I have constantly been asking myself if an electric car can meet my needs as a person living in the country and traveling ~450km per week.
For a lot of people living in the city electric cars in my opinion have made sense for most of the last decade. But in the later years of the decade EVs have increased their driving range and become in reach for more people, including us rural drivers. Now with higher ranges and more infrastructure being installed, EVs are not such a strange concept for rural travelers.
There are now several cars under $80K such as the Hyundai Ioniq & Kona EV, Renault Zoe, Nissan Leaf 2, BMW i3 and Tesla Model 3. These cars are all available to test drive in Perth across select dealers except for the Tesla Model 3. You can hire the Model 3 through a platform called evee.com.au it is basically an AirBNB for electric cars, at the time of writing EVEE only has Tesla cars available in WA.
In Australia all of the earlier mentioned cars are available and more are set to arrive in 2020. One notable car that is poised to enter the Australian EV market is the MG ZS EV starting under the $50k mark. This car is slated to be the cheapest EV to hit our shores with a reasonable range.
Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus starts from $74,539* with a range of 409km^.
BMW i3s starts from $79,462* with a range of 285km^.
MG ZS EV starts from $46,990* with a range of 263km^.
Hyundai Ioniq Electric starts from $53,920* with a range of 311km^.
Nissan Leaf starts from $56,232* with a range of 270km^.
Hyundai Kona Electric starts from $66,570* with a range of 449km^.
Renault Zoe starts from $55,426* with a range of 300km^.
The criteria for me living in rural Western Australia with a ~450km weekly commute, is to be able to travel half of the commute without charging (~225km) and to consume around 50% of the battery (for the rare case of needing to travel again not long after arriving). Therefore the only 2 cars near this and in the sub $80k category is the Tesla Model 3 SR+ and the Hyundai Kona Electric. I have compared the Model 3 and the Kona, the latter is too small for me and personally I am not really a SUV or CUV fan. The Model 3 has more space and a sportier feel which I like coming from a Holden Commodore, also the Model 3 is packed with tech and constantly gets updated with new features.
If you are looking for an EV closer to the $50k mark and range is not such an issue (~200km weekly commute), you are in luck! The Ioniq, Leaf and Zoe give you a reasonable choice to choose from. Personally if this was my circumstances I would choose the Ioniq, reasonable charging speed, space, shape, range and has a liquid cooled battery. Liquid cooling has to be a must for the longevity of batteries in Australia.
*All prices are Drive Away and are current as of Jan 2020, Source: Car Sales.
^All ranges are WLTP, Source: Ev Database.
Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
Rural Oz Electric Car Blog 
The Model 3 SR+ only does about 250-350kms of “highway driving” from a full charge. So while it might do your 225km without charge, you won’t have 50% of the battery remaining if this is 110km/h driving.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Matt, yeah I have driven one along my route back in December and managed to travel 186km starting at 98% arriving with 40% I figured that was not the most efficient trip either. On the way back I travelled 197km starting at 79% arriving with 20%. At a stretch starting at 100% and arriving with 50% could be possible under the “perfect conditions” I thought, probably not very often though.
LikeLike