“You won’t get far with that thing, mate.” Model Y does lap of Australia towing a trailer

Australia’s former prime minister once infamously said the EV won’t tow your boat, but retiree Jeff Giddins begs to differ. In fact, Giddins has just towed a trailer – including a kayak, an electric bike and camping equipment – with his RWD Tesla Model Y all the way around Australia.

“I met a lot of characters, and most were interested in my EV travels. But some were negative too …   comments like ‘you are not going to get far with that thing up here mate’,” Giddins tells the Driven.

But Giddins did indeed get very far – 20,000kms in fact. After setting off on June 29 from Jan Juc in Victoria, Giddins made it back home on 22 September after almost three months on the road. To the knowledge of The Driven, he might be the first person with electric vehicle (EV) to complete a lap of Australia towing a trailer, boat or caravan.

Giddins, 67, who bought his RWD Model Y in January, says that he took the trip very slow and steady, but says it shows that driving an EV across the country is not only possible, but an option for those who want to ‘tow their trailer’ as well.

“I’m quite happy to dawdle,” Giddins says. “By about 200 kilometres, I’m feeling tired, so I can pull over, go and recharge and take off the next day.”

Giddens, an ex motor mechanic, had a car full of camping equipment and food, and his small boat trailer housed an electric bike and kayak, and weighed around 700kg, so he wasn’t expecting to get close to the RWD Model Y’s range of 430 kilometres. (Just to be clear his Model Y is not the long range version).

However, he did manage to finish his approximately 200-kilometre trips most days with 20 – 30 percent charge remaining. Giddins says he found 90km/h was the sweet spot, as it is with any car, be it electric or fossil fuel, when towing.

“Most days I would drive into my destination with 20 per cent, 30 per cent – worse case 10 per cent,” he said.

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Of course, this still required good planning. In areas with no fast-charging – and that includes a lot of Australia – he would call the locations the day before to ensure they had somewhere for him to trickle charge, and had to plan his route for stopping every 200 kilometres or so.

Updating the PlugCharge app – which provides locations of all sorts of chargers – with any new locations or broken chargers became his secondary mission throughout the trip, as it was in Queensland where he found a number of chargers not working.

He managed to recharge on whatever was available, be that at caravan parks, at road-houses along the way, at DC fast chargers where they were installed, and 3 phase plugs. He says a lot of cattle stations are now considering hosting charging stations of some sort.

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But Giddins didn’t start his trip expecting it to be a full loop.

“It was just a road trip to see how far I could get the boat trailer with the kayak and bike” he told The Driven. “Ideally getting somewhere warm enough to paddle on the estuaries.” (He likes to paddle every day if he can).

Giddins didn’t think he was going to do a full loop until after making it across Western Australia, as he wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it between towns within the car’s limit.

“I met a fellow at Carnarvon, and he showed me the way on an old road map, he’d been around Australia seven or eight times,” he said.

“There ended up being a shortcut across the section – a cattle station in Ballara where I could charge there, and then continue the journey.”

Although he’s happy to be back home now, Giddins says he enjoyed the lengthy trip, and absolutely managed to find somewhere warm enough to paddle.

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“The beauty of the trip was that I stopped in a lot of places and saw a lot of things I normally wouldn’t see,” he says.

“Normally you’d just drive straight through.”

Giddins is a former motor mechanic, and his previous vehicle was a Toyota LandCruiser turbo, which he used to tow his fishing boats, and decided to go electric after towing a newly bought caravan from South Australia to Victoria, and was rocked by the fuel bill.

“There was no way I can afford that going round Australia,” he says. He looked at an electric transit van for his long wished for trip around Australia but decided they weren’t ready, so chose the Model Y because it had a towing package.

“This proves to me how cheap they cheap they are,” he says. The biggest bill for charging was $24. “I’m sold on them. They are the best car to drive I’ve ever had. I’m loving it.”

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This article was first published on The Driven. You can read it here.