Plans for Australia’s biggest supercharger site have been revealed by a Canadian-based Supercharger enthusiast, MarcoRPTesla, on Twitter.
It’s planned for the Victorian town of Benalla with up to 20 fast-charging stalls once the two construction stages are completed. The town is located 213 km northeast of Melbourne.
A new Supercharger is coming to Benalla, Australia.
Tesla recently submitted a proposal to build a 20-stall site by the Woolworths on Smythe St.
The project is set to be carried out in two phases of 10 stalls each, which will make it the largest Supercharger in the country!!! pic.twitter.com/eiyC2vE92A
— Supercharged (@MarcoRPTesla) February 7, 2023
The site is close to a Woolworths supermarket and fast food restaurants and with amenities that are ideal for people stopping to charge on a road trip.
The Benalla Rural City council is also asking for feedback on the proposed project but shares some interesting insights into what’s expected from the site:
“Council is proposing to lease the Council owned section of Smythe Street Carpark next to Woolworths to Tesla for the purpose of an Electric Vehicle (EV) charging station. The proposed lease term would be five years with two five year options to extend.”
They go on to explain the size of the project and the two stages it will be built in with a potential of up to 20 fast-charging stalls:
“The proposed carpark would include 20 dedicated spaces for electric vehicle charging as well as retaining 21 spaces for general parking. There will be a staged delivery with the first stage consisting of the installation of 10 charges (31 retained for general parking) with another 10 to be added at a later date as needed.”
The project will also consist of V3 superchargers including non-Tesla EV charging a possibility too which we have seen with the opening of five trial sites in NSW:
“The proposed chargers being installed would be Tesla V3 chargers, these charges will have the capacity to charge at 250 kilowatts. Options for charging non-Tesla electric vehicles will be explored as part of the agreement with Tesla.”
It’s also recently been shown that those sites can charge non-Tesla EVs like the BYD with ease via the Tesla app.
Since it’s a Tesla site and is outside the scope of NSW government’s fast-charging funding rounds, Tesla will be be funding, constructing and running the site.
Even the local council project brief states the significance of the size of this project, surpassing the 12-stall Box Hill supercharger in Victoria which opened just before Christmas last year:
“The proposed carpark would be the largest Tesla EV charger site in the country to date.”
Projects like the one being proposed by Tesla in Benalla should send a strong signal to other charging point operators to offer reliable, convenient fast charging options to EV owners that are thinking of road-tripping.
If Tesla offers all of these to EV drivers, it’s unlikely that they will be looking at other options when they can depend on well-selected, reliable fast-chargers, amenities and large sites like that proposed in Banella.
This is great news for Tesla and non-Tesla EV owners as we are starting to see some sizeable reliable charging options on the horizon. That will create the path to ending charger anxiety in Australia.
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.