Image: Tesla Australia
Tesla has just opened its first Australian supercharger site which took only days to install on site, instead of weeks.
The new supercharger site with 4 Tesla V4 Superchargers has just opened in Bordertown South Australia with a pre-fabricated setup which arrived to site on the back of a truck.
This allowed the Tesla supercharger installation contractor to set the site up in days instead of weeks typically seen at other fast charging installs across the country.
Thom Drew, Tesla’s country manager, shared the opening on LinkedIn by saying: “New Tesla Supercharger: Bordertown, SA (4 stalls). This is the first pre-fab site in APAC, which reduced hardware installation time from weeks to days!”
According to Drew’s post, this is not only the first charging site to utilize this method in Australia but also across the entire Asia Pacific.
The Bordertown supercharger is located at the OTR service station in Bordertown and has a charging price set at $0.68/kWh for chargers capable of delivering up to 250 kW of power.
As of now, the site is only opened to Tesla vehicles but that may change in the future given the longer length cables in the V4 superchargers, making it easier to accommodate for non-Tesla EVs charge port locations.
The pre-fab method to deploy sites is fairly efficient. Fast charger projects traditionally took many months of planning, acquisition of hardware and construction before they are ready to be commissioned for use by EV drivers.
Any time that can be saved by doing it in a controlled environment away before the hardware gets to site, helps save time and increases the speed to help get the site open sooner.
This month, Tesla has also hit a significant milestone with the global supercharger rollout. The company now has over 60,000 superchargers globally.
It celebrated the milestone by opening the 60,000th supercharger in Japan wrapped in an iconic design and by sharing on X: “Today we opened Enshu Morimachi in Japan, commemorating 60,000 Supercharger posts globally and 600 Supercharger posts in Japan.”
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.
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On a recent trip between Melbourne and Adelaide I discovered that none of the Tesla chargers were open to non-Teslas. I can't see why they need to add to the existing Tesla chargers, as Teslas can and do use the non-Tesla chargers along this route.
Tesla's charge network is becoming the main reason to buy one of their MAGAmobiles. Some would say the sole remaining reason....
Sorry but Elon's politics haven't changed the cars, they are better than ever
Each time a Tesla is sold, Elon benefits in some way, do you really want to support, in any way, such a complete right wing nutjob ignorant hater? There are so many nice EVs on the market now, I would take an MG4 over a Tesla any day of the week, better warranty, $20k cheaper at least, and it has sane controls rather than everything through the touch screen.
Sure, there might be better EV options, but that's why people buy Tesla. No other EV manufacturer bothers to support its vehicles with proprietary charging networks. Kudos to Elon for having the vision to anticipate the market.
You can't blame Tesla for wanting to support there own vehicles, while also making sure there vehicles are compliant with other EV chargers. Unlike the Atto3 and BYD whom is making no effort to even support EV chargers that should be compatible.
Tesla knows how to build quality and to run efficiently.
The prefab SC chargers can also be put in rows with parking bays run next to them rather than with a 90 degree orientation, similar to a fossil fuel service station. Norway have plenty of examples of 12 plus chargers in rows, it makes easier with EVs that are towing.
In this example that is pictured above, 2 bays on this side and 2 on the other side in parallel to the concrete base.
I have also seen a similar setup that is on a truck tray bed for when a town has a major blackout, Florida USA