Tesla’s expansion of its Supercharger network now has an additional benefit for drivers of other-brand EVs, but the convenience comes at a cost.
Electric Cars
State Government funding and a managed supply chain is what helps make the Tesla Supercharger network the broadest and most reliable electric-vehicle charging infrastructure in the country, and now even more of it is open to drivers of other EVs.
Tesla currently operates 130 charging locations (with 817 plugs) around Australia, with more than two-thirds of these now available to all electric vehicles. However, this facility is not offered out of goodwill, but as part of an investment partnership with Australian government funding bodies.
Speaking with Drive earlier this year, Tesla Australia Company Director Thom Drew noted “the New South Wales government has semi-funded a lot of our locations and one of the stipulations is that it’s not just exclusive for Tesla.”
“That’s a double-edged sword for us. It’s allowing us to get into regional areas that we may not be ready to invest in from a user perspective, but it also helps all EVs.”
"We have 86 open sites (564 posts). That’s 66 per cent of all sites and 69 per cent of posts," says Tesla Australia Marketing Manager, Kevin Goult, of the 'open to all' sites. You can view a map of all Tesla charging sites here.
The Tesla network has a claimed service rate of nearly 100 per cent, largely due to the brand’s investment in its own service, parts and maintenance supply chain.
In terms of support, Drew noted, “We have a full service team that maintain it [chargers]. We obviously have our own parts supply. A lot of the parts are actually shared across the vehicles into the charging technology so we manage the whole thing with live data.”
“If a site goes down – and it’s often not an entire site, it’s usually a stall or two, we fix it in days, not in months.”
Reliability of charging infrastructure has been a well-documented barrier for many Australians to consider an electric vehicle.
Drew stated, “That figure, the 99.5 per cent uptime, is the Australian figure of the average of 2024 – and that’s full service energy flow.”
“You hear this charger in this remote town has been out for six months as there are no parts – we are the total opposite of that, “ said Drew.
The convenience can come at a cost for non-Tesla drivers, with many sites charging up to $0.85 per kWh at peak times, compared to $0.61 for Tesla drivers and $0.72 at other branded sites.
“It can be expensive, obviously, to invest in this and getting the right power to particularly remote location can be hard. Making sure that we’re building just in time to where the demand is – is how we do it.”
The brand is on a continued charge – so to speak – to continue extending its charging network.
“We’ve only been in Australia since 2010,” said Drew, “so there is still a lot of growth to happen here.”
“We see where our customers drive. We have all that data and that helps us influence our decisions on where to open up new stations.”
“What if I can’t find a reliable charging station? That’s the type of stuff that we want to overcome and give customer that certainty that its not going to disrupt their lifestyle.”
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With over 20 years of experience in digital publishing, James Ward has worked within the automotive landscape since 2007 and brings experience from the publishing, manufacturer and lifestyle side of the industry together to spearhead Drive's multi-media content direction.
