Tesla has lodged plans for a $3.5 million electric vehicle charging station with 37 bays in Albury, on the New South Wales and Victoria border. If the council approves it, the site in the suburb of Thurgoona would be the largest public charging hub in Australia.
The development application filed with Albury City Council describes a 1,300 square metre vacant lot about 2.5 kilometres from the Hume Highway, next to a gym and across the road from a supermarket complex. It would use Tesla’s V4 chargers and mainly serve long-distance highway drivers, and solar panels on the bay canopies could generate up to 100 kilowatts, according to the documents. The hub would add to a 16-bay Tesla charger in Albury’s CBD that opened three years ago. An artist’s impression of the plan shows solar canopies over the bays. Tesla had not responded to requests for comment.
The proposal is one of several along the main interstate routes. Wagga Wagga councillors on Monday considered seeking expressions of interest for chargers at the Tarcutta truck stop, roughly halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, and Tesla is looking to almost double its chargers in Kaniva, a western Victorian town on the Melbourne to Adelaide route.
Ross De Rango, director of Vehicle Charging Solutions Australia, said sites beside highways are seen as competitive prospects and argued state governments should help pay for chargers away from main roads. He said the number of EVs on the road has tripled while “the amount of charging infrastructure has gone up by a factor of 12”. Milad Haghani, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne, warned that infrastructure would struggle to keep up if the sales boom continues. RACV motoring editor Terry Martin said interest in EVs was surging and companies were rushing to install sites. “More than 180,000 EVs have been sold this year,” he said.
Recent data shows regional hubs rarely face queues but can get very busy at peak times such as public holidays, which is the gap a large site on the Hume corridor is meant to fill. Public notification for the Albury proposal, during which residents can comment, runs until 21 October, a council assessment report is due by the end of November, and councillors will decide on the application at a later meeting.
