June 5, 2020 by Chai Vuriti
Sydney to Melbourne on a Tesla for Free!
When I say Free I would like to point out that I made the trip on a Tesla Model 3 so I’m only considering the cost of travel and not the car.
And not to state the obvious here, you could just grab a lift and go!
My roommate and I started from our house early in the morning with the car fully charged at home. The Wall charger for Tesla Model 3 at our house charges the car to its full capacity in under 8 hours so we left the car overnight in its charging condition.
The Tesla Model 3 gives about 350 KM range which in real time takes you up to 250 KM based on the terrain, speed, climate control and other minor factors like outside temperatures. Low-temperature conditions drain the battery faster than usual. Starting from our house, we laid out a plan to reach each free charging station operated by NRMA before the battery runs out under 10% or we have made fallback plans for paid charging stations operated by Tesla, Chargefox etc.
Mittagong
With the plan in place, we started from our house to the first charging stop at Mittagong, a very interesting place which was just about 100 KM from our house. We left the car for supercharging and went for our morning coffee. The best thing about charging stops is that I get to try different kinds of coffee in different locations. Be it a coffee or gelato or any other thing for that matter, I’d like to try different varieties of local foods in various locations. Returning from our coffee break, the car was not fully charged so we started to our next destination which is about 225 KM.
Jugiong
Jugiong is a beautiful river village with horses and just about a population of 222. Our charging station is in a parking lot on Riverside Drive and we got to see a fascinating wine cellar with interesting crafts. We started to our next charging stop which has the same distance as the previous trip and is located on the border of NSW and Victoria.
Albury-Wodonga
The interesting thing about Hume’s highway is that you can once enter the highway in Sydney and reach Melbourne without entering any towns or villages in between except for the Albury-Wodonga twin cities separated by Murray river. So we reached Albury and put the car in charge to visit the city. We finished our lunch here and by the time our little tour in the city ended, the car was already charged. Now we are officially entering Victoria state and the bad thing is we do not have NRMA charging stations in Victoria. So we had to rely on other free charging stations maintained by the local councils.
This is the tricky part. The next free charging station is 310 KM away at Coburg North and we could barely make it to the destination with usual consumption. That’s where the advantages of Speed Throttling and Climate control come in handy. With the maximum speed being reduced below 100 KMPH and turning off the climate control, we reached our destination easily even though it took longer than it had to. And not to mention, being very cold inside the car with the temperatures dropping below 10° C. This reduces the car power consumption from 210 Wh/km to 120 Wh/km which is our salvation.
Melbourne
Finally, we reached Coburg North with bare minimum charging left in the car. By this time we have successfully reached Melbourne from Sydney with 3 charging stops in between and all of them are FREE. We left the car in charge and took a stroll on the streets. I’m always fascinated by trains so I kept staring at the railway crossing nearby to see the passing trains. It was really fun.
