'Ridiculous': EV owner slams caravan site for not allowing charging on site

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As more electric vehicles hit our roads, some owners have taken their battery-powered cars on road trips across regional and coastal Australia, highlighting the state of EV charging stations in the process.

And while the charging network in metropolitan cities is catching up to other countries, tourism hotspots like caravan sites and national parks are also starting to accommodate EV owners who need to charge their vehicles after a long day of driving.

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However, some caravan sites still prohibit drivers from charging their EVs, predominantly due to insurance concerns.

Posting on the BYD EV Owners Australia Facebook group earlier this month, one EV owner claimed they weren't allowed to trickle-charge their Atto 3 SUV via a normal three-pin wall charger at a caravan park.

"The caravan park owner doesn't permit charging of an EV via a standard power point using an extension lead from the cabin,” they wrote.

"He was apologetic but said that his insurance doesn't allow it (or allowed it but with a ridiculous number of expensive conditions) … this is a ridiculous situation," the Facebook user stated.

While the individual site was not named in the post, comments from other users have suggested the problem is occurring at many other locations around the country.

Tom and Francis Brodhurst-Hill, a couple who share their adventures on the road on the Tesla Tripping Facebook page, said their experiences over the last three years have been mostly positive, but they have, on occasion, been refused charging for their Tesla Model 3.

"When we stay at a caravan park or a motel, we often ask if it’s okay to plug the car in. The responses vary, but have been about 95 per cent positive,” they said.

“The most bemusing [time] was at a motel in Yeppoon [a coastal Queensland town] where they thought that the EV posed a fire hazard. We tried to point out that they are 20 times less likely to catch on fire compared to the ute parked next to their gas cylinder.

“Sometimes they [site owners] are surprised that we can plug into any 10-amp power point (or 15-amp caravan outlet). Sometimes they’ve had to call the manager to check.

"But awareness has grown. They sometimes ask us not to charge during the peak time, which is around 6:00pm, and that is easy enough for us to schedule.”

Drive understands that reasons for refusal range from confusion about how common EV fires are, and the causes to fears their insurance wouldn’t cover them if something were to happen while a car was plugged in.

As previously reported by Drive, according to EV FireSafe, there have only been six EV-related fires in Australia – of which, one was due to arson, three were caused by an external fire, one vehicle was part of a crash, and one involved road debris hitting the car’s battery.

Meanwhile, as long as a building/site owner has informed their insurer that they have EVs charging – or have had a dedicated charger installed – they would be covered.

"If property owners, developers or managers install EV charging infrastructure into new or existing properties, this is a material fact that should be disclosed to insurers and needs to be considered in insurance coverage," an ICA spokesperson recently told Drive.

Luke Chippindale, General Manager at Caravan Industry Association of Australia, said the industry supports the EV transition, and owners being refused charging is rare.

"The industry has embraced it [EV chargers] because at the end of the day there's recognition now [of how important it is]," Chippindale told Drive.

"A lot of customers will pull up [to a caravan park] and say 'hey, I've got an EV, do you mind if I plug in?' so there is communication. I haven't heard of too many people not being allowed to charge at all, it's a fairly rare occurrence," he added.

As an alternative to plugging in a standard wall charger, caravan parks are starting to install fast chargers to serve their customers better, but according to Chippindale, this isn’t without problems either.

Chippindale said EV charging installation isn't cheap, and caravan site owners usually pay thousands of dollars out of pocket to include the infrastructure on their grounds.

"The installation of charging infrastructure is costly because in a number of parks it means rewiring the park [itself], upgrading mains and so forth," he told Drive.

"The issue that a number of parks will have is sometimes the [installation process] incurs the upgrading of a [power] grid or upgrading their own electrical infrastructure within the park.

"We've had scenarios where several parks have been truly on board with this, and have gone to put in fast chargers [at their sites] at their own cost. They're then receiving notices telling [them] they need to upgrade their grid and that can quite often run into the millions of dollars."

The General Manager of Caravan Industry Association of Australia said the subsidies to promote and support the uptick of EV charging stations has been a "mixed bag".

"The states [and territories] become responsible for their own infrastructure and charging highways, [local] councils then become the owner of how [charging] infrastructure is installed amongst their own networks or assets. So none of it has been particularly clear [or] straightforward.

"There have been a number of council parks in certain states that have gone 'we can't [install EV chargers] because it means that we have an energy burden within the council budget ourselves and we can't then have other people absorb additional energy, which requires a cost'.

"Most of the cost is still largely sitting with private enterprises," he told Drive.

It’s not all bad news as some states like New South Wales and South Australia have started subsidising EV charging stations at regional tourism hotspots like caravan sites and national parks.

For NSW EV drivers, the state government’s destination charging grant is taking applications for the third round, with approved applicants eligible to receive up to $200,000 in subsidies to install DC public chargers between 24kW and 100kW at specific sites.

Currently the program has installed more than 1300 EV charging stations in over 500 sites across regional NSW at a cost of $5 million.

In South Australia, the state government is investing $3.2 million in EV charging infrastructure trials, with the funding planned to go towards hotel, motel and holiday destinations.

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