Driving across the Nullarbor Plain, the white, insect-specked car is eerily silent, with just the sounds of 80s Australian rock playing over the speakers.

The boot is packed with a huge box of plugs — from "trickle" or "granny" chargers all the way to "DC fast".

This is all to make this meticulously planned, time-consuming trip possible.

Krishna Sen and her partner David Hill are driving across the whole width of the country twice — from Perth to Melbourne, then Sydney, and back to Perth — in an electric car.

"When you start driving in an electric vehicle on a long journey, there's this thing at the back of your mind: 'Is the range of this car going to be enough to get me from one charging station to another?'," says Krishna, a retired social science professor.

"So, we started with some anxiety. Our car theoretically can do 450 kilometres with a full charge, but in reality, it can't.

"If it's a cold morning, it (the battery) does less. If we need to use the heater, it does less.

"All of this adds to your anxiety, and also a bit of excitement.

"Am I going to do it, or will I get stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere?"

The challenges of finding power

Krishna explains that each day, she and David work out where the next destination is within range, drive the 400 kilometres in a few hours, check in, and plug in a wall socket to slowly recharge for the next 11 hours.

Cables sitting on the bonnet of a white electric vehicle.
Krishna and David had to make sure they had all the cables they needed for different situations.(ABC: Jacinta Bowler)
"I ring through one or two days in advance to check that wherever we're staying has the capacity for us to plug the car into a normal charger, even if it is in through the motel window.

"We've got a 20-metre extension cable. It's ridiculous!"

These trickle chargers take so long to charge because of the low rate of power they can feed – just 2 kilowatts.

On the other hand, if you can find a fast charger, it can be anything from 25 to 160 kilowatts, dropping the time needed to charge from multiple hours to 60 minutes or less.

These fast chargers are much more important in long-distance travel, when you want to quickly fill up and then continue on your journey.

The infrastructure of high-power DC fast chargers in cities and along common travel routes like the Hume Highway or Pacific Highway is already mostly in place, but there are a lot fewer options for regional areas.
Currently, these regional fast charging stations are being added in an ad hoc way.

After the Western Australian government pushed back against plans to fund electric vehicle fast chargers on the Nullarbor, researchers at the University of Western Australia set up a private funding campaign to fill the gap.

This led to a particularly novel charger that David and Krishna used along their route — the fish and chip charger at Caiguna.

The 50kW DC fast charger uses leftover frying oil to charge an electric vehicle in about 30 minutes.

"The fastest charger on the Nullarbor is actually the fish and chip oil one," says David, who's also a retired professor.

"The concept originated from a retired engineer called John Edwards in Perth … John came up with a concept of reusing fish and chip oil, which then goes into an adapted diesel generator, and that then powers a DC electric vehicle charger."

There were times when Krishna and David were worried about being "stuck in the middle of nowhere".(Supplied: Krishna Sen)

It might be early days for the Nullarbor, but as more fast chargers become available, charging an electric vehicle becomes closer to filling up a car with petrol — rather than a multi-hour affair with regular stops.

But currently, without these fast chargers, driving an electric vehicle long distance is not a fast, simple or easy way to travel.

"I know people who are [driving electric vehicles across Australia] right now, and they're saying that they're doing it now while it's still a challenge," says Professor Thomas Bräunl, an electric vehicle expert at the University of Western Australia.

"In a couple of years' time, there's going to be stations all around, and everyone can do it."

On your last petrol vehicle?

Professor Bräunl suggests Australia is only a decade away from electric being almost the only option for new cars — and with that rise in demand comes a need for more infrastructure.

"If you buy a new car now and it's not electric, that's probably the last non-electric car that you're going to buy," he says.

More electric vehicles will mean more chargers are required. Electric vehicles make up just 0.12 per cent of all cars in Australia.(Supplied: Krishna Sen)

Professor Bräunl's team has done work with the Western Australian government on how many more fast chargers will be needed to fill this demand.

While electric cars currently make up just 0.12 per cent of all cars in Australia, the researchers are dreaming big for the future.

If 1 per cent of cars in WA were electric vehicles, the electricity required would be 44 gigawatt hours per year.

If all cars on the road were electric, this would require 100 times more electricity — 4,400 gigawatt hours per year.

But the number of charging stations doesn't also need to be 100 times more.

"What we recommended is about 10 times more, just because you can't have a fraction of a charging station," Professor Bräunl says.

Currently, many charging stations in big cities are sitting idle for most of the day, with only a few electric vehicle owners using them, or owners just charging at home.

This is not necessarily the case on the major highways of the east coast, where Krishna and David ended up having to queue for fast chargers or book in for a spot.

As more electric vehicles come onto the market, these fast chargers will be used more often, but the basic infrastructure will already be partially in place.

A trip that spanned more than 9,000km

Although there are no official figures, David thinks there have been only a few dozen people who have made the trek across the country in an electric vehicle.

In fact, when he started asking for advice in EV enthusiast Facebook groups, some didn't think it was possible.

"The very first response was from a gentleman who said, 'Mate! DON'T! It's suicidal!!'

"When I saw his very swift response to the question, I immediately thought this is going to be much more difficult than I thought."

Luckily, a number of helpful electric vehicle enthusiasts who'd done it before offered advice.

Over the course of the 25-day, 9,211-kilometre journey, Krishna and David found the trip was not as hard as they (or that swift commenter) thought.

They ended up finding a rhythm to the slow pace, despite their initial trepidation.

"It's like any other long-distance driving, only smoother and more silent. It's more peaceful than in most petrol-driven cars," Krishna says.

"My theme song for this journey is Leonard Cohen's Slow. 'Slow is in my blood'."