Motel room with a free tank of fuel!
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We checked into the Armidale Inn for the night for $130. That includes a free tank of fuel – well, technically a full battery charge, and morning continental breakfast. We rolled into Armidale, after driving from Maclean, up onto the Great Dividing Range, through Ebor and Guyra.
Armidale is Australia’s highest city, at 980 metres. Maclean, where we started the day, is barely above sea level, so the car spent a lot more energy than usual getting us up here.
Nice motel, in a row of motels. Set far enough back from the road to not be noisy. We arrived just before sunset, with the sun blinding us as we drove up next to reception.
This is another motel that asks drivers to not reverse their exhausts facing the rooms.
Apple Maps showed the nearest place for dinner was the Deer Park Motor Inn, just 100m away. We walked into the restaurant as the only customers. The staff were a bit apologetic about the limited offerings, but we were just grateful to sit and chill with a cooked meal.
Back at our motel, I chatted with Dwayne about his Model 3. He has stayed here many times, frequently travelling up and down the New England Highway, and into South East Queensland. He has done 91,000km since January last year! Wow.
Charging
The two free Tesla destination chargers seemed oddly positioned, on the wrong side of each car spot for the Tesla’s port. I parked sideways, plugged in and checked in on PlugShare in case anyone needed access. A couple of hours later, Dwayne messaged me on PlugShare to ask how long I’d be. We chatted IRL in the car park. He had also figured that reversing in wouldn’t reach the cables. It turns out, we were wrong. We both reversed in, and both cars connected fine. I did misjudge the tailgate clearance, though. It touched the carport beam. Two full tanks by morning.
Climbing the range takes energy. From Maclean to Armidale we used 44 kWh over 274 km, an average of 161 Wh/km. The steepest leg, from Ulmarra up to Ebor, averaged 201 Wh/km, against about 140 Wh/km on our usual highway drives. That’s about 8 kWh extra, just to lift us up the range. The car tank (battery) was down to 16% when we arrived. The charger took us to 98% overnight, adding 55 kWh at up to 11 kW.
But that's all just nerdy stats. We didn't have to calculate anything for the trip. We just told the navigation where we're going, and it told us we'd get there with about 15%. That's all we needed to know.
Armidale has a few fast charging options, including four Tesla Superchargers, which we could have used while we were getting morning coffee at Goldfish Bowl Cafe and Bakery.
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- The motel where we started the day, charging EVs from its own power plant: A motel charging EVs from its own power plant 21 Sep 2026
- Last time we were in Armidale, heading the other way in 2022: Breakfast in Armidale's Central Park 10 Dec 2022
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