EVX's DC pole charger isn't on a pole yet. Use the AC ones

The pole-mounted DC charger that made the Australian news doesn't have a street address. EVX hasn't named a single location for it yet.

That gap matters most to one kind of driver. This one's a composite, not a real person. You rent a unit in Wollongong. There's no driveway, so the car sleeps on the street, and you can't put a wallbox on a wall you don't own. Kerbside charging isn't a nice extra for you. It's the whole plan.

So when pv magazine, The Driven and EV Central all ran a story about a DC charger that bolts onto a power pole, it read like the answer. It's tempting to start sketching the run up to Byron Bay around it. Don't. Here's what the reports actually say, what's already on the poles, and how to plan with hardware you can plug into today.

What EVX announced, and where it's up to

The model is EVX's Polecharger Rapid. pv magazine and The Driven both report it's still going through detailed engineering and certification. More specifications, manufacturing partners and locations are being held back until closer to commercial release.

EV Central gives more detail on where the work sits. EVX is still working through the electrical design, the physical design and the cable management. Testing, validation and certification come after the first production unit is assembled.

That's the order: finish the design, build a first production unit, then test and certify it. None of those reports puts a Rapid unit on a street you can drive to. It's an announcement, and you can't charge from an announcement.

A charger counts when it's bolted down, listed on a network and taking payment. Until then it's news, and news doesn't belong in a trip plan.

The EVX chargers you can use now

EVX already has hardware on the street, and it's a different product. pv magazine and The Driven both describe EVX's current charger as a dual-charging AC Polecharger. That changes how you use it.

You've got two ways to find and pay for one:

• Through Chargefox. Chargefox's news page says EVX kerbside chargers were added to its network, usable with its app or an RFID card.
• Through EVX's own driver app, which EVX's website links to on the App Store and Google Play.

Chargefox's page names the places: Sydney, Wollongong, Ballina, Byron Bay and south-east Melbourne. For our Wollongong renter, that's the useful part of the story. There's EVX hardware named in your own city already, and EVX hardware named at the other end of the Byron run too. It's just slower hardware than the headline.

So judge EVX by the AC units you can find and pay for today. Treat the Rapid as news until it's up on a pole near you.

How to plan a trip around AC kerbside charging

An AC pole is the charger you park at. Think overnight, a long lunch, an afternoon at the beach. It isn't the quick top-up between towns, and planning it as one is how a road trip goes sideways.

Here's how I'd set up a trip that starts and ends on the kerb:

1. Use the AC pole near home as your slow charge before you leave. Plug in the evening before, not the morning of.
2. Plan the highway legs around DC sites.
3. Set an arrival buffer you're comfortable with. Somewhere around 15 to 20 percent leaves room for a detour, a headwind or a charger that's out of action.
4. Charge to about 80 percent at each fast stop, then move on.
5. Have a second charger in mind near every stop you plan.
6. At the destination end, use the kerbside AC poles the way you would at home: park, plug in, go and do something else.

Before you go, check three things for every EVX pole on your list: which network it's on, how you pay (app or RFID card), and exactly which street it's on. Kerbside chargers sit in ordinary parking, so the pin and the pole need to match.

One honest caution. Charge Nomad doesn't show whether a bay is free right now, and no app should promise that here. A pole in a residential street can have a car parked at it when you pull up. That's why the backup charger matters more than the first choice.

Where Charge Nomad fits

You can check every one of those steps by hand, network page by network page. Or you can open Charge Nomad, on iPhone and Android, where the free charger map opens where you are and filters by network, power output and connector type. If you're on Charge Nomad+, the Route Planner puts a backup charger near each stop and flags legs where the charging infrastructure genuinely isn't there yet, before you commit to the route.

Charge Nomad is free on the App Store and Google Play, no ads, iOS 17 and up or Android 8 and up: evbygenz.com/app

If you've plugged into an EVX pole in Wollongong, Ballina or south-east Melbourne, tell us on the channel how long you left the car there. That's the number that tells the next street-parker what to expect.