John and Sue kindly invited us to stay last night at their house near Kempsey, on our way…

…south. Beautiful house and large property, with Marley the labrador to welcome us.

We met John and Sue back in February at the Fully Charged Show in Sydney. John had then been waiting two years for his Tesla Model S order. He hedged his bets and ordered a black Model Y performance (shown in the photo). Later Tesla canceled his Model S order, after announcing that they will no longer make them for right hand drive markets, like Australia. They also credited $3k for the inconvenience, towards his Model Y order.

We took it for a spin, with our heads planted on the head rests during launch. Whoa! It’s zero to 100km/h is 3.7s, compared to our standard Model 3’s 6.1s. (The Model 3 Performance does 100km/h in 3.3s.) The sound system is amazing, with about 14 speakers plus sub woofer.

Charging:

We arrived with about 17% charge, after our trip from Ballina (and a nine minute charge at Coffs Harbour). John was kind enough to allow us to displace his prized Model Y to use their wall charger at 7kW, so we were at 100% in the morning for our drive to the NSW Central Coast. John and Sue were heading off to Forster, so they charged their Model Y from a standard power point, from about 75% up to 96%, ready for the trip. Their Performance model uses a nickel based (NMC) battery, which Tesla recommends regularly charging to 80% or less, export for long trips. Our Tesla Model 3 RWD, iron based (LFP) battery is okay to regularly charge to 100%.