This is the map of my recent EV lap of Australia, although it is missing 3000km of side trips. By the end of 2024, this route should be covered by DC fast charging everywhere except for the red lines. Note that there needs to be DC chargers at both ends of a section to avoid the red brush. At the moment, the only mob that I know of building DC charging on highways in the NT is the NRMA, although Evie has some very welcome chargers in Darwin. Queensland is building a lot of chargers to augment and enhance their already extensive skeleton, but has no plans that I know of to add DC charging to their red section. The section of the Ayre highway in SA from Penong to Border Village is on the NRMA map for future development with ARENA funds. Considering their strategy in the USA, Tesla have been strangely slow to push out Superchargers on this prestigious route. They also have no off-grid chargers in Australia at all, despite building all the components in-house. While most will never use these, the electrification of key routes in Australia provides a psychological boost that will speed the transition to passenger BEVs and is a key first step to the electrification of long-distance trucks as well. Megawatt-class charging is just a matter of scaling up what we do for light vehicles after all. There are many obstacles in the way, including large remote areas away from large-scale energy grids, low population and traffic levels, kafkaesque planning processes and a shortage of experienced engineers. There is also a distinct lack of urgency around this from all levels of government. There are a great many ways that we could achieve this goal, including broad distribution of remote power systems and pushing the electricity grid across the major highway routes. Integrated with existing demands, remote power systems consisting of solar, wind and batteries, possibly with diesel generator backup, can vastly reduce the huge consumption of diesel in remote roadhouses and communities across the country. Extending the grid would allow us to build interchanges between the eastern and western states, allowing eastern solar to support western morning peak, and western solar to do the same for the eastern evening peaks. Our wide brown land is almost 3 hours wide after all! What can we all do to make this happen?

#AUSYtour #AUSYHotLap @Tesla @TeslaAUNZ #ModelY Day 10 Arrived #Perth #WesternAustralia after traveling 270km from #Merredin. Efficiency 149Wh/km. Charging at home on a Type 2 AC charger. Day 10 total 1,649km Tour total 13,554km Tour complete.

Charging at the RAA Kempower unit in Wudinna. Getting the standard 100-ish kW from this configuration. Great to see these essential chargers coming online finally. Activated using my RFID since it is not in the Chargefox app yet.

Not a single completed DC charger on the main road from the SA border to Adelaide. What is going on here @RAAofSA? Wasn't the contract to build these chargers awarded in February of 2022, 20 months ago?

Dropped in at the Overlander Roadhouse near Shark Bay on the way past to check progress on their off-grid solar DC fast charger setup. The DC charger is installed and appears to be a Tritium RTM 75. The AC backup is also present and the usual JetCharge BYO type 2. Payment terminal is also visible. What looks like the battery container is also visible and branded CDI energy. There is an extensive solar array present which has a very interesting, possibly east-west layout.

Erldunda. 2x 75kW DCRC with 25 kW PV & 180kWh storage. @AEVA_National @outbacktesla @NRMA @sydney_ev @EVCouncil @robrobdean