Foxes in the wild | Rohan Smith

Rohan Smith recently joined the Chargefox team as Head of Partner Success. He's a reformed petrol-head and now EV enthusiast.

Since turning 18 and buying my first car (a 1984 Mazda 626), I quickly became a petrol head and developed a passion for modifying cars.

Once I graduated from my Probationary (P) licence, I quickly upgraded to a slightly faster vehicle, being a Toyota Celica, and then transitioned into a 1990 Toyota MR2 Turbo, imported from Japan.

I joined the MR2 Club in Victoria and became president of the car club in my early 20s, where I mostly focussed on getting as many Toyota MR2 drivers to enjoy their sportscars on Victorian raceways, including Philip Island Grand Prix Circuit, Sandown Raceway, Calder Park Raceway, and Winton Motor Raceway.

A decade later, I told my wife that I would never sell my Toyota MR2 Turbo…

But that all changed, when I joined AGL in 2017.

In a newly created role as Product Innovation Manager, I was responsible for the first energy retailer led Electric Car Plan in Australia, coined "$1 a day", for unlimited home charging.

As part of managing this new Minimum Viable Product (MVP), I drove an EV for the first time, an AGL fleet vehicle in the form of a BMW i3.

I quickly fell in love with the instant, silent, and smooth power delivery of the electric drivetrain, and it made my Toyota MR2 Turbo feel like a dinosaur.

During 2017, my wife Michelle and I installed 5kW of rooftop solar to our house, and added a Tesla Powerwall 2 in the garage to increase our solar self-consumption and provide whole-home backup during electricity outages.

Then, less than a year after joining AGL, I sold the MR2 (to my wife's amazement) and purchased a BMW i3 at the start of 2018.

Equipped with a 30kWh battery, which could only travel about 200kms per charge, range anxiety was naturally a concern for early adopters of Electric Vehicles (EVs).

However, we still had a second car (a diesel SUV) that was used for long range trips across regional Victoria.

But after realising how much cheaper EVs were to run, and experiencing increasing servicing costs from the aging diesel SUV, in 2024 I decided it was time to go all-in on electric vehicles.

The SUV was replaced with a 2024 Tesla Model 3 Performance, which has an 80kWh battery (capable of doing over 500kms per charge), but more importantly could get up to freeway speed in 3.1 seconds.

Charging both EVs mostly at home, either directly from excess solar during the day or overnight on an off-peak EV energy tariff (at only 8c/kWh), my passion for cars was now actually saving money (from an operating cost perspective).

To end this tale, at the start of 2025, Michelle and I (and our two daughters) drove the Tesla M3P from Melbourne to Sydney over the summer holidays and used multiple Chargefox public charging stations along the way, including receiving 10% off some charging sites with my RACV membership linked to my Chargefox account.

I was actually working at RACV at the time, as EV Product Manager, but I have recently joined the Chargefox team to ensure auto clubs, like RACV, have the best experience with Chargefox.

‍