How to find an EV charger?
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Someone about to get their first EV asked me this week: "what's that app that shows you where the chargers are?"
Great question, and there's a straight answer: PlugShare. Free, on iPhone and Android, and the one nearly every EV driver in Australia has on their phone.
It's a map covered in pins. Tap one and you get the charger's speed in kW, which network runs it and what plugs it has — plus the part that makes it genuinely worth having: check-ins from real drivers. People report when a charger worked, when it didn't, where the entrance is, and post photos so you know what you're looking for when you get there.
On a road trip, though, it isn't our planner. The car's own navigation does that. Put in the destination and the Tesla picks the charging stops, says how long at each, and warms the battery on the way in so the charge runs faster. For the main route, that is all you need.
PlugShare is for the stops the car would never have chosen. We want to pull off the highway at a town that looks interesting, or a lookout, or a bakery — so we check whether there is anything to plug into while we are parked there anyway, for lunch or a coffee or a toilet or a wander around. Often there is, and the car quietly tops up while we are doing something else.
It also fills the gaps in the car's map. Rolling into Batemans Bay on 5%, the Tesla kept warning us there was nowhere to charge, because it only knew Tesla's own network — while PlugShare had been showing two fast-charging sites in town the whole way. And we once booked a motel in Port Augusta whose listing advertised charging on site; PlugShare already had those chargers logged as offline, and offline they were.
The best one was last December, looking for somewhere to camp in East Gippsland. I gambled on a single green pin sitting on its own, way west of me, across the Victorian border, in a town called Tubbut. No check-ins at all. After a long and beautiful drive on windy unsealed roads, "the town" turned out to be a community hall with a few add-ons — one of them a working 7 kW charger.
Most days we never open it at all. Nearly all our charging happens at home, overnight or straight off the roof, and on a day trip of up to about 400 km return the app stays shut.
So install it and have a scroll — around your own suburb, and around whatever town you are thinking of driving to for the day. It all looks more ordinary than you would expect.
Related Posts
- The lone pin, and the town at the end of it: Chasing a lone PlugShare pin to Tubbut 30 Dec 2025
- When the car said no chargers and the app said two: Arriving in Batemans Bay on 5 % 1 Feb 2023
- A motel listing that promised charging on site: Green lawns and EV chargers at Port Augusta 8 Aug 2025
- More for anyone weighing up their first EV: Thinking about an EV? Here's what surprised us 19 Jun 2026
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