Tesla driver clocks almost 1000km in Australian outback in one day

A Tesla driver doing a round-Australia trip in an electric car has clocked almost 1,000km in one day driving to Perth, Western Australia.

Richard Smith (aka @outbacktesla) tweeted the impressive achievement on Thursday after reaching the Western Australian capital, completing the long drive from hometown Darwin.

It is the first leg in a mission to travel to all Australian states and capital cities to prove the point that electric cars can travel long distances across the wide expanses of Australia.

Incidentally, Smith was the first point of call for Dutchman Wiebe Wakker – who recently completed a world record-breaking 95,000km trip from Europe and around Australia.

Unlike Wakker’s converted VW Golf with about 230km range, Smith is driving a Model X 100D, with just over twice the range of Wakker’s Golf.

Over Wednesday and Thursday last week Smith travelled 1,789km in total – and without using a DC fast-charger.

“I just thought that was worthy of shouting out, in that the most common thing you hear – and I hear it a lot in the top end because everyone’s driving to Alice Springs over a couple of days (which is 1,600km) – they say you can’t do that in electric vehicle,” Smith told The Driven in an interview.

With each day’s drive split into two parts with a few hours’ rest in between while the car charged up again, Smith says rather than experiencing “range anxiety” he felt “range confidence”.

To read the full story on RenewEconomy’s electric vehicle dedicated news site, click here…