Tesla Model Y Ownership after 6 Months in Australia (2024)

This post comes seven months after we purchased our Tesla Model Y Long Range in Australia.

I cannot believe it has been seven months already. The car has performed perfectly; we have had zero issues and zero services or issues with the car.

Issues we assumed we would have

Our first concern before buying a Tesla was how we would charge it. The Tesla did not come with a home charging cable/device.We read that charging at home on a 240V 10A or 240V 15 AMP plug was slow, and we would probably have to get a 7kW/h Tesla Wall charger or 22kW/h Three Phase cable installed under our driveway to AC change at home.

We assumed that recharging was easiest via Public charge stations, and in our first month, we charged at public chargers. This charge station will be powered by 100% renewable electricity. Two charging bays will be rated at 175kW per bay (+/- 20%). Two charging bays will be rated at a minimum of 350kW per bay.

A fast charger is planned to be installed at a Shopping Center a few kilometres from our house, and we had a Tesla Supercharger in town. We had backup option if 240V 10 to 15A was too slow at home. Our Tesla came with no charging cable, so the first month, we charged at the Tesla Super Charger on the other side of town.

Our Tesla came with no charging cable, so the first month, we charged at the Tesla Super Charger on the other side of town.

We bought a $550 Tesla mobile charger to charge at home. We knew we had a 240V 10A and 240V 15A plug next to the car.

Charging at home on a 10A to 15A plug is much slower than public charging, but it is way cheaper (and better for the car). The kit above comes with Australian 10A and 15A 240V Plugs.

Using the Tesla Mobile charger, we can click on charge adapters or skip the Tesla adapter and use a Type 2 to Type 2 cable (these can be purchased from https://tessories.com.au/) here.

Order the adapters above here

3 Phase Image credit below goes to Inchargex.com.au; buy this adapter here.

Charging at home is not an issue; 79% of the time, we charge at home with the Tesla Mobile charger and 21% of the time, we charge at public stations on long trips.

At home, we use the 2nd lowest charge speeds (240V 15A (lowered to 12~13A to be nice to the wiring)).

We charge at home when possible. We do not have 3-phase or caravan adapter plugs yet (if we ever travel in the outback we will get them)

We charge while we sleep to charge up to the desired daily charge level.

We do partner with your energy provider to get a cheap rate at a time that is good for the grid.

We have never dropped below 15% (75km range) left on long trips; we avoid charging above 90%. We do not panic anymore.

Range Anxiety on Long Trips

We have driven lots of long trips, 8000km in 7 months, without running out of charge. Trips do need planning (Wh/km, not litres per 100km), but planning is easy.

Entering long trips into the navigation will help with range planning

Trips can be edited along the route

At the end of each trip leg you can get a breakdown of energy used. in the case below my wife was driving efficiently and she was better than the predicted estimated energy consumption.

Recently, we decided to go on a longer trip; given we charge 76% daily, we wanted to charge 100% before we left the following day to make sure we had maximum range for adventures. I knew I could not charge 30% overnight in off-peak over 9 hours so we added about 12KW to our car at Tesla Super Charger to go from 71% to 83% in the afternoon.

Then, we set the remainder to charge at home while we sleep at a slow pace (240V 12A) at 8c per kWh.

This maximized the lowest total price and convenience of not waiting for charging the following day. We could have charged to 100% quickly with a public supercharger, but we did not want to or need to. That is a backup plan if we ever need to go somewhere in an emergency.

Change of Mindset

Once we got used to thinking in charge per cent, energy used per kilometre and kilometres per kW, we calmed down. Also, if we have been to a public charger before, we are very confident and rarely plan.

At first, we tried using the default range in klms to monitor the charge usage.

But over time, we switched to the battery percent indicator as it was easier to calculate over Petrol in our head. To us 20% battery is an easy 100km range.

I could charge daily to 530km range with 100% battery but based on our car’s battery chemistry it likes staying under 80% (charging to 100% to get the extra 100km range is OK but best to use it on longer trips). Average daily usage we are only using 30~50km range in the city.

The free app ABRP (abetterrouteplanner.com) if great for planning trips and have it do the maths. Sites like PlugShare – EV Charging Station Map – Find a place to charge your car! are awesome for a plan C.

We generally rely on Tesla in-car navigation with known charging locations in the car. If the car says we will make it, we will make it; if it says we need power, we need power. It will route us to power if needed.

We now trust the range prediction on long trips. We have never dropped below 15% (75km range) left; avoid going above 90%.

Instead of filling a car with petrol every fortnight on payday, we have opted to top up the car for a few hours each night to replenish the range lost the previous day; this means that every day, we wake up with the car at 400+km range and 76% battery. Read more here about the cost of recharging.

In Car Screen Overview

My wife and I have paired our phones to the car; whoever gets in the driver’s seat has the driver’s profile auto set and all profile settings loaded (seat adjusted, spotify loaded etc).

Here are the other Tesla Screen Menus (without scrolling)

If you can drive a Mobile Phone, iPad or Tablet, you can drive a Tesla screen.

Technology in the Tesla is still impressing us

The Tesla Mobile App is very convenient. We can check most of the car’s status, lock and unlock the doors remotely, open the frunk and trunk, turn on/off the air conditioner, set charging settings, request a service, invite other drives to drive the car remotely, upgrade the car (add an extra 100kW of power to increase acceleration)

Downloadable Upgrades are something that cars we have bought in the past would not offer after thee sale, usually new features are retained for next years model in other cars.

Using our Spotify in the car is a treat.

The AI Visualization from the camera feeds and sensors is useful. Often the screen flags a nearby driver that is too close or acting dangerously.

Carpark Visualization

Objects will be highlighted red if they are acting crazy, AI will predict how a car will turn if they have no indicator on.

Realtime Tire Pressure Warnings

Efficient Heat Pump Air Conditioner (with Remote Control away from the car)

Rear Seat and Air con settings.

Regenerative braking, 1 pedal driving seems safer to me. On longer downhill parts of the highway, we can regain range/battery. Driving from Tamworth to Port Macquarie on the steep down hill sections regenerated 15% of our battery.

The car’s navigation will factor in wind, temperature and elevation data on trips to calculate range automatically. We do set the destination on each trip to get directions and charge stats and better navigation routing.

It is near possible to run out of charge as the Tesla will notice when you are driving beyond known chargers on you trip.

Pre-conditioning the car on Hot or cold days is one feature I love.

Sentry mode is a must

The Sound System is nice

Smart Summon is a nice feature and is being improved

Energy usage and predicted energy usage on Trips app

Self Diagnostics and Remote Diagnostics ability

Basic Auto Pilot, Enhanced Auto Pilot and Full Self Driving (old video)

Every few months, the car offers us a free software update that we can install ourselves. Security updates, recalls, and new features are included for free. No visiting a dealer

Tesla Software Updates & Release Notes – (notateslaapp.com) is a great site to keep track of past updates

Opt-in Tesla Premium Connectivity (Live Traffic, Visualization, Satellite-View Maps, Video Streaming, Caraoke, Music Streaming, Internet Browser)

Auto Park/Tesla Vision

Automatic Average Speed Zone calculations on the highway

Etc

Power Usage

Below is the charging history of our car, Blue is home charging, red and grey is public charging.

Energy Used: 2,703 kWh

Cost to Charge $586 (combined at home and public charging over 7 months)

Charging in public is 7x more expensive than charging at home but 3x cheaper than buying Petrol.

Money saved by not buying petrol to drive the same distance travelled.

This uses 1/6 of the power of our conditioner at home.

To better know our Electricity costs, we confirmed our Power Peak and Off Peak Periods.

We purchased a Power Pal Energy monitor from https://www.powerpal.net/ to monitor our house’s power consumption and EV charging. This was the best $90 ever.

Average Energy Usage at home: The car usually only trickles charges for just over 2 hours while we sleep. We wake up every day to over 400km range at a 76% battery charge level.

Some people prefer to charge 80%, and some charge 100%. Based on the battery chemistry of our car I prefer to drain the battery to 65% and charge it to 76% (+1% as my OCT likes seeing 75% each day and I drive away front the house at see 75% not 75.9%)).

We are spending less than $23 a month on charging at home. We rarely charge at public charge stations.

Service and Maintenance

Here is the official Tesla Vehicle maintenance page: Vehicle Maintenance | Tesla Support Australia

Tesla vehicles require no traditional oil changes, fuel system maintenance, spark plug replacements or emission checks. Even brake pad replacements are rare because regenerative braking returns energy to the battery, significantly reducing wear on the brakes.

We will get our air filters replaced every 3 years, check the brake fluid every 4 years, rotate and wheel align our tyres every 7000km and wait for the car to report issues that need looking at.

Service Mode

I can access the internal service menu if I want to.

Daily Charge Routine

We plug in the car at 10 PM or earlier or later it does not matter. I am used to plugging in after 10PM to get the older manual 17c per kWh rate.

We review the charge limit in the Tesla app. If we need more power for future trips, we can tweak this.

Our power point can provide 15A 240V, but I like to lower this to 12A to be nice to the house wiring for no reason.

We can set the Tesla departure time in the Tesla app for tomorrow.

I can log in to our Energy Provider (Origin’s) app and ensure they are ready to deliver power at 8c per kWh

I glance at yesterday’s charge cost 59c overnight to top the car back up to 400km range.

Issues/Downsides

The only issues have been small issues

• When using public Evie charging, you need to unlock the charge port inside the car (on the Tesla screen) instead of on the charge handle like Tesla Super Chargers (this took me 1 minute to figure out the solution).
• When you are parked on a sideways slope, and you press the button to release the car door, you may need to push the door with your knee slightly to prevent the door from coming back and re-locking (10 seconds to figure this out).
• One Tesla software update caused my phone (paired car key) to delay connecting when I walked up to the car. I rebooted my phone, and all was okay with subsequent unlocks.
• Once I had to reboot the car (holding down the brake pedal and 2 steering wheel buttons for 5 seconds) in my garage as the user interface seemed stuck on one screen. I was running Beta (advanced) software and I set the next update to revert back to the standard (my fault).

Public Charging

We have only had to wait for a public charge once (we ended up driving on and coming back 3 hours later as we did not need to charge), however we have observed that all public chargers in my town were down for maintenance over a busy holiday.

When we are in our home town, we charge 100% of the time at home, and when on holidays (or on long trips) and we need to charge up away from home, we use public chargers.

Charging at home or using public charge stations is way cheaper than Petrol per km travelled.

When travelling to new places where we have never charged before we plan ahead with PlugShare – EV Charging Station Map – Find a place to charge your car!

When we charge the car, we never walk into a Petrol Station, so we cannot buy junk food and candy. All charging payments are handled automatically via the charging station app (as long as the payment method is in the app).

What we wished we knew before we bought an EV

All EVs have a maximum AC and DC charge rate. AC is generally at home, and DC is generally public chargers. Just because you rock up to a 150kWh charger does not mean you will get 150kWh for the entire charging time.

Here is our Tesla Model Y Long Range charge curve,

Go to EV models :: evkx.net to view all EV EV specifications and charge curve times for the following brand EV’s

EV models :: evkx.net

Charging an EV at home in off-peak periods or with solar power is ridiculously cheap compared to petrol.

Conclusion

Cost per Kilometer Travelled

* Prices are based on Fuel Check (nsw.gov.au) Premium 95 at $2.17c per litre.

Conclusion

We automated our Tesla charging at home for 8c per kWh via Origin Energy. 8c per kW/h is a good deal without going to Solar panels. Origin offers green energy carbon offsetting to guarantee green energy sourcing.

We have done long trips: Electric Car Adventures – Our journey on a long road trip

We are not on foreign oil to keep us moving, and all charging money stays in Australia.

Our next plan is to get solar panels from Origin Energy.

Overall, we are very impressed after 7 months and still very happy with the car.

V1.2