Zeekr Big Lap: Day 32 - Esperance to Caiguna

Day 32 of the Zeekr Big Lap and another epic day with a fantastic meet up and shall we say some interesting charging experiences. Headed off from Esperance after sunrise grabbing a tea from the coffee van outside the van park, topping up to 90% at the town's WA EV Network station. Then a nice 2-hour run in the misty rain up to Norseman, narrowly avoiding hitting a big roo. Here we met up with Tony and his son Solomon, as well as Colin and Elise, all founding members of the Goldfields EV Owners Facebook page. They drove the 2 hours down from Kalgoorlie, just to see Twig and myself, and these meet ups really have been the highlight of the lap. After chatting and charging to 100% on the newly repaired Norseman charger, we were off on the 372 km leg to Caiguna via the solar charger at Balladonia. The most recent PlugShare reports were that this charger was faulty, despite being repaired only a few days previous. So I hypermiled it at 95kph with the intent of making it all the way to Caiguna, my range estimate going up from 14% to 25%. However upon arrival at Balladonia the 50kW charger was unexpectedly working just fine, so I charged to 82% leaving enough in the charger's battery for the next EV. After this top up, my ABRP app told me I could get the remaining 182 km to Caiguna with 40%. After travelling down the 90-Mile Straight I ended up arriving with a healthy 45 per cent, enough to easily get to the next charger at Cocklebiddy. Waiting at Caiguna there were two BYDs belonging to novice EV drivers heading west, both charging at less than 3kW at the faulty charger that's supposed to deliver 30kW. I plugged into the AC charger with my cable getting 9kW but decided to overnight at Caiguna, spending the evening helping out these hapless drivers, even though I had more than enough to make it to the next charger. The moral of the story is to have all the cables, a Telstra phone and to use PlugShare to plan and report issues. It's also a good idea to join your state Australian Electric Vehicle Association chapter to educate yourself on EV road tripping.  You can catch all the drama in my daily YouTube vlog on Kangaroo Island TV.  Camped in Hotel Zeekr, planning on crossing into South Australia tomorrow, with the Zeekr set to clock over 20,000km! Today we did 566 km with an efficiency of 21.9kWh/100km.