How to Charge your Tesla at Home and on the road - JET Charge
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How to Charge your Tesla at Home and on the road

Posted
28 March 2018

So your new Tesla has arrived and you can’t wait to take it for a drive.  But you know that owning an EV (electric vehicle) comes with its own difficulties, which may offset the many advantages; chiefly, you can’t fill up your tank at the nearest petrol station.  What are your options for charging a Tesla?  In this post we will explore the options available to you; where you are able to charge your Tesla, and how you can go about doing so.

In Australia, the average passenger vehicle travels around 36km per day.[1]  While this may sound like a significant distance, it is far less than the several hundred kilometres of range offered by your Tesla!  As such, here at JET Charge the most common question we get is; can you charge a Tesla at home?  Fortunately, this is a question that Jet Charge is more than equipped to answer!  When you purchase your Tesla it will come with a Tesla wall connector for no additional cost, a charger that JET Charge can easily install at your home.  The wall connector comes with an inbuilt charging cable, so there’s no need to purchase this separately. 

There are several options as to how to install your Tesla charger; you can either organise for an accredited electrician to do it and manage the installation yourself, or you can give JET Charge a call and we’ll organise the whole process for you.  As we are Tesla’s recommended installer, all our costs and procedures are reported back to Tesla, so you can be sure that you are getting the best service in the market.

The cost of a standard install varies between houses but generally speaking, it will be under $1,000.  After we have installed your home charger, your car becomes just like any other appliance and the cost is included as part of your electricity bill.  If you’d like an estimate of charging costs, please check out this Charging Cost Calculator.

Another question we often get is ‘how much time will it take to charge my Tesla?’  Due to the nature of batteries the time it takes to charge to 80% is significantly shorter than the time it takes to charge to 100%, with only a 20% gain in range.  We designed a calculator to estimate charge times, so you know just how long you have to get a coffee – feel free to check it out here.  A word of advice: plug your Tesla into its wall connector overnight and you’ll never have to worry about charging time or finding a public charger.

If you need to charge on the road, then the Tesla Supercharger Network is your answer.  These chargers allow for massively reduced charge times – 0 to 80% in only 45 minutes.[2]

  Available only to Tesla customers, the Supercharger Network makes long distance EV travel feasible.  Tesla has even released this nifty map (which is also available from the touchscreen of your car) so you can plan your journey for easy, rapid charging.

The charging options don’t end there however.  As the number of EV’s in Australia grows, Tesla’s Destination Charging Network – comprised of chargers hosted by businesses, event spaces and customers just like you – is expanding to allow you to charge your car wherever you are.  And best of all – it costs nothing to charge at one!  Just like for the supercharger network, you can automatically set your navigation to accommodate destination charger stops into your journey from the Tesla touchscreen.

Your final option for away-from-home charging is to use 3rd party charging networks.  There are several options on offer; Chargepoint currently leads the way, but as EV uptake gathers speed so will the roll-out of stations by 3rd party providers.  However, these non-Tesla stations do present a potential problem; due to the lack of standardisation between EV brands, some of the charging plugs may not work with your Tesla.  Fortunately, there is a solution!  EVnomics (JET Charge’s partner store) offers a wide range of cable adaptors that ensure that you’ll be able to charge your car no matter the infrastructure.  To find out what accessory cables you’ll need for your journey check out our interactive tool here.


[1] http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/9208.0

[2] https://transportevolved.com/2014/07/03/fast-tesla-supercharger-charge-electric-tesla-model-s-fast/