News
Tesla Model S Charging Costs in Australia
Tesla Motors seen as a key sponsor of Web Directions in Sydney, Australia.
More than 2 years after the it first went on sale in the US the Model S arrived in Australia in late December 2014. As an early owner of the Model S the car generates a lot of interest from friends, neighbours and the general public when you’re out and about. One of the most common questions is how much does it cost to run. We need a new language to describe this as litre’s per 100km doesn’t work and a “full tank” in a Model S is less than a normal tank in a modern petrol car. The answer I find people find easiest to understand is $11 for a full charge which lasts for around 500kms.
Compared to a petrol car this is great, current models will give you 500 – 1000kms from a tank but you’ll spend $50 to $100 to fill them up (at the current, and relatively cheap fuel prices).
Victorian Government’s initiative called for an expansive roll out of digital smart meters across residential and small businesses. Source: Energy Australia
To understand where the $11 comes from let’s dig into electricity pricing in Australia a little more. Historically homes have been configured with analog meters. All the power we use is charged at a flat rate day and night. Optionally an off peak circuit was often installed which was only connected to the hot water service. Available into two variants supply is remotely controlled by the electricity company for circa 6 or 12 hours per day.
More recently smart meters are being installed on new dwellings and with consumers that have added solar photovoltaics to their home. In certain states such as Victoria blanket rollouts of smart meters have been known to occur. Once installed electricity is charged on tariffs that vary across different times of the day for weekdays and weekends. Tariffs vary across networks but generally consist of a peak morning or late afternoon & evening period, shoulder during the remaining waking hours on weekdays and across the weekend and off peak for overnight.
Charging Costs and Meter Options in Australia
For both analog and smart meters the difference in tariffs between their maximum and minimum are material. From a low of circa $0.10/kWh on off peak to a high of $0.50/kWh in peak periods.
RELATED: EV Basics: What’s a killowat hour?
Analog Meter
- If you’re on an analog meter you can wire your charger to a standard circuit and charge at any time, or choose one of the two controlled load circuits to get cheaper power but with less control. Note that you can’t mix standard and controlled circuits so you’ll have to choose one or the other. Having the electric company control when to supply your electricity may not work for you if you plan on taking consistent high length trips in your Model S each day. Especially since you’ll likely require a nightly charge with a guarantee of no interruption.
Smart Meter
- If you’re on a smart meter, find out what time your off peak starts, configure your Tesla Model S to start charging at this time, plug in every night and you’ll almost certainly be charging on the cheapest power all the time. The off peak periods are long enough to get a full charge on a standard 32 Amp charger for all but the most depleted of batteries. On the rare occasion that you can’t complete your charge during the off peak period you’ll simply push the small remaining part into a shoulder or peak tariff.
A smart meter provides much greater flexibility, but the real cost of changing from an analog needs to take into consideration your whole home.
The average Australian home uses around 20kWh of electricity per day or and the average vehicle travels 270kms per week. In Model S terms this equates to 140 kWh per week on your home and 55-65 kWh per week to charge the car.
Obviously these figures vary enormously depending on your personal home and driving habits but car charging is likely to remain the smaller part.
What about charging from solar? Everyone that has solar has a smart meter and hence the ability to control the price they pay for the electricity which is used for charging their car. Households that installed solar early are on feed-in tariffs which pay them for all or just the excess power that they produce. In the majority of cases these rates are much higher than the cheapest power available over night. Those that aren’t on solar power are mostly being paid feed in tariffs which are only marginally lower than the price they pay for power over night.
ALSO SEE: One Telsa owner’s journey with installing photovoltaic cells through SolarCity
Most users will be better off using their solar in their home or selling it then buying cheap power overnight to charge their car. There are certainly users for whom it would be cheaper to charge from the power generated through their solar system, but the cost and complexity of making it work is unlikely to stack up. Some form of power router is needed that can take into account usage by other appliances in your home, the tariffs, the amount of charge your car needs each day and the potentially intermittent supply of sun on any given day.
LEARN MORE: How to reduce your electricity usage at home in Australia?
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the third quarter of 2026, marking a reasonable performance on the various financial metrics. Tesla still plans to hold a call that will field investor questions at 5:30 p.m. ET, 4:30 p.m. CT.
Here’s where Earnings came in:
- Total Revenues: $28.046 reported vs. $28.34B expected
- Non-GAAP EPS: $0.48 reported vs. $0.45 expected
- Operating Margin: 2.6 % reported vs. 2.5% expected
- Operating Income: $718M reported vs. $721M expected
- Free Cash Flow: $1.531B reported vs. ~-$4.51B expected
Tesla $TSLA Earnings Results:
Revenues: $28.046B
Non-GAAP EPS: $0.48
Operating Margin: 2.6%
Operating Income: $718M
FCF: $1.531B— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 21, 2026
Major Takeaways
Full Self-Driving (Supervised)
“FSD (Supervised)⁴ attach rate continued to grow, reaching over 75% of new vehicle deliveries in North America – our most mature market – a nearly twenty percentage point sequential increase. We believe that FSD is driving demand in markets where it is available, and we continue to work with regulators to get it approved in other markets.”
Tesla Semi
“We began volume production of Tesla Semi, our Class 8 heavy-duty truck. The top variant can go 500 miles at full 82,000 lbs gross combination weight while achieving an efficiency of 1.7 kWh/mile. That efficiency allows the Tesla Semi to use a third of the energy used by a comparable diesel truck to haul the same payload. In a transportation market where energy is one of the largest components of total cost per mile, this will provide a meaningful advantage to Tesla Semi operators.”
SI Compute
“We plan to reach 400 MW of SI training compute by the end of the year, supporting the development of both vehicle and humanoid robot autonomy software. Additionally, we continued construction for the Austin Fab, where we plan to start commissioning equipment in 2027.”
Robotaxi
“We began deployment of Cybercab into our Robotaxi fleet in Austin. We reached nearly two million cumulative unsupervised miles for our Robotaxi service as of the end of the quarter. Operating hours in Austin are now 6am to midnight, and we expect to reduce wait times via increased fleet supply and improvement of Robotaxi orchestration algorithms. Grok is available in Cybercab with access to Grok Bot and Connectors, which allows users to manage their inbox, calendars, files, chats and tasks – all hands free via voice command – making Cybercab a mode of transport, a productivity space and, with our entertainment options, a second living room.”
Interested in ordering a Tesla? Use my referral code for three free months of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) here.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reports its earnings for Q3 today. Here’s what to expect, as the company will reveal its balance sheet after the market closes on Wednesday.
Tesla already reported deliveries just after Q3 ended, and it demolished Wall Street consensus estimates of roughly 462,000 vehicles. Tesla delivered 486,532 cars in the third quarter, which was a big beat, but was down 2.1 percent from the same quarter last year. Energy storage deployments were 13.7 GWh, up year-over-year.
Tesla showrooms picked clean ahead of Q3 end as demand looks strong
For the quarter, analysts have already compiled their predictions for what Tesla will report this afternoon:
- Total Revenues: $28.34B
- Non-GAAP EPS: $0.43
- Operating Margin: 2.5%
- Operating Income: $721M
- Free Cash Flow: ~-$4.51B
Here are a few things we are looking forward to hearing about on the call:
Automotive Gross Margin and Overall Profitability
This was 16.3 percent in Q2, down from 19.2 percent in Q1, and was impacted by warranty charges and some fading regulatory credits. Consensus implies overall gross margin near 18 percent, but a miss here would potentially reinforce concerns about pricing pressure on its vehicles.
Pay attention to energy storage margins as well, especially since Tesla missed GWh expectations, although it was still a strong quarter.
Robotaxi/Cybercab, Unsupervised FSD, and Optimus Progress
The Say questions from retail investors usually focus on these types of projects, and this quarter is no different. Scaling the Cybercab fleet beyond Austin amid the open NHTSA safety review, timeline for Unsupervised FSD in customer cars, Robotaxi unit economics, and Optimus cost per unit plus when it could start generating revenue, are all things to be looking for.
Any concrete timelines or regulatory path details will likely move the stock more than the near-term numbers. SpaceX merger speculation, which was detailed during SpaceX’s earnings call last night, may also surface, although the key details were shared last night.
Elon Musk just confirmed the Tesla and SpaceX merger step everyone was waiting for
Say Investor Questions
- How does the Cybercab fleet scale past Austin, and what’s the regulatory path outside Texas given NHTSA’s open safety review?
- When can we anticipate FSD unsupervised in customer cars?
- When will the CyberCab be available for customer purchase/ownership?
- What’s the unit economics per paid robotaxi mile, and how does it compare to the thirty-cent target?
- Tesla has acknowledged that HW3 vehicles cannot support unsupervised FSD. When will owners know whether they can upgrade their hardware for free, and when will Tesla provide a clear plan?
The full Earnings Call will be streamed this evening after market close around 5 p.m. this evening.
SpaceX confirmed the date of Starship’s 15th launch window with some massive ambitions for the mission, as it will attempt to catch Ship for the first time.
CEO Elon Musk confirmed during SpaceX’s Earnings Call last night on October 20 that it would launch Starship for its 15th test flight in November, and there are some incredible things the company wants to try, making it perhaps the most groundbreaking launch in the program’s history.
SpaceX delivers blockbuster Q3 results as Super Intelligence segment booms
The most major development of the call was SpaceX’s intention to catch Ship alongside catching the Super Heavy Booster, something that has happened in the past. SpaceX showed an animation of the Ship catch, which will be done on the launch tower’s chopsticks:
SpaceX has released a new Starship tower catch animation for the upcoming Flight 15! https://t.co/kStn01Da8u
— Truthful🛰️ (@Truthful_ast) October 20, 2026
This monumental goal is to catch both the Ship and Booster in a dual-catch scenario, an incredible feat since SpaceX has never been able to reuse a Ship after launch. Musk said it would be “the first time that an orbital launch vehicle has been fully recovered,” and said it would be a “profound technology milestone.”
Musk said the odds of success on this first Ship catch attempt are “more likely than not,” but SpaceX is ultimately prepared for more tries moving forward. The SpaceX frontman said that, starting next year, Starship would have a “steady stream” of flights through the end of the year.
The cadence will accelerate in 2027, with Musk stating the company plans to target weekly flights in the first half of 2027 and twice-weekly by year-end.
The Flight 15 attempt follows that of Flight 14, which took off in late September and was Starship’s first orbital mission. It deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, accomplished a controlled ocean splashdown of both stages, and shed more light on potential challenges for the program moving forward.
As of now, the Starship program is firing on all cylinders.
Interested in ordering a Tesla? Use my referral code for three free months of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) here.
Tesla Q3 2026 Earnings results: in-line revenues, slight beat on EPS
Tesla reports Q3 Earnings today: here’s what to expect
