I drove three hours in an electric vehicle to a friend's wedding. Everything was running smoothly until I hit a major problem on the way back

An Aussie has exposed a major issue when travelling around the country in an electric car after she took a vehicle on a short road trip for a wedding. 

Kristie Hannah, who is a property and stock investor, drove her Tesla Model Y from Perth to Dunsborough, in Western Australia, over the weekend.

Ms Hannah highly rated the overall drive, but revealed one problem that stopped the three-hour-long trek from being a perfect experience.

The car enthusiast found herself in trouble when trying to recharge her car during the trip back home.

Ms Hannah said she struggled to find any available chargers, and when she finally did, they either didn't work or they were already taken by other drivers.

Her lack of options meant she was forced to charge her car at Tesla-owned stations - which ended up costing her more than it would have at the other generic stations. 

Ms Hannah told Daily Mail Australia that while she 'loved her EV', the lack of quality chargers was holding them back from being reliable in rural areas.

'I think what is missing at the moment is the lack of charging points... But the other thing is the maintenance,' Ms Hannah said.

'It's really annoying if you don't schedule in, like if you walk up to a charging point, and it happens to be out of order, and you've not got much charge, you're in trouble.'

After finding Dunsborough's only EV charger in use, Ms Hannah was forced to drive to the nearby Tesla Supercharger in Margaret River.

A video posted to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, shows her drive past as a man stands in front of the charger looking confused.

When she returned to the Dunsborough charger the next day to top up her batteries for the drive home, she was instead greeted with the charger being out of order.

In another video, Ms Hannah showed the charger's screen instructing her to unplug the car as it was already charged.

However the Tesla only had 11 per cent battery left.

The low levels caused Ms Hannah to be stricken with 'EV range anxiety'.

She said it was the lowest charge her car had ever been on, and was lucky to have made it to a functioning charger.

'I'm lucky because I live in Perth near the CBD, so I'm close to chargers or my home where I have a socket to charge it,' she said.

On a previous trip to the area a few weeks prior, she relied on the Tesla supercharger in Margaret River instead of the chargers on the RAC network.

'It seems that there's a lack of maintenance on the chargers, the facilities are there but they're out of order unless you to a Tesla one,' she said.

'People don't necessarily want to go to the Tesla chargers because they're faster but a lot more expensive than the RAC ones.'

Despite the issue with finding a reliable charger, Ms Hannah said the future of EVs will still be bright if the proper infrastructure is introduced.

'I think once people buy an EV, or test drive one, it will change their perspective on it,' she said.

After posting videos of the experience to her X on Tuesday, hundreds of Aussies chimed in to have their say on the charger mishap.

'If a system is complex and people have difficulty using it, the people aren't a problem. This looks like horrific infrastructure,' one user said.

Another EV user said he wouldn't 'even think about using anything other than the [Tesla] Supercharger at Eaton when I'm going to Dunsborough and back'.

Others said the car chargers in the state's south-west had done more harm than good, noting they were more likely to not be working.

The stretch of 16 fast DC charging locations make up the Royal Automotive Club's (RAC) Electric Highway, built to help connect Perth EV drivers to rural coastal towns.

The RAC chargers are produced by Brisbane-based company Tritium, which has been criticised for being unreliable at charging stations across the nation.

The company's chief executive Jane Hunter responded to the criticism in January.

Ms Hunter said the company had been hit hard by disrupted supply lines during Covid, meaning they were scrambling for important parts such as semiconductors.

'There's no doubt that we would have had shortages on semiconductors during the thick of Covid. I would say that those are now getting better and better,' she told The Daily Telegraph

'We're more desperate than anybody for it to become a phenomenal user experience because it's our hardware that wears the negative connotations and we want it to be super successful.'

Daily Mail Australia contacted RAC for comment.