Tesla electric vehicle sales are rapidly increasing significantly in Australia. There are now more than 26,500 Teslas on Australian roads, Tesla Inc Board Chairman Robyn Denholm at the Australian Clean Energy Summit.
This amount is equivalent to 1 per cent of the total 2.5 million cars in Australia at the end of the first quarter of 2022.
In total, new EVs account for about 2% of new car sales in Australia. Denholm says the biggest obstacle to EV adoption is the lack of fast charging stations.
“Australia is in a very unique position from an energy perspective, in that we have more Powerwalls installed in Australia than we do have Teslas on the road,” Denholm said.
Energy consumption in Australia differs from that in some countries where the use of home batteries is used in conjunction with rooftop solar. Australia has been known as a country that has the highest per capita solar rooftop absorption globally.
He urged the new Labor government to implement vehicle fuel emission standards that would encourage adoption of electric vehicles and spur improvements to fast charging networks.
He also called on Australia to do more to build battery material refining capacity. Tesla is known to get three-quarters of the lithium for electric vehicle battery production from Australia. But Australia has almost no purification capacity for lithium used for electric vehicle batteries.
