On Friday, Tesla received notification from the Australian Government that the company’s application to sell Model 3’s in Australia was approved. From looking at the application, Tesla only applied for the 1726 kg and 1856 kg weights, which correspond to the Long Range Rear Wheel Drive, Long Range All Wheel Drive, and Performance All Wheel Drive models, so the Standard Range and Standard Range Plus won’t be coming to Australia right yet — probably in a few months after they work through the backlog of orders for the higher-end models.
Image Credit: Road Vehicle Certification System Australia
According to Wikipedia, Australia has the 8th most cars per capita, with 730 cars per 1000 people (slightly behind the US, which has 811 cars per 1000 people). That makes the market about 7% as large as the US market, but about half the size of the UK market and 6 times the size of Norway’s automotive market.
Australia is using both distributed and utility solar plus storage to help it solve the grid reliability and cost issues that the country has had in the summer. It has been shown that the use of solar increases people’s interest in electric vehicles.
All in all, expect Australia to be a good but small market for Tesla.
I would expect that now that the government has approved 3 configurations of Model 3 for sale, Tesla will open up the Design Studio for Australian customers any day now.
If you want to take advantage of my Tesla referral link to get 5,000 miles (hurry, 5,000 miles goes back to 1,000 miles after May 28) of free Supercharging on a Tesla Model S, Model X, or Model 3, here’s the link: https://ts.la/paul92237 (if someone else helped you, please use their code instead of mine).
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