Perth Tesla owner, Jayson Stanley, managed to get some attention from Elon himself after the recent Tesla posting about changes to the service centres and delivery centres:
Lets hope some follow-through happens. We’ll keep you posted, and well done, Jayson.
If you want to respond on twitter and share the excitement, click on the image above to link to Elon’s response directly.
The Tweet also got some coverage at driven.io here:
Musk promises Tesla store in W.A. to the delight of enthusiasts
Tesla announced today its first “Version 3” Supercharger:
https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/blog/introducing-v3-supercharging
At present, the fastest speeds may be limited to new Model 3 deliveries (and the upcoming Model Y), but a new accompanying software update also works to condition the battery of your vehicle before you arrive, if you set the satnav to take you to a Supercharger.
After the full annoucement today, we will update with more information. We will not see V3 Superchargers in Europe and Asia-Pacific until late this year. The arrival date of Perth’s Supercharger is still unconfirmed, but we hope to see a more concrete announcement on this, too.
Introduction
Several electric vehicle drivers in Australia have made the long journeys away from the isolated City of Perth travelling to Darwin, Adelaide and even all the way around Australia. A few keen enthusiasts in the EV community have done an excellent job arranging 3-phase power points to be installed along these routes. While these have been much appreciated by those that have followed, many places are not well connected to the grid and the power supply is inadequate or more to the point not as reliable as required – phases are often not balanced and access is sometimes restricted. The ChargePod was developed to service these locations, with a simple easily installed skid with 50kW DC charging capability. A keen AEVA member has built a prototype unit and a fuel consumption and endurance test was undertaken.
Objectives of the test
Test Outline
The test consisted of 10 electric cars being charged consecutively at roughly 1 hour intervals utilizing a 50kW DC charger powered by a diesel generator (ChargePod). The cars were predominately Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X which arrived with around 35% battery with a view to charging to around 85% to ensure the optimum charging range. The ChargePod was not stopped between charges but allowed to idle for the few minutes while cars changed representing what would happen in a real situation. The charge sessions were all started and stopped using the ChargeFox App.
Equipment used
Test sequence
Calculation method
Using total kWh added to all cars divided by the total fuel consumed an average kilowatt hour per litre diesel consumed is established – this is 3.392 kWh per litre which is the ChargePod performance.
Using the lifetime average kWh per kilometre for each car (this depends on the car and the driving style and is recorded continually by the car) an individual litres diesel equivalent per kilometre for each car tested can be established
Results
Diesel fuel consumption equivalents :
Conclusion :
A stand alone DC EV-charging skid powered by diesel generator for remote locations with inadequate power delivers fuel consumption results are very comparable but on most occasions better than equivalent diesel powered passenger vehicles.
Thanks to all the EV drivers who volunteered their cars on the day and most importantly to Jon Edwards who provided the venue, equipment, knowledge and can-do attitude to build the Chargepod and complete the test.
On November 3rd, TOCWA held its AGM at beautiful Millbrook Winery in Jarrahdale. It was a lovely day for a drive out, even for those of us that couldn’t stay for lunch. It was great to see so many in attendance, and see the car park full of new and old Teslas!
TOCWA’s new committee is – in Alphabetical Order:
Annie Atkins
Rob Dean
Martin Kane
Harald Murphy
Trevor Pinnington
Ken Taylor
We are yet to meet and assign roles/portfolios, but we’re pleased to welcome Trevor to the committee, and to get to work on the needs and wants of our members here in WA.
To that end, we’ll be sending out a small survey to members this week to help us know what are the main priorities for this year – please give us as much or little feedback as you feel led!
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:
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
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:
Although they are not holding a public hearing in Perth, there have been hearings in Brisbane on 27 Sep 2018, Melbourne on 31 Aug 2018 and in Canberra on 17 Aug 2018.
The commitee is due to report on 18 Oct 2018 in Canberra.
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
Sylvia visited Perth back in April, and there’s a great writeup of her trip here:
Sylvia , 70, completes round-Australia trip in an EV for …. $150.90
