Brisbane to Sydney for 50 bucks: what an EV trip costs

$50.66. That's the total at the bottom of the trip cost screen for Brisbane to Sydney in an EV. Under it, highlighted: "You save $101.84."

I put both numbers in a short, next to a servo price board ticking upward. Diesel goes from 284.9 to 290.2. Unleaded 91 goes from 242.9 to 248.9, and Premium 98 from 263.9 to 268.9. The board is an animation, so the prices are illustrative. The feeling is real enough. Anyone who's watched a fuel board change on the drive to work knows it.

Over the top I said one thing: "Brisbane to Sydney for 50 bucks. And I saved a hundred." That fits in a short. This is the longer version: where the $50.66 comes from, what the hundred is measured against, and what changes when you plan the same trip with your own car and your own rates.

I'm Adam. I run EV by Gen Z from the Sunshine Coast. It's the four-wheel spin-off of TechCruise26, my e-scooter and e-bike channel. I'm not an engineer. I review cars.

Where the $50.66 comes from

The planner splits the trip into lines, so you can see each dollar:

• Starting charge: $14.21
• Stop 1: $18.47
• Stop 2: $13.13
• Stop 3: $4.85
• Total: $50.66

Add them up and you get $50.66 to the cent. Three charging stops, each on a different network, plus the charge that's already in the battery when you roll out of Brisbane.

That first line matters. A lot of back-of-envelope EV maths quietly treats the starting battery as free. It isn't. You paid for that energy somewhere, and the plan counts it.

The petrol side is simple arithmetic. $50.66 plus $101.84 is $152.50. That's what the same drive costs in petrol at the prices the planner used. So the "hundred" in the short is the gap between those two totals, not a figure pulled from the air.

What sets your number

The short doesn't say which car the plan used, or what per-kWh rates sat behind each stop. Your total depends on three things, and none of them are mine:

• Your car's consumption. A heavy SUV and a small hatch don't use the same energy over a long motorway run.
• The price per kWh at each stop. Networks charge different rates, and you may stop at different ones.
• How much you charge at each stop. Charging to 100 percent every time costs more and takes longer than topping up to what the next leg needs.

There's an "Edit prices" button right under the total on that screen. Use it. A cost estimate is only as good as the rates you feed it.

One more thing on prices. A charger listed with no cost isn't a free charger. In the app, a station is only marked free when the operator explicitly says so. A blank cost field is treated as unknown. That stops a missing price from making your trip look cheaper than it'll be.

For Kiwi readers: in New Zealand, every EV-versus-petrol comparison in the app includes road user charges as their own line. Leave them out and the comparison flatters the EV.

Planning Brisbane to Sydney yourself

You can do this by hand. Here's the order I'd work in:

1. Start with your car's real range, not the brochure figure. If your battery has aged, knock some off.
2. Pick an arrival buffer. 15 to 20 percent is a sensible default for each leg.
3. Plan to charge to about 80 percent per stop. That's the Route Planner's default target.
4. Find chargers that actually fit your plug. Don't assume Type 2 and CCS2. A Nissan Leaf or an import can be different.
5. Note a backup charger near every stop.
6. Check for legs where the chargers thin out before you commit to the route.
7. Price each stop at that network's rate and add the starting charge.

Here's my one caution. Charge Nomad doesn't show whether a charger is in use or working right now, and no app should promise that here. Chargers go down. That's why step 5 isn't optional.

Before you pull in at each stop, read the star ratings and short notes other drivers have left on that station.

What's free and what's Charge Nomad+

Charge Nomad's Route Planner does most of that for you. On iPhone it prices each stop too. Give the Route Planner your start, your destination, your car and your battery percentage, and it works out where to stop, how long to charge and how much battery you'll arrive with. It plans around your arrival buffer and an 80 percent target per stop, attaches a backup charger to every stop, and flags legs where the charging just isn't there yet. On iPhone it also picks stops by Reliable, Cheapest or Fastest, plans the return trip, and shows the cost stop by stop next to the same drive in petrol, which is the screen in the short.

The Route Planner and the Range Estimator are part of Charge Nomad+, along with more than one car in your garage, home-screen widgets, customisation, saved trips in CarPlay and a couple of small extras. The charger map, Stranded mode and the other tools are free, Trip Cost included. On iPhone, Charge Nomad+ is $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year in Australia, with a 7 day free trial on the monthly plan. On Android there's a 7 day free trial on the monthly plan too, and the price is shown in Google Play. Prices vary by country.

One practical note for a long drive. The calculators run on the phone, so range, charging time and cost still work with no signal. The map and the Route Planner need data.

Charge Nomad, free on the App Store and Google Play: evbygenz.com/app

Run your own Brisbane to Sydney before you leave. Your number won't be $50.66, but you'll know what it is.