If you own an electric vehicle (or you're thinking about buying one) here's how it's going to play out for long-distance driving in Australia.

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Finding the nearest charger in unfamiliar terrain is more than half the battle here - but provided you’ve got a smartphone and signal, the Chargefox app has you covered - seamlessly. It’s actually pretty easy to find the needle when the app deletes the haystack for you.

It’ll find you the nearest charger, give you real-time information about the charger’s status - like, is it operational and/or being used by some other EV owner. And it’ll integrate with Google Maps to give you turn-by-turn instructions to get you there.

You also start the charger, stop it, and pay for the electricity within the app - no lining up with the liquid-fuel customers, no paying at the cashier and no having the two-for-one Kit-Kat diabetes meal deal inflicted upon you. So that’s nice.

Plugging in - well, they have tried to make it look as much like conventional refuelling as possible. The outlets look like fuel bowsers, and the process is pretty easy. Now, the time to recharge kinda varies, because the outlet needs to talk to the car, and not fry the battery - but you’ll get from near zero to 80 per cent charge fairly fast.

The car will make a fair bit of noise during this fast-charge process because the cooling system is doing the mad voodoo of heat exchange, keeping the battery within acceptable temperature limits.

Generally, depending on the EV, and the state of charge, you’ll be looking at a half-hour stop, ballpark. Maybe 40 minutes. Which, hypothetically, isn’t a bad way to travel. Like, 300 kilometres is going to take you roughly three hours, and by then (if you kicked off at 80 per cent) you’d be down to about 60 kays range in the Kona, and you’d stop for half an hour, be back up to 80 per cent, repeat. You’d probably Hoover up a burger, and let the kids burn off a bit of latent energy.

To me, that’s not much of an imposition, logistically, for most people. And I’d have to say, as a Chargefox virgin, I found the whole process pretty simple, and totally reliable. Even gentle and intuitive. I just went with the flow. Like, a politician could do this. (Not a cabinet minister, obviously, but a hard-working back-bencher? Sure. It’s that easy.)

According to the app, which has a map showing every charger nationally, you can basically drive from Port Douglas up north to Adelaide , using the Chargefox network. But you can’t go any way you want. You essentially have to follow the coast.

Sydney to Brisbane: no problem, just not via the New England Highway. Gotta go via the coast. Rechargers at Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, Ballina, Byron - then wherever you want, north of that.

Sydney to Melbourne on the Hume: no prob. Canberra? Yep. Also Cooma and Batemans Bay. Melbourne to Adelaide - OK. But essentially nothing in regional NSW and regional Queensland - away from the coast.

Even the Blue Mountains is a recharging desert, and as for Bathurst, Dubbo, Cobar, Broken Hill … I’m hearing crickets.

There are rechargers around Perth and down to the Margaret River. You can even charge up in Kalgoorlie, but to get there in the Kona you’d need to go via Albany and Esperance. Which is kinda the long way round...