Month: October 2018

Chargefox have announced that they will be working with motoring clubs to roll out a 350kW charging network around Australia.  WA should get three new chargers over the next year (expected by early 2020 at the latest), one in Perth, one on the northern corridor and one south.

At present, Teslas can not make full use of 350kW CCS-2 chargers*, as we only have DC options of SuperChargers (120kW) and CHAdeMO (50kW).  There is much discussion about Tesla’s next move, as they are members of the CHAdeMO and CCS working groups, and stated in their Australian Senate submission they advocate the rollout of 100kW+ charging using Type-2/CCS-2.  Whether Model 3 will come with CCS-2 in Europe and Australia is yet to be seen, and there is much hand-wringing about the ability to adapt current vehicles to CCS-2.

It’s still great news that commercial funding continues to grow for EV infrastructure.

Car clubs, ARENA get behind solar-powered ultra-fast EV charging network

* In fact – no currently shipping vehicle can charge at 350kW and none that are likely to ship before 2020 will.

Harald and I represented TOCWA at the Tesla Owners Club 2018 Leadership Summit in Fremont, California from the 11th to 13th October.

The summit was designed to be a two-way conversation between Tesla and owners and representatives from official owners groups from around the world were invited.

We began with a factory tour on registration day, and then spent the next day in sessions.

Tesla sent along a number of staff to talk about Tesla’s approach to marketing, owner liaison and how it hopes to work with us.  Some highlights of that conversation are:

• Tesla is keen to get owners involved in making the new owner experience as pleasant as possible.  In the US, in the leadup to the end-of-quarter, they invited various owners clubs to help with the large volume of Model 3 deliveries.  This experiment is likely to be repeated – TOCWA will follow up with Tesla about this happening in WA, and we may call for volunteers.
• There is now an up-to-date list of officially recognised owenrs clubs at https://www.tesla.com/support/tesla-owners-club-directory
• Tesla is working on a mechanism for new owners to be put in touch with official clubs in their region – this needs, of course, to be sensitive to any privacy issues.
• Tesla is slowly becoming more aware of issues presenting owners outside of continental North America, and recent tweets by Elon back this up

Same goes for all countries within which we officially operate by end of next year

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 17, 2018

We were also given a good look at the new Performance Model 3, as well as the new service vehicle designs to be rolled out

Most importantly, it was a great opportunity to see how other clubs around the world were interacting with Tesla and with owners, and we hope to be able to provide a better channel of communication that has been present thus far.

Nice writeup of the owners club summit in InsideEVs

This Shows The Ultimate Tesla Ownership Support … Wow!

As part of the Tesla Owners Club Summit in Fremont, we visited the Tesla factory for a tour.

Although we’re not allowed to talk about what we saw there, the factory speaks volumes of Tesla’s success in getting these vehcles designed and built.

The Model S/X line and the new Model 3 line were running at full strength to meet the ongoing demand for product.  We spent a bit of time on the tour trying to spot the odd right-hand-drive vehicle (none were spotted on the 3 line, unfortuantely!)

The Australian Government is holding an Inquiry into Elecric Vehicles through a senate committee chaired by independent SA senator, Tim Storer.

The terms of reference of the inquiry are:

1. the potential economic, environmental and social benefits of widespread electric vehicle uptake in Australia;
2. opportunities for electric vehicle manufacturing and electric vehicle supply and value chain services in Australia, and related economic benefits;
3. measures to support the acceleration of electric vehicle uptake;
4. measures to attract electric vehicle manufacturing and electric vehicle supply and value chain manufacturing to Australia;
5. how federal, state and territory Governments could work together to support electric vehicle uptake and manufacturing, supply, and value chain activities; and
6. any other related matters.

TOCWA did not submit as an organisation, but members of the committee took some of our input, and made their own submissions – these submissions are linked below

Tesla also made a direct submission

You can see the full inquiry page here