Iâve been putting in a bit of thought how Iâm going to deal with the condition known as Australian Range Anxiety (ARA). ARA is a condition largely isolated to Australia, however, with the advent of Electric Vehicles an almost identical condition known as Electric Vehicle Range Anxiety (EVRA) has been surfacing all around the world with concentrations on the west coast of the USA and western Europe. Although the symptoms to this condition are similar the treatments are quite different.
ARA is defined by a mismatch in the actual required driving range between stops at refuelling infrastructure and how much a person thinks that they need. Extreme examples of this can be seen in the CBDâs of our major cities where the âRaptorâ, âRogueâ or âSportsâ models of common utility vehicles can be seen with not one but two Jerry Cans mounted to the rear of the vehicle. Should the driver of said vehicle run out of fuel in the 5km between petrol stations, they will be able to add an additional 300 odd kilometres of range by simply filling up from their rear-mounted emergency supply.
A recent study of Australian drivers by the University of Betoota found that 97% of Australian drivers of utility and off-road vehicles did not venture far enough away from petrol stations to justify any sort of range anxiety, whilst a further 2% did so only once a year.
Now onto the problem.
For a vast majority of my travels the 90L fuel tank for the grenadier will be sufficient. However there are a few tracks in Australia which actually do justify the need for a long range fuel tank. The most extreme example of that is the Canning Stock Route (The CSR) which attracts around 1,000 vehicles every year. A rule of thumb for the CSR is that you should leave Wiluna or Halls Creek with 300L of fuel onboard. Between these two stops there is nowhere that you can fill up. Lets say your vehicle of choice is a Grenadier, well you need to find somewhere to keep 210L of fuel.
There are a few things that concern me carrying this much fuel: - I dont want to carry it inside the vehicle, I just don't like the concept of sniffing diesel for days on end, not to mention the amount of space it will consume that could otherwise be used for other essentials like water, food, clothing, shelter, etc. - I donât really want to carry too much weight on my roof, maybe one or two rotopax laying flat but definitely not hundreds of litres. Its an awkward place to be dealing with heavy objects and generally I try to avoid making my car too top heavy. - Whilst you could mount a few rotopax on the âutility beltâ, thatâs not going to put much of a dent in the 210L Iâm trying to tuck away
A few assumptions Iâm making are: - I wonât have a trailer (If I have a trailer ill just store any extra fuel in there easily - Iâll be driving a diesel
So my plan is:1 - Buy or make a hitch mounted rack. Iâve got my eye on something like the
Pakmule Sway Back. This gives me something that I can use only when I actually get to the point of needing to carry the extra fuel. Up to that point I can tie it down on my roof rack, at 18kg its relatively light so it isnât going to throw off the balance of the vehicle when its stored up there.2 - Approach
Fleximake to make a custom diesel bladder that fits within the footprint of the hitch rack. If we use the Pakmule footprint as an example, a 20cm high bladder will have sufficient volume to carry 210L of diesel.
Proâs: - The Pakmule and fuel bladder can be packed away to a volume far smaller than the volume of diesel they can carry. The same cannot be said for jerry cans, rotopax, etc. - The Pakmule will have other uses, picking up bags of fertiliser from Bunnings, carrying garbage out of campsites, wet/muddy storage, etc.
Conâs: - The Pakmule has a carrying capacity of 226kg - the weight of the fuel plus the bladder itself will be just below that limit. One thing Iâve learnt is that the rated limit is often meant for ideal conditions. To keep the strain off the the platform Iâll just have to stop after the first few hours and top off the IGâs tank, that will bring the weight down to something well within the limits of the Pakmule. The towball weight limit of the IG is 350kg so no concerns there. - The Pakmule will definitely reduce the departure angle, if it proves to be a real problem I could possibly use a tow hitch
extension/raiser to raise the height of the platform (which will then get in the way of the rear doors at a certain point
Keen to hear what the community thinks - are there any proâs or conâs I havenât thought about. Are there any better ideas out there?
Edit: One additional thought/consideration I have is that it might be a good idea to have two bladders side by side or internal baffling within the one bladder to ensure I haven't got too much weight shifting to the edge of the platform when the vehicle is angled over to the left or right.
