Eve Jeffery
With a price tag of close to $150,000, there is probably not going to be a rush of Tesla’s new Model S vehicles at Macadamia Castle this week, but the technology is in place and the good news is, the price tag is coming down at a rate of knots.
Ben Franklin MLC cut the ribbon for the Macadamia Castle opens Tesla Supercharger Station yesterday at Knockrow and there were free joy rides for journos in the car which goes from from 0 to 100 in under 4 seconds in total silence, (no we didn’t test that out in the carpark).
Though there aren’t currently a lot of the new vehicles on the road, Castle owner Tony Gilding said that five of these hope-for-climate-change cars had visited the charging station in one day and that when the new model comes out with a retail of around $70k, there will definitely be a need for the six pumps installed at the popular tourist attraction.
The opening of this facility now means that you can now travel from Brisbane to Melbourne on electricity which each charge giving you approximately 450 kilometres, with the new technology costing about 1/3 of the cost of traditional fuel, this is a money as well as a planet saver.
Early Adopter
In what history will deem as heroism, people like Vicki Brooke who are the “early adopters” of this technology, will pave the way to a cleaner more sustainable future by literally putting their money where their mouth is.
Any early forays into new technology is always expensive for the pioneers but without those who financially support companies as they step into the market, there would be no progress and Vicki feels very strongly about her footprint and is doing all she can to leave a better world for the future.
Vicki purchased the car in May this year and really just loves it and is happy to be helping the planet. She had no reservations about the Tesla technology. ‘I thought “This is terrific. Bring it on!” I think this is definitely the way of the future.
‘I’m really concerned about the environment’, she says. ‘This is a way of reducing my emissions.’
The Future
Tony see this new technology as a huge step forward in climate action and the effect it will have on the planet and its people.
‘It certainly means a lot initially to the drivers of Tesla cars who are the early adopters, who are the people we do have to encourage’, says Tony. ‘It means now they can drive from Brisbane to Melbourne with regular charging stations.
‘These cars are using 25 percent of the fossil fuels of a regular driver and zero emissions and that’s a good thing, but it’s also showing the way for the future.
‘In the future so many more cars will be electric and within my lifetime, the majority of cars will be electric.’
‘These chargers will charge a Tesla car very quickly, we also have regulars chargers for other cars. The beauty of these [Tesla] things is that they are massively powerful. They are 120,000 watts per transformer, which means that a Tesla driver can charge in 20 to 30 minutes and then get close to 500 kilometres of mileage.’
Ben Franklin MLC thinks that the new facility is fantastic and absolutely the way of the future. ‘We obviously have to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy’, says Ben. ‘Everyone’s aware of that. The government has to be committed to it, but it’s about the community as well and what Tony has done today is showing that the community is committed to this too, because we all have to work together to get a future that is clean, that is green, that is reliable and is affordable.’
Tony says that the world is slowly changing for the better.
‘In America now, over these holidays, there has been congestion at some Tesla car charging stations. In California now there are places where people are waiting half an hour to charge their car. I Australia at the moment, I don’t think there is too much chance of that, but next year when the Model 3 come out, a much cheaper Tesla, (around the $70k mark) then you will see plenty of people here.’
The specs for Tesla car are phenomenal with everything from adaptive lighting, touch screens and all the latest safety bits and bobs including a Bio-Weapon Defense Mode.
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