Australian Supercharger network

[Tasdevil]

I agree with you 100% about the model S, but 3rd gen and 4th gen tesla car will be a lot more affordable and I expect to see a lot more of them about than model Ses.

Your point about Melbourne to Sydney. Imo wouldn't people who can afford to buy a model S just buy a $60 plane ticket? I don't believe road trips are as bigger thing here as they are in the USA.
Apart from Christmas time when the tickets are expensive...

 

[VolkerP]

The initial rollout of the supercharger network along the arterial highways is meant to be payed by Model S customers. Spacing is calculated for range of 85kWh Model S. Elon more or less confirmed that in Munich last Thursday.
I guesstimate 5 supercharger stations in NSW and Victora to form the AUS supercharger core network.

The second phase is covering the continent which will require around 32 additional stations. BTW the circles have 100mi radius. Australia is BIG.

 

[moollar]

The initial rollout of the supercharger network along the arterial highways is meant to be payed by Model S customers. Spacing is calculated for range of 85kWh Model S. Elon more or less confirmed that in Munich last Thursday.
I guesstimate 5 supercharger stations in NSW and Victora to form the AUS supercharger core network.

The second phase is covering the continent which will require around 32 additional stations. BTW the circles have 100mi radius. Australia is BIG.

Thanks for your input VolkerP. You are right that Australia is very big! However, most of the population is on the east coast. As great as it would be to have superchargers along the Nullarbor Plain (which is the bit between Adelaide and Perth), there is not much going on along that route. You are basically driving through desert for nearly 3 days as you cross the country. There might be some superchargers along there eventually, but I think it will take a while before that happens. Except for Northern Queensland, not a lot of people drive to the Northern parts of Australia from the main cities. Our population is only just over 23 million at the moment. So, not even 8% of the US population, but we also have a LOT less habitable land. I agree on the core network from Brisbane to Melbourne via Sydney.

Just so you know, the main highway from Sydney to Melbourne is the one the passes through Albury on your first map. Not many people travel along the route you've outlined on your first map (at least, not to get to Melbourne from Sydney - or vice versa).

 

[WarpedOne]

The second phase is covering the continent which will require around 32 additional stations.

2k/car, 200k/SC = 100cars/SC
40 SCs are payed for by ~4000 customers having SC access. No biggie.

 

[meloccom]

Neat Graphic Volker, how did you create it?
I postulated some Australian Supercharger locations earlier in this thread and would like to see how they look.

 

[VolkerP]

I used the supercharge map from teslawiki.net (current URL is http://supercharge.info/). You can place custom markers with a right mouse click.
Drag the range slider get the transparent circles. Placing dots on a map is the cheap part
What I learned from this thread so far, one could do with 3 superchargers to connect Melbourne - Canberra - Sydney.

circles are 137km / 85 mi

 

[renim]

Thanks for your input VolkerP. You are right that Australia is very big! However, most of the population is on the east coast. As great as it would be to have superchargers along the Nullarbor Plain (which is the bit between Adelaide and Perth), there is not much going on along that route. You are basically driving through desert for nearly 3 days as you cross the country. There might be some superchargers along there eventually, but I think it will take a while before that happens. Except for Northern Queensland, not a lot of people drive to the Northern parts of Australia from the main cities. Our population is only just over 23 million at the moment. So, not even 8% of the US population, but we also have a LOT less habitable land. I agree on the core network from Brisbane to Melbourne via Sydney.

Just so you know, the main highway from Sydney to Melbourne is the one the passes through Albury on your first map. Not many people travel along the route you've outlined on your first map (at least, not to get to Melbourne from Sydney - or vice versa).

I don't think there is electricity along the nullarbor

also Perth is a bit like an island, I bet 1 superchager there would do wonders for sales, even if it never got used

 

[moollar]

I don't think there is electricity along the nullarbor

I haven't personally driven across the Nullarbor (I'm not that crazy! :wink, but this wouldn't surprise me. I do have a couple of friends who have done it once and vowed never to do it again! I guess Tesla could still have superchargers along there eventually though. After all, they will all eventually be solar powered anyway.

also Perth is a bit like an island, I bet 1 superchager there would do wonders for sales, even if it never got used

Yeah, when I lived in Perth in my late teens, the only time I really traveled was heading down south towards Margaret River for surfing trips with my mates or holidays with my family (the good old days...). Maybe they could put one in somewhere on the way down to that region. Say, Bunbury or something like that. I suppose you could also eventually put one in on the way up to Geraldton or even one on the way out to Kalgoorlie.

 

[Lerxt]

They will need to be more numerous. Even with a an 85 if you charge it as recommended, i.e. up to no more than 90% charge or lower, and taking into account a bit of degradation and about 250kwh mrs kilometre you wouldn't want any more than 250/280 km between charges. Even that is a bit much. They will also have to cover not only the main routes between the east coast capitals but also the lesser routes, like the coastal route Syd to Mel or Syd to Bris via Armidale. The problem I can see for Tesla in OZ is that though people will love the car they simply may not have the numbers of sales to justify a huge investment in Superchargers. On top of that the "Australia Tax" will make the car insanely expensive compared to everywhere else. They will need pretty well as many as in the US with 1/10th of the sales.

A 120kwh battery would be much better.

 

[moollar]

They will need pretty well as many as in the US with 1/10th of the sales.

I don't think they'll need anywhere near as many as the US. A lot of Australia is just desert. The US has a massive national highway network with multiple passages between the coasts. Australia has the A1, which goes around the coast of Australia, plus a a couple of other highways in the east coast states. It's chalk and cheese really.

 

[houdini]

I'd agree with one of the previous posters about needing heaps of chargers. We're cursed in a way by our size. Europe fits into Oz but we have 1/10th the population, same as USA who will sell ten times the amount of teslas.
I'd think at a minimum to start you'd need Melbourne to Sydney. Next expansion covering Sydney to Newcastle through to Brisbane. Follow the aircraft routes. Syd to Melb run is one of the busiest air routes in the world. There's a couple of big service stations along the syd melb run that would make logical choice for supercharger stations but can you do it with 2? No, so it would need to be 3. That would service the Melb - Canb - Syd run but and that's 1.5 million in superchargers right there. That sort of distance on the US East coast covers quite a few big Cities and in Norway they have like 6 chargers to do the Country but with heaps of tesla sales: 550+ in December alone with pretty much 2000 tesla on the road there for 2013. If tesla's hit Oz for $120,000 I can't see them selling more than a couple of hundred. Come in below the eco luxury tax threshold they'll sell more but that's unlikely.
Just thinking aloud....

 

[Tasdevil]

I'm not sure if you realise the purpose of the Superchargers. They're not putting them in cities in any of the countries they've put them in - at least, not yet anyway (including the USA). They're for long distance travel and are placed along major highway routes for this purpose, not in the cities.

Las Vegas Supercharger | Tesla Motors

 

[gizmonty]

As a potential Melbourne-based Model S owner, this is my perspective on Supercharger locations.
Basically there's nowhere more than about 300km away that I would ever want to drive to, so even driving Melbourne to Sydney just doesn't interest me. If I need to be in Sydney with a car, it's fly then rent for me. I wouldn't even drive to Canberra (come to think of it, I wouldn't fly there either). The places I would want to go within driving distance are essentially recreational destinations, i.e. beaches and skifields. All of these could be reached one-way without charging, and then an overnight charge would see me back, so a Supercharger would not even be necessary in theory. In practice though, it may be difficult to find somewhere to charge staying in a hotel or apartment, and it'd be nice to know I could get back home in a hurry if I needed to. I presume that what little charging infrastructure there is in Australia is pretty much confined to the state capitals as almost no current electric car in Australia could make it far beyond the city limits so public charging points are probably a while away yet.
A Supercharger on the Great Ocean Road would be very desirable to me (maybe at Torquay or Lorne). Somewhere along the Hume Highway would also be good to get to skifields, but exactly where is a little trickier. The turnoff for Mount Buller is at Seymour (and even then you've gone the long way instead of via the Maroondah highway) so maybe there, but that would be pretty close to Melbourne. One near Wangaratta would be handy for getting to Falls Creek/Hotham. Heading East is generally something I don't do, but looking at a map, it's hard to pick a useful spot that would cover a lot of destinations well.
In reality, I would probably only use one of these Superchargers 2 or 3 times a year at most so I do wonder about the viability of Superchargers in Australia. I just don't see the Model S's target market in Australia as a big long-haul driving crowd. I'm sure some people will drive from Melbourne to Sydney and back to prove it can be done, but if you think about the number of cars there will be and how often they're going to make these journeys I can imagine a Supercharger is going to be a pretty lonely place. I think that the ability to charge at your destination is going to be far more important than Superchargers for most Australian buyers. Thinking about the quality of the wiring in some places I've stayed around regional Victoria this could be a problem. But hey, that's the lot of the early adopter, right?

 

[houdini]

Of course as with everything your mileage my vary . With a family of four the air trip to Syd from Melbs is just too expensive so it's hit the road for us (at least 3 times a year). As for destination chargers, what seems to be working for lots of people is the Caravan parks (RV parks for the Americans) as they have 30 or 40amp power points for plugging in the vans. You can rent a cabin and use the van spot to charge the car.

 

[moollar]

Las Vegas Supercharger | Tesla Motors

Yeah, they only recently opened that one. Curious. To my knowledge, this is the first one to be opened up in a city. The Tesla Supercharger page on the Tesla website still explicitly says that Superchargers are for road trips ("ROAD TRIPS MADE EASY", "Tesla Superchargers allow Model S owners to travel for free between cities along well-traveled highways in North America and Europe"). The only thing I can think of is that it's located in fairly close proximity to the Las Vegas Freeway. Anyone have any insight on this? Is Tesla starting to roll out any other Superchargers in cities? Seems like the Superchargers will be held up by local freeloaders if this is the case, making it difficult for the people who actually need them to use them (i.e. people who are actually travelling long distances).

 

[stevezzzz]

Yeah, they only recently opened that one. Curious. To my knowledge, this is the first one to be opened up in a city. The Tesla Supercharger page on the Tesla website still explicitly says that Superchargers are for road trips ("ROAD TRIPS MADE EASY", "Tesla Superchargers allow Model S owners to travel for free between cities along well-traveled highways in North America and Europe"). The only thing I can think of is that it's located in fairly close proximity to the Las Vegas Freeway. Anyone have any insight on this? Is Tesla starting to roll out any other Superchargers in cities? Seems like the Superchargers will be held up by local freeloaders if this is the case, making it difficult for the people who actually need them to use them (i.e. people who are actually travelling long distances).

Hmmm: Hawthorne is in L.A. metro and Lone Tree is in Denver metro; Bethesda is in D.C. metro and Buckeye is just west of Phoenix.

 

[ggr]

Hmmm: Hawthorne is in L.A. metro and Lone Tree is in Denver metro; Bethesda is in D.C. metro and Buckeye is just west of Phoenix.

Hawthorne is there because the design center is there. Similarly for Fremont. It is, indeed, a problem that some locals in LA go there to charge; they are quite often all in use. They are soon going to open one in south San Diego, close to the Mexican border. This will make it easy to drive to various tourist areas in Mexico without them having to build superchargers down there. The other ones you mention are all in places where many freeways come together.

 

[Tasdevil]

Hmm, I can understand locals using the sc and long distance travelers being disadvantaged. I think tesla need to have some charging spots allocated for these people.
Anyone can still park there, but tesla has everyone's car information anyway. Then all they need is travel data (that is on the touch screen) and they can use that to know when a traveller will be at that sc station and the person in the designated spot receives a text message, or the message appears on their touch screen when they first plug in. And they know they must move their car within 30mins/1hour etc.
Tesla obviously have data of how long people are plugged in for etc, any non compilers can be fined, or just stop then from using the designated spots and they can only use the others, or ban them from that sc station all together or for a certain amount of time.
Possibilities are endless really.
Although I haven't heard of anyone complaining about doing long distance travel and having to wait for supercharger access. So maybe it's not a problem yet

 

[doctorwho]

I'm going to be a rural Tesla S owner. I currently live in Melbourne but we are building a house in north east Victoria. I'll be looking at an S85 so I can travel from home in the NE to my other home in Melbourne but would certainly appreciate superchargers along the Hume linking Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, as well as other rural locations like large regional centres and towns near the snowfields and west/east coasts. I don't expect them all at one of course but selling a car that can only be driven in major cities is rather limiting

- - - Updated - - -

I'd agree with one of the previous posters about needing heaps of chargers. We're cursed in a way by our size. Europe fits into Oz but we have 1/10th the population, same as USA who will sell ten times the amount of teslas.
I'd think at a minimum to start you'd need Melbourne to Sydney. Next expansion covering Sydney to Newcastle through to Brisbane. Follow the aircraft routes. Syd to Melb run is one of the busiest air routes in the world. There's a couple of big service stations along the syd melb run that would make logical choice for supercharger stations but can you do it with 2? No, so it would need to be 3. That would service the Melb - Canb - Syd run but and that's 1.5 million in superchargers right there. That sort of distance on the US East coast covers quite a few big Cities and in Norway they have like 6 chargers to do the Country but with heaps of tesla sales: 550+ in December alone with pretty much 2000 tesla on the road there for 2013. If tesla's hit Oz for $120,000 I can't see them selling more than a couple of hundred. Come in below the eco luxury tax threshold they'll sell more but that's unlikely.
Just thinking aloud....

They need to start installing them now to prepare for volume sales with the next model that should come in well under the LCT but will have a lower range than the Model S

 

[heosat]

I did some calculations and planning for a potential phase 1 Supercharger rollout for Australia.

Underpinning this planning were some basic assumptions that people would:

• Be using 85kWh Model S
• Want to travel between capital cities
• Want to travel to popular tourist destinations

So, here's map:

The routes and Supercharger locations (Supercharger locations are bolded):

• Sydney -> Goulburn -> Gundagai -> Wangaratta -> Melbourne (I would have liked to do this in 2 but the elevation changes are a killer).
• Sydney -> Goulburn -> Canberra
• Sydney -> Goulburn -> Jindabyne
• Sydney -> Lithgow -> Bathurst/Parkes/Dubbo/Mudgee/Orange
• Sydney -> Wallsend -> Port Macquarie -> Grafton -> Gold Coast/Brisbane
• Sydney -> Wallsend -> Cessnock/Tamworth/Armidale
• Melbourne -> Wangaratta -> Mount Hotham
• Melbourne -> Horsham -> Mildura/Adelaide
• Anywhere in Tasmania -> Campbell Town ​(optional)

So that makes 8 mainland Superchargers to cover the primary travel corridors.

Obvious locations that Superchargers would be useful in the future:

• Bendigo, Vic
• Dalby, Qld
• Port Augusta, SA
• Clare, SA
• Entire north coast of Queensland

Let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions as I'm happy to adjust locations!