The head of Tesla Australia Thom Drew says the company is hoping for “big things” as deliveries of the long awaited “new” or refreshed Model Y begin in Australia this week.
“I can’t report on the sales numbers until we actually get the deliveries out the door,” Drew told The Driven on Wednesday at a media launch event for the Model Y.
“We have just had the first vessel arrive … Â the vehicles start delivery this week …. with over 3,500 cars on board. There’s more to come over the (June) quarter. So we’re expecting some big things this quarter.”
That will be welcome relief for Tesla, and for the Australian EV industry as a whole, given the sharp slump in the company’s EV sales in the first four months of the year – a fall attributed to the re-tooling of Tesla factories for the new Model Y, the wait for the new model’s release, and consumer pushback against the politics of CEO Elon Musk.
The sales slump was particularly steep in April, with just 500 Tesla EVs delivered, including 280 Model Ys. But Drew says this was all about logistics as the ships carrying the new EVs had yet to arrive on Australian shores. He says those logistic issues affected Model 3 as well.
Time will tell to what extent Tesla sales rebound with the new Model Y. Tesla has been the dominant player in the Australian EV market over the last few years, with a share of more than 50 per cent of the market.
But that has shrunk to just 26 per cent in 2026, and its fall in sales has caused the overall EV market to be stagnant because other car makers have been unable to make up the difference, even though non-Tesla EV sales have grown slightly.
Drew says Tesla is confident that the Model Y will remain the best selling EV in Australia in 2026 – and the reality is that, despite the April slump, it already is. (See The Driven’s month by month sales data). But by just how much will be fascinating to watch.
He says the company is seeing lots of interest from first-time EV buyers for the new Model Y, and he says they are trading in their ICE (internal combustion engine) cars for the new EV.
Meanwhile, Drew confirmed that Tesla is rolling out a new Supercharging station at Coolac, near Cootamundra in western NSW, that will feature its own solar array and a Tesla megapack battery (3.9 MWh) – which will help alleviate capacity constraints on the local grid.
Drew says that similar set-ups could be used at other regional locations.
“The Supercharger network is an absolutely fundamental part of our customer experience,” he says.
“We want people to be able to buy the Model Y, particularly the family segment, rather than an ice car, and still live their lifestyle in the same way that they do today, and the Supercharger network is absolutely key to that, not just where those superchargers are, but the volume of stalls that we have per location.
“We’re looking at 8, 12, 15 stalls as a normal install for us now. But then the reliability is key. We’re 99.5% uptime on our network, which doesn’t just happen by chance.
“There is a fantastic field service team behind that that travel all around the country and keep our sites online. Things do break. Things do go down. If we do have (charging bays that go down, they are generally fixed within the same week, if not days, whereas you may see some other brands where, you know, can be months on end.”
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Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of The Driven, and also edits and founded the Renew Economy and One Step Off The Grid web sites. He has been a journalist for nearly 40 years, is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review, and owns a Tesla Model 3.