We have had our MG4 for over a year now, and never charged it away from home. After all, we did buy it as our run-around car, not for road trips.

A few of our friends were staying at Thredbo over Christmas (they are from the UK and like it cold for Christmas) so we decided to join them for a couple of days AND drive down in the MG4. We grilled people we know who have done road trips in their EVs and they recommended getting accounts with a number of charging companies before you leave rather than have to do this on the road.

I downloaded apps to my phone for Chargefox (NRMA), Evie Charging, Ampol and Tesla Super Chargers. Then I created an account for each one using my credit card. Not sure why they just don’t let you charge up with a credit card, without the messing around creating an account, but that is the way it is at present.

I did a test before leaving by going to the Tesla charger at Figtree and I was able to charge the car without much difficulty. I then downloaded the Plug Share app, which shows where all the charging points are along the route.

Armed with our new knowledge, we set off with the car charged to 100% from our solar panels.

I decided that I would stop overnight in Goulburn first (baby steps). In Goulburn, I found an NRMA Chargefox charger and set up charging via the app on my phone. Since there was no one was waiting, I left the charger running until the car was 90% charged.

One interesting thing is that when you select the charge point on your phone, then plug the cable into the car, the charger and the car seem to have to talk to one another for a while. Not sure what they chat about, but it can take about half a minute (like dogs sniffing each other before getting down to business). I discovered that it was best to just stay calm and wait rather than start stabbing at buttons. Eventually there would be clicking noises, and the charging would start.

Next morning we set off for the 200km drive to our next stop, the Snowy Hydro Centre in Cooma, which had another bank of NRMA chargers outside. When we arrived, we set the charger going and went in for our morning coffee. In half an hour, the car was 80% charged. The cost of the charge was $20, which was much more than to buy from the grid at home and, of course, more expensive than our home-grown solar power, but still much cheaper than the equivalent petrol.

We also noticed that when we stopped to charge, the cost of the coffee and food was almost invariably more expensive than the electricity!

We set off again for Thredbo via Dalgety to experience some of the Monaro Plains. Beautiful cruising along those quiet roads in a very quiet car! Arrived in Thredbo and the hotel had a charger for guests. How convenient. It was cold in Thredbo, as hoped for, AND it even snowed a little overnight, so our friends were very happy.