Australia’s EV charging map just got its biggest shake-up of the year, and the dust has not even settled before a second, bigger move landed on top of it. Ampol, the country’s largest petrol retailer, switched on redeveloped fast-charging bays at its Foodary Eastern Creek service centres in Sydney’s west on January 19, 2026, according to The Driven. Within months, Tesla filed paperwork for a Supercharger site roughly four times the size, in a regional city 600 kilometres away. The juxtaposition says a lot about where EV infrastructure in Australia is actually headed in late 2026: incumbent fuel retailers retrofitting existing forecourts, and Tesla building purpose-built mega-hubs from scratch.
The timing has put both projects in the same sentence across Australian motoring and energy outlets this week, even though they are hundreds of kilometres apart and serve different purposes. One is a retrofit at a major east-coast logistics corridor. The other is a still-pending development application in a border town best known as a stopover on the Hume Highway. Together they frame a question Australian drivers keep asking: who is actually building the country’s biggest EV charging hub, and does “biggest” even mean the same thing to a fuel company as it does to Tesla?
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Ampol’s Eastern Creek Rollout: What Actually Opened
Ampol reopened its redeveloped Foodary Eastern Creek service centres on January 19, 2026, according to The Driven’s report on the rollout. The sites sit on Sydney’s western fringe, close to the logistics and freight corridor that runs along the M4 and M7 motorways, a location choice that matters because Ampol has leaned heavily into serving commercial and trailer-towing traffic as part of this redevelopment, per the same report.
Each Eastern Creek site carries ten AmpCharge EV charging bays, and four of those bays at each location are drive-through bays, built specifically so a vehicle towing a trailer or caravan does not need to unhitch before charging, The Driven reported. That drive-through detail is the standout engineering choice here: most fast-charging bays in Australia, including Tesla’s, are still designed around a standard nose-in or reverse-in parking bay, not a through-route a rig can roll straight across.
On the hardware side, the westbound Eastern Creek site is fitted with two 400-kilowatt EV chargers supplied by ABB, according to The Driven. That is a serious power rating by Australian retail standards, on par with the fastest public DC chargers currently deployed in the country, and it signals Ampol is not treating this as a token gesture tacked onto a fuel stop. It is a different scale of hardware entirely from the consumer-grade GaN wall chargers compared in recent desktop charger roundups, which top out at a few hundred watts rather than hundreds of kilowatts.
AmpCharge itself is not new. Ampol launched the network in early 2022, and Eastern Creek represents one of its more ambitious builds rather than a first foray into charging. The funding behind the broader AmpCharge rollout also traces back to a $7.05 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, ARENA, which Ampol received to support its charging infrastructure expansion, The Driven reported.
Tesla’s Albury Proposal: The Numbers Behind “Australia’s Biggest”
While Ampol’s Eastern Creek upgrade was getting coverage for its trailer-friendly design, Tesla had already lodged a development application with Albury City Council for a new Supercharger site at 19 Diamond Drive in Thurgoona, a suburb of Albury on the New South Wales side of the Victorian border, according to reporting from TeslaNorth and ABC News.
The scale is what sets this proposal apart. Plans call for 37 charging bays, made up of 36 standard bays plus one accessible bay, spread across a site of roughly 1,300 square metres, according to TeslaNorth’s reporting on the application. For context, that is more than three times the bay count at each individual Eastern Creek location. The Thurgoona site sits about 2.5 kilometres from the Hume Highway, the main artery connecting Sydney and Melbourne, which explains why Tesla picked this exact stretch of regional New South Wales rather than a metro location.
Tesla’s filing puts the estimated development cost at $3.5 million, according to techAU‘s coverage of the plans. The documents specify Tesla’s V4 charging posts, the newer hardware generation already live at some Australian sites, paired with solar canopies over the parking bays capable of generating up to 100 kilowatts, techAU reported. Pairing a Supercharger hub with on-site solar generation is not unprecedented for Tesla globally, but a 100kW canopy at this scale would be among the larger solar-plus-charging installs the company has proposed in Australia.
Crucially, this is still a proposal, not a finished site. The application was on public display until October 21, 2026, and Albury City Council was not expected to deliver its assessment report until the end of November 2026, according to TeslaNorth and ABC News. No opening date has been set, and construction depends entirely on the planning approval going through. Readers searching for when the Thurgoona Supercharger opens will not find an answer yet, because Tesla itself has not published one.
Why Albury, and Why Now
Albury is not a random pick on Tesla’s part. The city already hosts an existing Tesla Supercharger with 16 stalls, which opened in December 2023, according to TeslaNorth’s reporting. That means Tesla is not entering a new market with Thurgoona, it is proposing to more than double its own regional footprint in a city it has already identified as a high-traffic stopover between Australia’s two largest metro areas.
That pattern of upsizing regional sites has shown up elsewhere on the Hume Highway corridor too. Tesla’s Goulburn Supercharger, roughly midway between Sydney and Canberra, opened in August 2025 with 20 stalls, according to TeslaNorth, which at the time made it one of the larger Supercharger builds outside a capital city. If the Thurgoona application is approved as filed, its 37 bays would roughly double even that Goulburn benchmark, and more than double the existing 16-stall Albury site a short drive away.
The pattern suggests Tesla is treating the Hume Highway, the busiest interstate freight and travel corridor in the country, as a priority zone for its biggest charging builds, rather than concentrating investment inside Sydney or Melbourne proper. That is a notable strategic tell: Tesla appears to be betting on long-haul road trip volume along one corridor rather than spreading smaller sites evenly across the national map.
Two Different Definitions of “Biggest”
Here is where the headline-grabbing comparison gets murkier than it first appears. Ampol’s claim to a major charging milestone rests on the Eastern Creek redevelopment’s ten AmpCharge bays per site, four of them drive-through, backed by 400kW ABB hardware and a $7.05 million ARENA grant behind the wider AmpCharge build-out, as reported by The Driven. Nothing in that reporting establishes Eastern Creek as the single largest charging site in the country by total bay count; the claim is about the capability of what AmpCharge has rolled out, not a confirmed national ranking.
Tesla’s Thurgoona filing, by contrast, is explicitly sized to be the largest Supercharger site the company has proposed in Australia, with 37 bays against Goulburn’s 20 and the existing Albury site’s 16. But a proposal with a council assessment still pending is not a built, operating hub. Until Albury City Council issues its determination, expected by the end of November 2026, the 37-bay Thurgoona site exists only on paper.
So the honest framing is this: Ampol has an operating, trailer-friendly fast-charging upgrade live today. Tesla has a larger, solar-backed proposal working through the planning system that could, if approved and built, become the country’s largest single Supercharger site. Whether either one earns the title of “Australia’s biggest EV charging hub” outright depends on which metric, bays, kilowatts, or footprint, you are measuring, and on a council decision that has not been made yet.
Ampol vs Tesla: Site-by-Site Comparison
The table below lines up the confirmed specifications of Ampol’s Eastern Creek rollout against Tesla’s proposed Thurgoona site, using only the figures reported by The Driven, TeslaNorth, ABC News, and techAU.
| Metric | Ampol Foodary Eastern Creek | Tesla Thurgoona (Proposed) |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Open since January 19, 2026 | Development application, pending council decision |
| Charging bays per site | 10 AmpCharge bays | 37 bays (36 standard, 1 accessible) |
| Drive-through capability | 4 drive-through bays per site | Not specified in filing |
| Charger hardware | Two 400kW ABB chargers (westbound site) | Tesla V4 charging posts |
| On-site power generation | Not reported | Solar canopies, up to 100kW |
| Site footprint | Not reported | Approximately 1,300 square metres |
| Estimated cost | Backed by $7.05M ARENA grant (network-wide) | $3.5 million |
| Location context | Sydney’s west, M4/M7 freight corridor | 2.5km from the Hume Highway, Albury region |
The Hume Highway’s Supercharger Build-Out Timeline
Tesla’s Thurgoona application does not exist in isolation. It is the latest step in a steady expansion of Supercharger capacity along the Sydney-Melbourne corridor that has been underway since at least late 2023. Tracking the stall counts at each stage shows just how quickly Tesla has been scaling up its regional site sizing.
| Site | Opened / Filed | Stalls or Bays |
|---|---|---|
| Tesla Albury (existing) | December 2023 | 16 stalls |
| Tesla Goulburn | August 2025 | 20 stalls |
| Ampol Foodary Eastern Creek | January 19, 2026 | 10 AmpCharge bays per site |
| Tesla Thurgoona (proposed) | Application displayed until October 21, 2026 | 37 bays (pending approval) |
Reading the timeline this way, the proposed Thurgoona site is not a one-off anomaly. It is roughly double the size of Tesla’s own Goulburn build from just over a year earlier, which was itself a step up from the original 16-stall Albury site. If the pattern holds and the application clears council review, Tesla’s regional Australian sites look set to keep growing in scale rather than plateauing.
What a Petrol Retailer Gains From Fast-Charging Bays
Ampol’s motivation for building out AmpCharge is straightforward: a fuel retailer that does not offer fast charging risks losing forecourt visits entirely as the vehicle fleet electrifies. Unlike Tesla, which sells both the vehicles and the chargers, Ampol’s charging business exists to keep drivers of any EV brand stopping at its sites, buying coffee, snacks, and convenience items the same way they would buy fuel.
The drive-through bay design at Eastern Creek reinforces that convenience-retail logic. A driver towing a boat, caravan, or trailer who has to unhitch before charging is a driver who is more likely to skip the stop altogether. By building bays a rig can roll straight through, Ampol is targeting a segment of road-trip traffic that Tesla’s Supercharger network, designed primarily around Tesla’s own passenger vehicle fleet, has not prioritized in the same way.
The $7.05 million ARENA grant behind the AmpCharge rollout also reflects a broader government push to get non-Tesla fast-charging infrastructure built faster. ARENA funding of this kind typically requires chargers to be open to any EV, not gated to one manufacturer, which is part of why Ampol’s network matters to the national charging map even though its individual sites are smaller in bay count than Tesla’s proposed mega-hub. That kind of subsidized public buildout mirrors incentive schemes elsewhere, such as the utility-backed EV charging credit Duke Energy pays Florida drivers, where the goal is similarly to pull charging load toward off-peak periods and keep adoption costs down for drivers.
Why Tesla Keeps Building Bigger Regional Sites
Tesla’s logic runs differently. Supercharger sites exist partly to sell cars, by removing range anxiety on long drives, and partly as a standalone business now that Tesla opens many sites to non-Tesla EVs as well. A 37-bay site at Thurgoona would be large enough to absorb queueing during peak long-weekend travel on the Hume Highway, something a 16 or 20-stall site can struggle with when several buses or convoy groups arrive at once.
The solar canopy component, up to 100kW according to techAU’s reporting on the filing, also fits a pattern Tesla has pursued at select sites globally: pairing charging infrastructure with on-site generation to offset grid draw during peak demand. Whether the Thurgoona canopy is designed to meaningfully offset the site’s total charging load, or is more of a cost-management and PR feature, is not detailed in the public filing.
Tesla’s pattern of supersizing its site filings also shows up beyond Albury. ABC News reported this month on a separate Tesla application to nearly double the number of chargers at an existing site in Kaniva, a small Victorian town also on a major interstate route, underscoring that the Thurgoona proposal is part of a broader regional expansion push rather than an isolated filing.
Historical Context: From Zero to a 37-Bay Proposal
Australia’s EV charging buildout has moved fast by the standards of a country with notoriously long distances between population centres. Ampol’s AmpCharge network only launched in early 2022, and within four years it has expanded to sites carrying ABB’s 400kW hardware and government-backed grants worth millions of dollars. Tesla’s own Albury presence dates back to December 2023 with a comparatively modest 16 stalls, a figure that already looked generous for a regional city at the time.
What has changed since then is the baseline expectation for site size. Twenty stalls at Goulburn in August 2025 was treated as a notably large build when it opened. A year later, a 37-bay filing at Thurgoona, more than double Goulburn’s count, is the one making headlines. That trajectory mirrors what Tesla has done in other markets, where early Supercharger sites with a handful of stalls gave way to 20-plus and even 40-plus stall mega-sites as EV adoption and queueing pressure grew. Australia appears to be following that same curve, just a few years behind the US and parts of Europe.
Market Impact: What This Means for Drivers and Competitors
For everyday EV drivers, the practical impact of these two projects is different depending on where they drive. Anyone running freight or travelling through Sydney’s western logistics corridor benefits immediately from Ampol’s trailer-friendly Eastern Creek bays, which are already open. Anyone making the long Sydney-Melbourne run on the Hume Highway will not see any new capacity at Thurgoona until Albury City Council rules on the application, expected by the end of November 2026, and then construction would still need to happen.
For competing charging networks and fuel retailers, both projects raise the bar. A 400kW ABB installation at a petrol forecourt signals that legacy fuel retailers are willing to match or exceed the charging speeds typically associated with EV-only networks. A 37-bay Tesla filing, meanwhile, signals that Tesla is not content to let regional charging capacity lag behind demand, even in markets far smaller than Sydney or Melbourne.
It is also worth noting that Australia’s EV charging competition is not purely a two-horse race between Ampol and Tesla. Rival automakers and infrastructure providers continue to expand charging-adjacent hardware and services across the country, and broader EV market dynamics, like the pricing pressure BYD has put on Tesla in other overseas markets, continue to shape how aggressively each company needs to invest in supporting infrastructure. Tesla’s position is reinforced locally by raw sales volume too: the Model Y has been reported to outsell two dozen rival EVs combined in some markets, which is the kind of demand base that makes a 37-bay charging hub look justifiable on paper.
What Happens Next
The immediate next milestone is procedural rather than physical. Albury City Council’s assessment report on the Thurgoona application was expected by the end of November 2026, following a public display period that ran until October 21, 2026, according to TeslaNorth and ABC News. Until that report lands, there is no construction timeline, no opening date, and no certainty the 37-bay design survives the planning process unchanged.
Meanwhile, Ampol’s Eastern Creek sites continue operating as the live, confirmed entrant in this comparison. Whether Ampol expands the drive-through, trailer-friendly format to other sites across its network is not detailed in current reporting, but the ARENA-backed funding model behind AmpCharge suggests more sites are likely in the pipeline regardless of how the Thurgoona decision lands.
5 Predictions for Australia’s EV Charging Race
- Albury City Council approves the Thurgoona application in some form by late November 2026, though the final bay count or solar canopy spec could be scaled back during assessment.
- Ampol expands its drive-through, trailer-friendly bay design to additional AmpCharge sites beyond Eastern Creek, given the ARENA funding already backing the network.
- Tesla continues filing larger regional site proposals along the Hume Highway corridor, following the same escalation seen from Albury’s 16 stalls to Goulburn’s 20 to Thurgoona’s proposed 37.
- Other fuel retailers accelerate their own fast-charging retrofits in response to Ampol’s Eastern Creek rollout, particularly at sites near freight corridors.
- Media and public debate over which site qualifies as Australia’s biggest EV charging hub continues until Thurgoona either breaks ground or stalls in the planning process, since the title currently depends on definition rather than settled fact.
Competitive Landscape: Fuel Retailers vs Automaker-Owned Networks
The Ampol-Tesla contrast also illustrates a broader split in how Australia’s charging infrastructure is being built. Ampol represents the fuel-retailer model: an existing network of forecourts retrofitted with charging bays, funded partly through government grants like the $7.05 million ARENA contribution, and designed to serve any EV brand that pulls in. That model scales through Ampol’s existing real estate footprint rather than requiring new site acquisitions.
Tesla represents the automaker-owned network model: purpose-built sites, sized to Tesla’s own projections of future demand, funded by Tesla itself, and increasingly opened to non-Tesla vehicles as a secondary revenue stream. The Thurgoona proposal’s solar canopy component also hints at a long-term cost structure where Tesla tries to offset grid electricity costs at its largest sites, something a retrofit-based network like AmpCharge has not been reported doing at Eastern Creek.
Neither model has definitively won in Australia yet, and the two can coexist without direct competition in most cases, since Ampol’s Eastern Creek sites and Tesla’s Albury-area sites serve different parts of the country. The more interesting tension is what happens if both models try to build mega-hubs on the same corridor at the same time, a scenario the Thurgoona filing brings closer to reality given its location near the Hume Highway. Australia’s EV sector has also had a rougher run on the security and compliance side this year, from a hack that found no password protecting a chunk of BYD’s local fleet to banned Dahua cameras turning up inside a Leapmotor EV, reminders that charging hubs are not the only infrastructure layer regulators are watching closely.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Ampol’s Eastern Creek site Australia’s biggest EV charging hub?
Ampol’s redeveloped Foodary Eastern Creek sites carry 10 AmpCharge bays each, including four drive-through bays, according to The Driven. Current reporting confirms those specifications but does not establish Eastern Creek as the largest EV charging site in Australia by total bay count or capacity.
How many charging bays is Tesla proposing at Thurgoona?
Tesla’s development application filed with Albury City Council specifies 37 charging bays, made up of 36 standard bays and one accessible bay, according to TeslaNorth and techAU’s reporting on the filing.
Has the Tesla Thurgoona Supercharger been approved?
Not yet. The application was on public display until October 21, 2026, and Albury City Council’s assessment report was expected by the end of November 2026. No opening date has been announced, and construction depends on planning approval.
Where exactly is the proposed Tesla site located?
The proposed site is at 19 Diamond Drive, Thurgoona, a suburb of Albury in New South Wales, roughly 1,300 square metres in size and about 2.5 kilometres from the Hume Highway, according to TeslaNorth and techAU.
How much would the Tesla Thurgoona Supercharger cost to build?
The filing estimates a development cost of $3.5 million, according to techAU’s reporting, which also covers Tesla V4 charging posts and solar canopies capable of generating up to 100 kilowatts.
What charging hardware does Ampol use at Eastern Creek?
The westbound Eastern Creek site uses two 400-kilowatt EV chargers supplied by ABB, according to The Driven. That is among the fastest public DC charging hardware currently deployed at an Australian retail site.
Does Tesla already have a Supercharger in Albury?
Yes. Tesla’s existing Albury Supercharger has 16 stalls and opened in December 2023, according to TeslaNorth. The Thurgoona proposal would be a separate, significantly larger site in the same region.
Is Ampol’s AmpCharge network open to all EV brands?
AmpCharge is Ampol’s EV fast-charging network, launched in early 2022 and built with backing from a $7.05 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, according to The Driven’s reporting on the rollout.
