Tesla is encouraging owners of its electric vehicles to avoid peak hour line ups for Superchargers by making charging completely free at certain sites in the US these holidays.
A new post on its US website lists a multitude of sites at which Tesla owners can charge for free between the hours of 7pm and 10am between Thursday and Sunday this week.
The majority of the free sites are in California, Tesla’s home state (until it moved its headquarters to Texas recently) and where the majority of electric cars are registered in the US.
It’s a clever move, not only in terms of making holiday charging a less tedious and more affordable experience in the US, but also because it will remove some demand from the grid as families take to the roads to visit loved ones.
Sadly for Australian drivers, there is not the same free charging on offer here. Although with electric car numbers still relatively low compared to the US, this is not surprising.
Tesla did however, enable access to extra battery capacity for Australian Tesla owners during the 2019 bushfires, with the intention of giving drivers extra driving range to reach a safe location when escaping fire-torn regions.
Bridie Schmidt is associate editor for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018, and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emissions transport has to play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is co-organiser of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model Y and has it available for hire on evee.com.au.