not having a driveway where you can charge and realizing, well, I can now charge on the street and I can now, you know, determine what the lowest cost provider is at all these charging sites near my house.

[00:09:46] Trevor Long: And I guess too, that there's one other issue with that is you'd be putting these on not every pole, but on enough poles that you wouldn't have to dedicate spaces because again, that's going to create uproar. And like on a street that's busy, there's a bunch of this, you you know, 20% of cars are electric, let's say, you don't want someone going, well, hang on a minute, you've just allocated a space to only electric cars, or does that need to happen to protect the ability for people to charge? What's the balance?

[00:10:11] Nick Black: Well, I guess we see a future of proliferation of electric vehicles. So there's no point having the dedicated parking spots in the future. And because of that, we also don't see the point of having the dedicated parking spots now. We believe the cost to dedicate those parking spots should be put into more chargers and more accessibility of those chargers so that people people can feel that they can charge near their home.

[00:10:34] Stephen Fenech: You have enough of them. I can't suppose every, every spot's an EV spot if you have enough.

[00:10:37] Trevor Long: Exactly. And in certain suburbs there'd be more EVs than others and that would work out beautifully for people.

[00:10:42] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:10:43] Trevor Long: On a very personal note and for many other people listening, where are we at with V2G, mate? Vehicle to grid. I mean, I'm sick of talking about it. Yeah, I've got 100 kilowatts sitting in a friggin Kia EV9 ready to power my house, ready to unleash. I mean, what are we doing? Where's this happening and who's holding it up? Is it the government? Who do we need to ring?

[00:11:03] Nick Black: Look, I think, I think it's, it's about ensuring that we get, I guess, a multitude of different industries working together.

[00:11:09] Nick Black: So you've got the grid.

[00:11:10] Trevor Long: That's never going to happen.

[00:11:13] Nick Black: We're working towards helping to make it happen. So you've got the grid. That's us. We're, I guess, open, open for business, happy to have a vehicle-to-grid charger installed. Tick. As long as it's, as long as it's been approved by the Clean Energy Council.

[00:11:28] Trevor Long: Sure. Let them do some diplomatic work. Make it happen.

[00:11:31] Stephen Fenech: Yep. My crystal, crystal ball, Nick. How many years before we've got the V2G, mate? That's going to be more— and I think an attractive feature to buy an EV, to be honest.

[00:11:41] Trevor Long: 100%.

[00:11:41] Stephen Fenech: How soon before it's more common?

[00:11:45] Nick Black: I'm hoping it's not years. I'm hoping it's less than a year before it's more common. I was going to say that one of the challenges is around the car manufacturers being comfortable with warranting the battery use. And to me, I see that as one of the biggest barriers.

[00:11:57] Trevor Long: Mate, I'll tell you right now, as an owner of an EV, I don't give a rat's. I don't care what they're going to do warranty-wise. Because I've seen enough research about the batteries. Like, we know so much today about batteries that we didn't know 5 years ago about just charging being so much better for the batteries than they thought it was going to be. There's no— and depleting a battery via vehicle-to-grid is far less intense on a vehicle battery than almost any form of driving. You know, the kind of driving you do around town is far more likely to degrade the battery than depleting it on a consistent current at a very low rate. So do you know what? If I have to plug it in and not tell them and then they approve it in 6 months, let's go. So essentially what I'm hearing from you is it's that it's the wallbox that matters now. It's, it's the providers of the boxes on the walls that need to be approved and rubber stamped by the Clean Energy Authority.

[00:12:56] Nick Black: Yeah, exactly right. And I think you might find there's a few out there now. I think StarCharge might have got the approval for 7 kilowatts. So if you know, depending how comfortable you are with your warranty, then you could probably start looking at trialing it. But I think you're exactly right. I mean, I just bought a Zeekr 7X and it's 450 kilowatts or something. So I put my foot down, that's 450 kilowatts being discharged. That's doing a lot more damage than 7 kilowatts just trickling out.

[00:13:25] Trevor Long: By the way, Nick, what a car. Yeah, we get a lot of big raps on that car.

[00:13:30] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:13:31] Trevor Long: Well done.

[00:13:31] Stephen Fenech: Were you waiting long for it, Nick? We've had a caller talking about this as well. Have you?

[00:13:38] Nick Black: I was. I think I ordered it early January and I was excited after Christmas and I didn't get it till late May.

[00:13:45] Trevor Long: So yeah, but I'm very happy with it. Speaking of cars, mate, I notice all the time on the freeway when I'm driving into Channel 9, I notice the Ausgrid cars, you know, the branding on the cars. It's not overt, but it's just subtle enough that you always know it's an Ausgrid car. And they're almost always electric. Are you converting your entire fleet? Is your entire fleet electric? And has the proliferation of newer vehicles like vans and things made that even easier?

[00:14:12] Nick Black: Yeah, we are. So we've got 1,600 fleet. We've got more if you include plant, but, you know, heavy, everything from prime movers, heavy trucks, etc. And we've electrified 11% of our fleet, which has predominantly been almost all passenger vehicles. So we've got the Kias. EV3s, EV5s, Niro's. And then now recently we've just purchased 22 Verizon vans, electric vans and 5 PV5 Kias and they're being fitted out. Yeah. And the field, a lot of field staff, they're ecstatic. They can't wait to get them.

[00:14:46] Trevor Long: It's just because you'll make it easy for them to charge at the end of a shift. No one provides power better than the grid. Hey, and you've done a test with an actual Prime Mover though as well. Here?

[00:14:57] Nick Black: We have. We did the Volvo Prime Mover and we put in a, you know, one of the, I guess the other challenges you probably hear about with the grid is connecting fast charging. And that's because it's equivalent of connecting, say, a 12-storey apartment block. So it does take time. But in that installation of the Prime Mover at our Somersby warehouse, we put a battery-connected fast charger. So it was a very quick install and it had 150 kilowatts.

[00:15:21] Trevor Long: So you put in an enormous battery and essentially trickle, but you know, it's not trickle, but you trickle charge it. So it's not a not an enormous drain on the grid so that when it's ready to deploy into the truck, it just goes whooshka and then it's got time to refill itself before the truck's back again. Is that the concept?

[00:15:39] Nick Black: Spot on. That's exactly what we did.

[00:15:41] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:15:41] Trevor Long: Wow.

[00:15:42] Nick Black: And it worked really well. So it's a way to sort of get the time down and still get the fast charging and yeah, it's quickly deployed. It wasn't quite a trickle. It still had a three-phase connection.

[00:15:52] Stephen Fenech: So it was still a bit bigger.

[00:15:53] Trevor Long: A high-end trickle.

[00:15:53] Stephen Fenech: But it wasn't a solid trickle.

[00:15:57] Trevor Long: Mate, lovely to talk to you.

[00:15:58] Stephen Fenech: Lovely to get an update on things.

[00:15:58] Trevor Long: Lovely to get clarity. Clarity on the, on the power pole charging concept and such things. And look, I think the best analogy you've given there, which you've probably struggled with because, you know, it's always hard to get a word in some, some places in reporting, but is just simply you're shifting, you're shifting the cost. We're shifting the cost from being a tax, from, from being within our taxes to within our existing bills. And we're talking about cents in a dollar essentially across the course of a year. So I'm on board. We're all good.

[00:16:26] Nick Black: Exactly.

[00:16:27] Nick Black: That's spot on.

[00:16:28] Trevor Long: Right. Great to hear from you again. And let's, let's keep in touch as always.

[00:16:33] Nick Black: Yeah. Thank you. Really appreciate you having me on the show.

[00:16:35] Trevor Long: Cheers, Nick. Anytime. Nick Black from Ausgrid. And yeah, I mean, that's, that's stuff that's been widely reported yet I feel like we needed to hear from him to understand it better. So all the better.

[00:16:45] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

Marek — Mini Countryman ownership experience

[00:16:46] Trevor Long: All right. Two blokes talking electric cars. We got more coming up straight after this. There he is, Stephen Fenech, dancing the night away here on Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars. Thanks to NRMA Insurance and Uniden, and you can get in touch with us thanks to Vodafone. Just send us a text, 0477 657 657. Marek did that. G'day Marek, how you doing?

[00:17:14] Marek: Yeah, going well, thanks.

[00:17:16] Trevor Long: And Marek, where are you at in the world of EVs? You are an owner. What did you want to talk about?

[00:17:21] Marek: About?

[00:17:22] Marek: Yeah, so we, um, we bought a Mini Countryman, uh, last year. So we've had it for about 12 months.

[00:17:28] Trevor Long: Nice.

[00:17:28] Marek: Coming up to 12 months now.

[00:17:30] Trevor Long: What drew you to that car?

[00:17:33] Marek: Oh, that was, uh, you like this, it was definitely the wife's choice. Um, yeah, so we drove a number of cars and none of them really sort of hit the spot with her in terms of what she liked. Um, but the Mini I guess has its sort of carryover features from—

[00:17:51] Trevor Long: it's still the same—

[00:17:53] Marek: around the round LED screen. That's a little bit funky inside. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit different. So it's, um, yeah, we didn't really want something sort of pedestrian, if you like.

[00:18:04] Trevor Long: So, Marek, what did you miss out on?

[00:18:05] Marek: It's a nice device.

[00:18:06] Trevor Long: What would you have bought? Let's be honest, it was up to you, mate.

[00:18:08] Stephen Fenech: What would you have done?

[00:18:09] Stephen Fenech: Tell us, be honest.

[00:18:10] Marek: Okay, I had a few on the shortlist. I did like the— where'd it go? It was the Smart #3 Performance. I really like that.

[00:18:23] Stephen Fenech: You know what?

[00:18:24] Trevor Long: Nice car.

[00:18:24] Stephen Fenech: Nice car. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:27] Marek: So, yeah, we did drive a number of different cars and I think we did create a bit of a list of things that were our— why not? It's a lot of money in a vehicle. Yeah, well, that's right. And so, you know, like, but certainly a number of the cars that we came across, for instance, had glass roofs now, but no sunshade. And that was a bit of a, that was a bit of a deal breaker in a bunch of cars.

[00:18:51] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, a lot of those cars, they've got a UV protection and all that sort of stuff. They're meant to be able to keep the heat out and, you know, the—

[00:18:59] Marek: I know, but when it's, when it's like 35, 40 degrees.

[00:19:01] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:19:02] Marek: Which we get a reasonable— I'm in Canberra, so we get plenty of good sun here in the summertime. It gets hot.

[00:19:09] Marek: Yeah.

[00:19:09] Marek: Yeah. Pretty happy not to have that.

[00:19:11] Stephen Fenech: So I take it the Mini Countryman EV doesn't have a glass roof?

[00:19:16] Marek: It has a glass roof, but it has a slide.

[00:19:18] Trevor Long: Ah, so it has— logical, right?

[00:19:21] Marek: Yeah, it has an electric slide. So, so it's ticked that box.

[00:19:25] Stephen Fenech: Smart.

[00:19:25] Trevor Long: Yeah. So have you found it charging? I mean, I think, I think one of your key takeouts from talking to us in your message was just what you'd learned with charging over that period.

[00:19:36] Marek: Yeah, well, I certainly have been been listening to you guys since I came across the podcast and did a bit of a catch-up walking the dog from over the last year or so.

[00:19:45] Trevor Long: Thank you, mate.

[00:19:45] Marek: So I had listened to everything, so it's been great, really. That's been really informative and certainly helps with making some decisions. You know, charging definitely was something that we looked at over time. We, um, when we went into this journey a bit quickly, um, we didn't, didn't have solar or battery. We'd have that in place now since March this year. And just recently also put in a— we have 3-phase in the house, so we put a 22-kilowatt charger in. So it's— yeah, so that's worked. So we survived on the— survived on the granny charger for 12 months, but it was always that because you could only charge at such a slow rate, you're always chasing the free energy and you'd have to sort of compromise how you were charging. So, so yeah, that was That was a good learning process. But certainly having the charger in place now makes it— it takes all the pressure off.

[00:20:37] Trevor Long: Like, you need the difference, doesn't it?

[00:20:38] Marek: You need to— oh yeah, because it runs about— oh, the Mini can go 22 kilowatts too.

[00:20:43] Marek: So.

[00:20:43] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, right. That's great.

[00:20:44] Trevor Long: See, that's funny. It's really interesting. Over the last little while, we've seen a few cars a couple of months ago with BMW and Mercedes and stuff. And it's interesting how many manufacturers are now going, oh, and by the way, it'll do 3-phase, 22 kilowatts. Which, by the way, when you put the graphs up of, you know, how long it takes to charge, you're like, oh my God, 5 hours, we're done. Like, that's It's a big difference between 7 or 11, isn't it?

[00:21:06] Stephen Fenech: Doubling. We're doubling. It was 11 before, now double.

[00:21:09] Marek: Yeah. Well, the, well, the Mini actually sits on a BMW iX1 platform. Yeah. So.

[00:21:14] Marek: Right.

[00:21:14] Marek: Okay. BMW underneath. But it's only a 65 kilowatt-hour battery. So it's actually a fairly small battery. So, you know, that has its consequences for range and so forth. But because it was a bit of an impulse buy, those sort of things Well, you know, it was so hard to get something that my wife liked. So in the end of the day, I went—

[00:21:35] Trevor Long: Amazing you made the cut.

[00:21:37] Marek: She likes it. She likes the car. And yeah, that's right. Oh, she's put it with me for long enough.

[00:21:41] Stephen Fenech: But you also mentioned, Barrie, that you got a deal on it. You got a good discount. That put you over the line too, didn't it?

[00:21:48] Marek: Oh, big time. Well, when I spotted the Mini and I took it out, we both went down to the local dealer and took it for a drive. And they were very helpful. Great experience there. But, um, sort of got the price and went, oh yeah, okay, that's— and because she really wanted a red one, that was, um, yeah, yeah, well, it just, it looked nice and red, it was cool. But, um, but then I jumped at home and looked online and I happened to spot this, um, demo one out of, um, Tassie.

[00:22:20] Trevor Long: Oh.

[00:22:20] Marek: And basically, and getting it delivered here and they deregistered it. So I saved the stamp duty at that end. Yeah, I saved like $20,000.

[00:22:32] Stephen Fenech: Whoa.

[00:22:33] Stephen Fenech: Wow, mate.

[00:22:35] Marek: So, so I had it on the road here and we at that time we had stamp duty exemption for EVs up until last year. So I told them they had 3 weeks to get it to me because to make this cutoff for the stamp duty exemption.

[00:22:49] Marek: Yes.

[00:22:49] Marek: Got that guaranteed that they would cover that. But yeah, got that in and wow, landed it on the road here. Was like 62 instead of 82. So that's brilliant.

[00:22:58] Stephen Fenech: Now tell us what sort of driving you do. And you mentioned you maybe you were planning a big road trip or what. Have you done that before and how did you go?

[00:23:07] Marek: We've done Sydney a number of times and that's not too big a stretch because of the small battery. We do, I do stop at Sutton. Sutton Forest, yeah.

[00:23:19] Trevor Long: The EV Charge.

[00:23:21] Marek: Yeah, the EV chargers there, they, um, they were—

[00:23:24] Trevor Long: Mickey D's while you're there?

[00:23:26] Marek: That's right. By the time you walk in, grab a coffee, toilet, back to the car, 20 minutes of charging, you've got more than enough to get you up and around Sydney. And then, um, yeah, using the fast chargers, um, hasn't been a problem. Uh, the big thing, the one thing that I've learned on that though is that each one that I joined with, I So I got an RFID card. That way you're not beholden to phone reception.

[00:23:52] Trevor Long: Have you had a play around with the idea of just using one of the cards? You know, we know the Australian EV Association, you can buy a card which has a single number on it, and in every one of the apps you can actually put that number in. But I assume, frankly, with any of those cards, you could— I don't know if you can find out easily what the number is, but you could just actually use one card across pretty much all of the platforms.

[00:24:14] Marek: Yeah, probably. I mean, I just, as I joined the different suppliers, like I basically got BP, EV, Ampol, I think I got those 3 cards.

[00:24:26] Trevor Long: Tap and go.

[00:24:28] Marek: They just sit in the thing and you just grab one out and just leave it in the car.

[00:24:31] Stephen Fenech: That's a really good idea. I mean, not having reception when you need it is frustrating.

[00:24:36] Marek: And look, because— and Sutton Forest is what made me, what drew me to that because I knew I used to always have Optus issues there.. And so having the card was basically—

[00:24:46] Trevor Long: I guess my problem with the card idea is a first world problem. I don't know what car I'm going to be in, so I could be driving anything. I can't just keep them in the glove box like you can keep them in the center console, whereas I'll leave them in a press car and then 2 weeks later I've lost them and forgotten them. So I get it. It's a great solution if you can. So all of them allow that, which is pretty much all of them allow that, which is a great thing.

[00:25:06] Stephen Fenech: One last question, Marek. This is your wife's car, isn't it? The EV. And you've got your own car. Including a little nice Mercedes C63. Is that right?

[00:25:15] Marek: Wow.

[00:25:17] Marek: Yeah. Yeah, it's— that's been a bit of— that was a— I've had it for about 5 years now.

[00:25:21] Trevor Long: It's a V8.

[00:25:23] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:25:23] Marek: Yeah. The 6.2-litre.

[00:25:25] Stephen Fenech: So would you ever go an EV then, or are you a petrol man?

[00:25:29] Trevor Long: What's your story?

[00:25:31] Marek: I appreciate both and happily will travel in the EV, but At the moment, I do little enough kilometers in that car that it doesn't— it's not of consequence.

[00:25:45] Stephen Fenech: So, right.

[00:25:47] Marek: Like, I work from home 4 out of 5 days. I don't know about— we can get around with what we have and just use that. And I've got a little Renault Megane as a daily. So it's— so I've got a couple of cars there.

[00:26:00] Trevor Long: You're a car man.

[00:26:01] Stephen Fenech: That's what's great about you. Car man. Absolutely.

[00:26:03] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:26:03] Marek: Well, I've always loved cars.

[00:26:05] Stephen Fenech: And loved how you got your wife a cheaper Mini. You've made her happy, mate. What a great husband you are.

[00:26:11] Trevor Long: But okay, let me, let me push that one step further though, Marek. Okay. You're a car man. You've got a beautiful Renault Megane RS 250. You got the C63. If for some reason one of those was at end of life, became too much cost, whatever, what would be your pick today to buy an EV?

[00:26:32] Marek: Oh, Yeah, there's one. There's one which looks like a Ferrari Paris. Always get the name wrong, but the Parisian—

[00:26:41] Trevor Long: Parisian way.

[00:26:42] Marek: Yeah, yeah. It's the SU7 by Xiaomi.

[00:26:49] Trevor Long: Xiaomi.

[00:26:49] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:26:49] Trevor Long: Well, they're not available in Australia.

[00:26:51] Marek: They're not yet.

[00:26:53] Trevor Long: You've picked a couple. But you know what's amazing? I saw one of those in London. Oh, I saw heaps of them in China.

[00:27:00] Stephen Fenech: Coming to Australia?

[00:27:01] Trevor Long: Not that I've heard. Have you heard? Anything.

[00:27:02] Stephen Fenech: You might have to import that, mate. You got one from Tasmania. Yeah, you got one from Tasmania imported. You might have to import it from mainland China.

[00:27:10] Trevor Long: But you're absolutely right, I saw one of those out of the bus. I saw one of those and went, 'It's a Ferrari.' Oh no, God, it's a Xiaomi. Yeah, uh, which is just a wild thing to see in the wild, frankly. But yeah, it's an interesting one. That's interesting because it's a good-looking car. I believe the drive is unbelievable. So anyway, maybe. But the C63, mate, it doesn't It's pretty good numbers. If you get hold of that C63, that thing is going to grow in value at some point.

[00:27:34] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. You're a Merc.

[00:27:35] Stephen Fenech: You're—

[00:27:35] Marek: Oh, it's already— it's already overtaken. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[00:27:38] Marek: We—

[00:27:39] Marek: well, I mean, we did actually— we had a GLC. Oh, before the—

[00:27:45] Marek: that's what the—

[00:27:46] Marek: that's what went out in favor of the Mini.

[00:27:48] Stephen Fenech: So when we really say—

[00:27:49] Marek: you never thought of getting an electric GLC, the electric version of that? We wanted to go slightly smaller and we drove the EQA and didn't really like it.

[00:27:59] Marek: Okay.

[00:28:00] Marek: I don't think it was as good as the GLC. So, so yeah, that sort of pushed us to look at other things. So yeah.

[00:28:07] Stephen Fenech: Okay.

[00:28:08] Marek: Yeah, we tried, we tried a whole bunch of different cars, but yeah, this is kind of where we landed.

[00:28:12] Marek: So.

[00:28:12] Trevor Long: Well, happy wife, happy life is the part that you've nailed there most, mate.

[00:28:16] Stephen Fenech: So good stuff.

[00:28:17] Trevor Long: In the end, you're on, you're on an absolute winner, buddy. Thank you for taking the time to to binge the show over time out walking the dog. But mate, thank you for listening and thank you for getting in touch, mate. It means a lot.

[00:28:27] Marek: Yeah, no, great show. Thanks very much.

[00:28:29] Trevor Long: Appreciate it, buddy. Thank you. Cheers. Yeah, I mean, look, that's the beautiful thing is it's an experience. Everyone's got their own unique thing. And again, Marek is a great example of you don't have to be all in. Like, happy to have his throbbing V8 in the garage. There was no conversation there about doing it for the environment. It was a financial and a smart decision.

[00:28:49] Stephen Fenech: Vision.

[00:28:50] Trevor Long: Yeah. And, and that's what led them to where they are. And the Mini's a great little car.

[00:28:54] Stephen Fenech: Good choice. Yeah, I like the— that's what I wish you mentioned, the circular display.

[00:28:58] Trevor Long: Even when you drive past someone driving a Mini, you look in and you go, that's a cool screen.

[00:29:02] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I think it's— look, I don't mean this to sound sexist, but it's a good ladies' car. Don't you reckon?

[00:29:07] Trevor Long: It sounds very sexist.

[00:29:08] Stephen Fenech: I think women would— I know you don't mean it to sound sexy, but ladies, I think I'd say if you look at them, there'd be more women driving that than men.

[00:29:15] Trevor Long: Hang on, let's go and get a shovel.

[00:29:16] Stephen Fenech: Um, you got some digging You know what I mean? It appeals to women. What's wrong with saying that? It appeals to women more. I think women would be drawn to that car.

[00:29:28] Trevor Long: I'm gonna get an excavator.

[00:29:30] Stephen Fenech: What's wrong with saying that?

[00:29:31] Trevor Long: Two blokes talking electric cars.

[00:29:33] Stephen Fenech: It's fine.

Rowan — Running an electric van for a pest control business

[00:29:34] Trevor Long: I'm taking the mickey. Uh, send us a text or a WhatsApp. 0477 657 657. 2 blokes talking electric cars. We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text, 0477 657 657. Rowan's on the line. G'day, Rowan.

[00:29:57] Rowan: G'day, how you going, guys?

[00:29:58] Trevor Long: Mate, really good. What, uh, what are you driving there, mate?

[00:30:02] Rowan: Uh, so I have picked up about 3 weeks ago a Verizon V7e.

[00:30:09] Trevor Long: V7e of their range, uh, described to to us the V7E for people that don't know it.

[00:30:17] Rowan: So it's sort of between the size of like the old Toyota LiteAce and HiAce, right? Um, it's, it's got about a 1250 kilo payload, I believe. Um, you can fit a couple of pallets in the back. Wow, it's got really good access and that sort of stuff. Um, yeah, so it's, um, a good little van. I've got it set out, uh, with racking and that sort of stuff for what I do in pest control. And it's working very well for that. I've had it about 3 weeks and really no great issue. I'm sort of getting used to how to turn off the bins and bongs.

[00:31:01] Trevor Long: I think every electric car— Yeah, that's an issue with not just electric cars. It's an issue with cars generally. I'm curious about the pallets. Do the pallets fit between the wheel arches or are they over the top for the back ones?

[00:31:11] Rowan: Yeah, no, they do. You can put one pallet in and push another, push the first pallet in through between the wheel arches into the front.

[00:31:20] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:31:20] Stephen Fenech: Wow, that is—

[00:31:21] Rowan: And you can also get a fork through the side doors at either side. And it comes standard with a door on each side.

[00:31:29] Trevor Long: Is that unique? Is that hard to find in a van generally?

[00:31:34] Rowan: Yeah, generally, certainly as standard.

[00:31:36] Trevor Long: Wow.

[00:31:38] Rowan: And certainly, like, this came with a checker plate floor. So it's, I'm guessing, aluminium. And most of the floors in vans are often plastic. And so, you know, they're not really very sturdy. Right. Yeah, so no, I was amazed after talking with you guys, what, that's probably 3 months ago since we spoke. I nipped up and had a look at this, test drove it, thought, yep, it's got everything. And the price was very good comparatively to, to anything else, you know. There's not— it was $52-ish. And, um, it's not bad. The, the nearest thing to it, like, you know, even something like one of the Volkswagen ID.Buzz, yeah, um, you know, looking about $80 grand.

[00:32:37] Trevor Long: Oh yeah, like in the electric space, just insane, right? I mean, obviously the key is there, but yeah. So how have you—

[00:32:40] Rowan: so you said pest control.

[00:32:42] Stephen Fenech: So how have you gone adapting to electric and how's your charging situation? Was it a steep learning curve or did you take to it straight away?

[00:32:53] Rowan: No, so I took to it pretty easily because we've had a BYD Seal, the wife's car for 2.5 years. Okay. She's always just charged with a granny charger and never had a problem. Problem. She does a few K's, but it tends to be in, in lumps, and the granny charger has been good for that. We've only ever had to charge it half a dozen times on a DC charger while we're out. Um, but I got a Zappi charger installed. Yeah. Um, and so I— some people are having a bit of an issue with the Furrizons. I see on, on different groups that, like, this has got a 65-kilowatt battery, but the real-world range is probably 250 K's.

[00:33:41] Trevor Long: Is that when you say that, do you mean like fully laden and like in some freeway driving or is that just city driving?

[00:33:49] Rowan: Yes, that's right.

[00:33:51] Trevor Long: I think that, look, they claim 329 as range and I would've said to any van prospective buyer with load on board, I wouldn't be counting on much more than 250. So if you're getting 250, I think you're in a good spot. Are people shocked or upset by that in the group?

[00:34:09] Rowan: Yes, very, very upset. And particularly people that are new to electric, I think that they haven't been able to work out how to get around it. Whereas, for example, I'm a very good example of this.

[00:34:24] Stephen Fenech: Empty the car. Yeah.

[00:34:24] Rowan: I've just pulled up to talk with you guys. I've done 206 kilometers today. The battery was at 100 when I left home. I've got 27% left. I know that there is a bank of Tesla chargers down at Campbelltown Catholic Club. I'm going to nip in there, spend 10 minutes, and just zap a little bit extra into it for the trip home. Yeah, just in case. I've not taken it under 20%, and you know, knowing that some can really run out of steam rapidly, I don't want to push the envelope.

[00:34:56] Stephen Fenech: That's actually, that's actually a pretty good rule of thumb to do that, to sort of set yourself— like, I do that in my cars. I don't like to ever have my EVs below 20%. I try to keep them between 30 and 80%.

[00:35:07] Trevor Long: It doesn't worry me much, but I think it's that concern that you have there that it might degrade differently. I don't know that that's genuine, but I think what's more fascinating is the learning curve for people jumping into this space, especially around weight. I mean, it's obviously going to go less, but it's not— Unfortunately, it's not marketed that way. And I think, to be honest, to Verizon and Kia and others doing this, you've gotta be far more honest be honest with people about it. Should say on the website, electric range up to 329 when un— when unloaded, unladen, or whatever, you know, empty, with a tailwind. Yes. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think it needs to be much clearer than that because they're not fooling themselves. They're going to upset people. Those, those people that are angry are gonna— they're not gonna come back. And it's likely that in 3 years from now there's going to be battery density that builds these ranges up to some extreme.

[00:36:00] Stephen Fenech: I take it, Rowan, that you got like a lot of chemicals, so a bit of weight in the back of your car, I imagine. Equipment, chemicals, there's a bit of weight.

[00:36:10] Rowan: 900 kilos.

[00:36:11] Stephen Fenech: Wow, you are pulling a car.

[00:36:13] Rowan: Wow.

[00:36:14] Stephen Fenech: There's some big cockroaches out there, eh, mate? Big rats out there. You've got to get them all.

[00:36:18] Rowan: It's termites I'm after.

[00:36:19] Stephen Fenech: Termites are little biters.

[00:36:22] Rowan: But yeah, I've learned a few little tricks, you know, with the freeway driving I do, which is not a great deal. But what, um, I'm sitting on about 95, uh, and that gets me under 20 kilowatts per 100 kilometers usage. Um, if I sat on 110, I'd be using 26, 27.

[00:36:45] Stephen Fenech: It's a big difference.

[00:36:47] Rowan: Yeah, much more. Yeah, so it makes a big difference. But, uh, yeah, so I've, I've certainly learned that. And the Horizon is great when the intelligent cruise control in it can actually— it doesn't call it tagging onto a vehicle,, but you can pretty much tag onto, say, a semi-trailer that's in front of you on a freeway, and it'll just track true to whatever that vehicle does. And the difference in fuel consumption is amazing.

[00:37:16] Trevor Long: Wow. When you're tagging someone, yeah. I think adaptive cruise control is phenomenal like that. And if you're willing, like, the problem is I couldn't do that because I just couldn't be bothered sitting behind a car or a truck on a freeway. But if you know that this is your daily drive it's part of your day and 5 minutes extra is not going to affect your day and your job run, then that's a good thing. What have you learned that you, I guess, other than range, that you wish you had have known before you bought it?

[00:37:44] Rowan: There's not too much. Maybe, you know, we had a slight problem with Bluetooth when I tried to pick up the phone to you guys and I haven't yet. I think I tend to plug it in, plug my phone in, uh, to make sure it's charged, right? But then the Apple CarPlay doesn't seem to work quite as it should when it's plugged in.

[00:38:11] Stephen Fenech: So it works wirelessly, doesn't it? CarPlay's wireless, but you're just using the plug for charge?

[00:38:17] Rowan: Correct, right? Yeah, but I think it it— I think it connects in anyway when I do that. So yeah, it just creates a little bit of an issue in, in that respect. Uh, but, uh, yeah, there's really not much, not much else that I've had any issue with. When I first got it, uh, the windscreen had a whole lot of what looked like paint, spray paint residue, little bubbles that I really, yeah, that I couldn't get off. Um, I contacted the dealer to see if this was, you know, whether they'd experienced that before. Um, he, to his credit, said yes, told me what I could do to get it off, and also just said, look, drop past, we'll get it off for you if you want.

[00:39:02] Trevor Long: Oh, that's lovely.

[00:39:03] Rowan: Good. Which is fine, but he's 150k from me, so probably not. But, um, yeah, you know, at least they, they were helpful. Uh, The user manual, I've not yet got what is, I would say, is a sufficient user manual for Australia.

[00:39:22] Trevor Long: Oh, interesting.

[00:39:23] Rowan: Yeah, there's a little cut-down version that's in the, um, in the system itself, but that doesn't really go into nitty-gritty. And the, the manual that I've been able to find online doesn't have— like, some of this van has some more features that are in that manual and less than others, you know. So it's it's not quite the right thing. And they were going to send me one, but I don't think I've seen it yet.

[00:39:54] Stephen Fenech: One last one for you, Rowan. Have you been an influence to other—

[00:39:58] Trevor Long: I was gonna ask the same thing, yeah.

[00:40:00] Stephen Fenech: Other tradies and other van owners? Have they sort of looked at what you've got and thought, "Oh, this isn't too bad.

[00:40:06] Rowan: It might be for me." I've had quite a few people people want to have a look at it. Guys that, that must be thinking electric. I tend not to say too much these days because I've had a— I had someone go aggro at me a while back for being a greenie.

[00:40:26] Rowan: I love it.

[00:40:27] Rowan: No, I don't say too much, but I'll happily ask questions when— answer questions when asked. Yeah, but, um, customers like it.

[00:40:38] Trevor Long: Oh, okay.

[00:40:39] Rowan: They, they note that, oh wow, that's a space-age looking van, is that electric? And they like, yeah, like the fact. So, uh, uh, that's nice.

[00:40:50] Trevor Long: Well, keep your trap shut and don't be a greenie.

[00:40:54] Stephen Fenech: What's, what's the best time to get your pest done, mate? Tell me about what, what should I do it, what, September, October? What's the best time?

[00:41:01] Rowan: September.

[00:41:02] Stephen Fenech: Okay, before it gets hot.

[00:41:03] Rowan: September September, because yeah, before, like, and it also depends on what a pestie is using too, because get someone that uses this product that lasts a long time.

[00:41:14] Stephen Fenech: Yes.

[00:41:15] Rowan: And, and go in September and you'll have pretty much a bug-free living all year round.

[00:41:20] Trevor Long: I think what Stephen's asking is, do you do the eastern suburbs? On my behalf, the, uh, Upper North Shore might be out of your range, mate.

[00:41:29] Stephen Fenech: It might be a bit out away and forget to leave it anyway.

[00:41:31] Rowan: It's all good.

[00:41:32] Rowan: Yeah, you've got a charger.

[00:41:33] Trevor Long: Hang on, you can charge it.

[00:41:35] Stephen Fenech: My joy, I can plug in. How's this, mate? We'll make a deal. You go charge your car, you pest, you bomb my house. Get me—

[00:41:43] Rowan: good on you. I can organize. Send me a message.

[00:41:47] Trevor Long: Good on you, mate. Great to hear from you again and hope you enjoy the car, mate.

[00:41:50] Rowan: Good on you. Thanks, guys.

[00:41:52] Trevor Long: Cheers, mate. That's great stuff. I mean, we're just— remember, mate, that's when the—

[00:41:55] Stephen Fenech: that's got to call the pesty best blokes in.

[00:41:58] Trevor Long: Righty-o, get it done. Uh, if you've got a story about a car you've bought and I want to share it with us, what you love and what you don't like so much, uh, we'd love to hear from you. 0477 657 657. Stephen, I have connected with a lot of people in the EV charging infrastructure world on LinkedIn apparently, because I get a lot of posts about new charges and new technologies and things like that. Yeah, but one of the things I saw, and I'm going to try, I'm going to try in the edit to put a little bit of this graph up on the screen for those people watching on YouTube, but it's actually low resolution. I don't know, I'll see what I can do. But yeah, broadly it's a graph, it's a picture of Australia with a heat map around the location of public chargers, and then some indication of where they are specifically, whether they're fast or slow, I think is the green or the AC or the DC dots. And then there's, there's a couple of things I wanted to point out to you which I find fascinating. First one is— this is a fascinating graph about utilization and congestion. Okay, so across the course of— this is 1, 2, 3, 4 and a bit months— average utilization on these chargers is below 10%, basically. So the utilization of chargers is extremely low, which is probably the answer to why more companies don't put in more plugs, right? Yeah, because frankly, the utilization is pretty low. And then on average, that's right.

[00:43:26] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:43:26] Trevor Long: And the number of congested hours, and I'm assuming this is clicked on a maybe a daily basis, is below 500. So basically what they're trying to argue here is, I think, you know what, we don't yet have the demand to grow this network. Right now this covers on— let's just talk DC, right? Fast charging. Let's not worry about AC.

[00:43:49] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:43:49] Trevor Long: 1,653 3 sites, right? DC with— CC charges nationwide, nationwide, right? With 5,520 active bays, which basically says that on average you're looking at a bit over 2 bays.

[00:44:04] Stephen Fenech: Okay.

[00:44:05] Trevor Long: I think 2 to 3.

[00:44:06] Stephen Fenech: Yep.

[00:44:06] Trevor Long: I mean, I think Tesla would be responsible for the majority of that average going up because they put in so many that are way more than 2.

[00:44:13] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:44:14] Trevor Long: But then if you look, are they still adding to their— or is their network— no, they are. Yeah, they are. No, they're still adding, right? Like that gold one only opened, you know, 6 months ago. So there's still—

[00:44:23] Stephen Fenech: Is that right?

[00:44:23] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:44:24] Trevor Long: Okay.

[00:44:24] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:44:24] Trevor Long: That move by Elon to stop the rollout was reversed very quickly.

[00:44:27] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, I bet.

[00:44:28] Trevor Long: Yeah. But then there are 37 different networks. I mean, that's crazy. The growth though is fascinating to me. So there's a list of the networks and their kind of year-on-year site growth and bay growth.

[00:44:46] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:44:47] Trevor Long: Ampol, for example, have grown the number of bays 70% year year on year. Wow. BP also doing big numbers, like 36%. So there, there's definite growth. Like, I don't know, AGL has grown like 4,000%, but I think that's, I think that's probably pole-side, kerbside style charging.

[00:45:04] Stephen Fenech: Okay.

[00:45:05] Trevor Long: The biggest network is Chargefox. Yes, 712 sites. Explorin is next with 612. EV Network then with 358. Tesla Destination Chargers is 322. Tesla themselves only have 159 sites.

[00:45:19] Stephen Fenech: Wow.

[00:45:20] Stephen Fenech: But the sites are pretty big though, each one. So how many?

[00:45:22] Trevor Long: They have 1,063 bays.

[00:45:25] Stephen Fenech: Wow.

[00:45:25] Stephen Fenech: See, see, in 159 sites.

[00:45:27] Trevor Long: Exactly.

[00:45:28] Stephen Fenech: Wow.

[00:45:28] Trevor Long: So whereas, whereas Chargefox across 700 sites has only 600-odd more, 700 more, more bays than Tesla.

[00:45:37] Stephen Fenech: Wow.

[00:45:38] Stephen Fenech: So Tesla's go big or go home when they put a charge site in.

[00:45:42] Trevor Long: Respect to, uh, to EV, they've got 1,260 60 bays off 358 sites.

[00:45:48] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, that's not a bad average.

[00:45:49] Trevor Long: But I do like the fact that BP and Ampol are, and NRMA are still growing at a good rate. Yeah, because I think they're the, I think that's the sleeper, you know. When I see what BP's doing, like, I've made, I think, I don't think I've talked about it, but in Young now, yeah, mate, the BP fast charge is unbelievable. Like, they're 300-kilowatt chargers. As we know, that doesn't mean I'm getting 300, but easily got 7,500 I think I was seeing 120 in the EV9 that I took down there, which is pretty good. Well, I just want to see a big number, right?

[00:46:19] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:46:19] Stephen Fenech: Yeah. Anything over 100, you think, yeah, this is humming.

[00:46:21] Trevor Long: I've decided essentially that I'm not charging if it's less than 75. Like, I may as well just go home and trickle it, you know?

[00:46:29] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:46:29] Stephen Fenech: Oh, well, if you're in the middle of nowhere— But if you're in the middle of nowhere, I get that.

[00:46:32] Trevor Long: But the choice now, like, I feel for NRMA in Young because I don't know why I would go to the NRMA one. It's only 50 to 75 kilowatts at best when I can go down the road and off we go.

[00:46:42] Stephen Fenech: The map itself is very interesting in how everything's obviously all around the coast, east coast clustered, west, you know, the New South Wales, Victoria, up into Queensland. Is that the Gulf of Carpentaria up there?

[00:46:53] Trevor Long: Yeah. Don't go up there. Don't drive an EV there.

[00:46:55] Stephen Fenech: There's no charges there.

[00:46:57] Trevor Long: There's nothing.

[00:46:57] Stephen Fenech: It's a big blank space.

[00:46:59] Trevor Long: Yes. Yes. But, you know, southwest of Western Australia. Australia is not too bad. Looks like he could really get around down there.

[00:47:07] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, well, that's what's at Perth and down to Albany, Bunbury, Margaret River. All there.

[00:47:12] Trevor Long: I know my Perth.

[00:47:13] Stephen Fenech: Where you used to live, mate.

[00:47:13] Trevor Long: That's right.

[00:47:14] Stephen Fenech: You used to live in Margaret River?

[00:47:15] Trevor Long: No, I was directing Perth, but I went to Bunbury. I went to down, right down to—

[00:47:19] Stephen Fenech: Trevor used to live in Perth.

[00:47:20] Trevor Long: Yeah, 2 years. Longest decade of my life.

[00:47:23] Stephen Fenech: You love saying that. Yeah, you love saying that, don't you?

[00:47:27] Trevor Long: But look, we were there a few weeks ago, weren't we? We were. I don't know how many weeks ago, but we were there a few weeks ago.

[00:47:31] Stephen Fenech: It felt like for you it was 4 days, but to Trevor felt like a month ago.

[00:47:34] Trevor Long: Feels like it's tomorrow for me, but I mean, it feels like a month ago. The, um, that's a, that's a pre-record joke, folks. Uh, but what's I think probably problematic for all of us in the EV community here is that average utilization and congestion graph, which basically says the argument from them is, whoa, calm down, we don't need to go too hard.

[00:47:54] Stephen Fenech: So like, how recent? So this goes up to May this year, May 2026.

[00:47:58] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:47:58] Stephen Fenech: So isn't it, isn't it around, was it at around this time when sort of the EV sales will start to spike as well. And you can tell there is a slight upshift April to May. So I'd say I'd love to see June, July, and August.

[00:48:11] Trevor Long: Yeah, for sure. I also probably don't understand congested hours because 500 out of what? It doesn't tell me whether that's a per day thing or whatever. So there's congestion for sure, but it appears to be on a low basis.

[00:48:26] Stephen Fenech: Yeah.

[00:48:26] Trevor Long: So because if utilization is it 10%? You can see why it's a tough business case.

[00:48:31] Stephen Fenech: Does that mean that 90% of the time they're just empty?

[00:48:34] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:48:34] Stephen Fenech: And so if you—

[00:48:35] Trevor Long: Out of 24 hours over 365 days, 90% of the time they're empty.

[00:48:40] Stephen Fenech: Wow.

[00:48:41] Trevor Long: You can see why a petrol car's parked there.

[00:48:44] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, it doesn't appear to be anyone needing them.

[00:48:47] Trevor Long: I mean, if anyone in the industry can help us, I'd love to see utilization By network, because that would be fascinating to see whether or not—

[00:48:58] Stephen Fenech: Oh, you mean the average V congested hours?

[00:49:01] Trevor Long: Yeah, I'd like to know, you know, how EV stacks up against BP and Ampol and stuff like that.

[00:49:06] Stephen Fenech: So I take it that these boxes on the right underneath the congested—

[00:49:09] Trevor Long: Are locations.

[00:49:10] Stephen Fenech: Yeah, so mostly shopping centers, car parks, accommodation, street parking, then it goes down to petrol stations, businesses, tourist destinations.

[00:49:19] Trevor Long: I think the petrol station one will grow. I think that'll grow as a percentage.

[00:49:22] Stephen Fenech: Well, you'd think so, eh? Like, I think that we are starting to see it, where there's bound bowser's over here and chargers over here and a shop in the middle.

[00:49:29] Trevor Long: Yeah. So, and you know, the biggest thing that— if my message to service stations is this: put a rubbish bin out near the chargers. You've got rubbish bins next to the bowser's, put one near the chargers.

[00:49:39] Stephen Fenech: And a windscreen washer. Yeah, they do that near the bowser's. Yeah, don't they?

[00:49:45] Trevor Long: Why don't we?

[00:49:46] Stephen Fenech: We're being second-class citizens, being squeegee discriminated is what was happening.

[00:49:52] Trevor Long: Squeegee discrimination. I wish I could remember that as the title of this show. Squeegee discrimination.

[00:49:58] Stephen Fenech: Squeegee discrimination. Yeah, we don't get a chance to wash our windscreen when we charge.

[00:50:03] Trevor Long: We'd love to talk charging with you, whatever your experience on the open road. 0477 657 657. We'll do it all again next week. Stephen, I'll see you then. I'll be right here. Right there? Right here.

[00:50:13] Stephen Fenech: Okay.