If you’ve bought a new electric car and you plan on using public fast chargers eg while on holidays or during daytrips you need to register with all the major Australian electric vehicle (EV) charging networks like Chargefox and Evie.
Just having the apps on your phone isn’t enough though. Sometimes you’ll be in charging station locations with no mobile signal eg: underground car parks or rural locations far from a town or city.
For those places you need to be able to start your charging station with a pre-registered RFID tap n pay card.
Here’s an example from reader Peter where without having an RFID card he wouldn’t have been able to start charging his car:
What if the charger is in a basement with no Vodafone or Optus reception (e.g. Chargefox Shell Cove) and you don’t want to have to sprint to the ramp where there’s signal before the charging attempt times out?
What if the charger is in a basement and relies on a Telstra cellular data card to operate, and the Telstra repeater in the basement (e.g. also at Chargefox Shell Cove) has gone into power-save mode? The charger can talk if it wants to, and wake stuff up, but until something wakes up the Telstra repeater, the app will just show the site as being offline, thus you can’t hit the Start button in-app.
You probably mistakenly think you need to order an RFID tap n pay membership card for every single charging network.
Thankfully you don’t have to do that. One RFID card for each driver in your family is all that’s necessary so don’t waste $10 dollars buying a Chargefox card.
I suggest you get an Evie Pass which is free to order, includes home delivery
It can also be used to tap n pay at Chargefox as explained below.
The pictures below show how to add multiple RFID cards to the Evie app.
Reader Patrick who works at EV infrastructure company E-Station confirmed my guess that actually any MiFare compatible RFID card will work eg: the Opal card in NSW if you read the tag number first using the Android app NFC tools.
I’ve also been told by readers that an Evie Pass works on Exploren, Everty, Smart Charge, Elanga and Charge Hub chargers (if the Evie card number is registered with those apps first).
I can confirm that it works at Exploren chargers because I have used it at Hamilton’s Queanbeyan Motel.
Of course you can use the Evie pass at Evie chargers like Taylors Lakes in Melbourne pictured below, where I charged the Hertz Polestar 2 I was reviewing at the time.
I first used my Evie Pass to tap n pay at Chargefox Euroa, during my 2022 Christmas road trip from Sydney to Melbourne and back in a MG ZS EV Excite model I was reviewing.
All I needed to do before my trip was save the full length Evie Pass unique card number (look at the back corner of the card) in the Chargefox app under My profile -> RFID Cards -> Add card.
Once I connected the car and tapped the EVIE Pass at Euroa charging went as normal.
Chargefox doesn’t care that you’re using a 3rd party card to tap in. All it wants is for you to use a unique card RFID number that is already registered in your Chargefox app account.
The charging speed was as usual and I got the normal 20% Chargefox discount for being an NRMA member, which is explained in my article save 20% on Chargefox ultra fast electric car chargers: members of NRMA, RACV, RACQ, RAC, RACT, RAA, AANT.
In my experience sometimes the charging station tap n pay units doesn’t recognise your card (regardless of whether you’re at an Evie or Chargefox location).
In that case quickly open the Chargefox or Evie app on your phone, as appropriate for where you are and start the charge session in the app/tap the phone with app open (depends on the machine).
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