Over Easter 2026, social media was filled with images of EV charging stations, particularly Tesla Superchargers on major highways with queues allegedly measured in “hours”.

In this article we will explore EV charging congestion using the example of one of the most reported sites, the Tesla V4 supercharger station in Coolac, NSW, a locality approximately 15 north of the town of Gundagai, NSW. Situated on the busiest interstate highway in Australia, it is a fairly new 12 bay charging site that has the distinction of being one of the closest V4 Supercharger sites adjacent to the Hume Highway.

The analysis will be supported by carloop’s charging session and occupancy dataset which covers the following networks:

• AGL
• Ampol Ampcharge
• bp Pulse
• Chargefox
• Evie Networks
• EVX
• Exploren
• JOLT
• NRMA
• Tesla Supercharger

What happened over Easter 2026?

The graphs below show percentage occupancy of the site on a per-minute basis. Each graph shows a four-day period, with the middle graph being Easter 2026 (3rd April – 6th April), the top being with week before Easter 2026 (27 March – 30 March) and the bottom being the week after Easter. The red line is an arbitrarily selected 95% occupancy indicator. Note that the week after Easter still falls within the NSW and Victoria public school holiday period (3rd April – 20th April).

Periods of congestion are clearly visible during the Easter long weekend, with an 8-hour period on Good Friday from 1000 to 1800 a similar period of nearly 8 hours starting from 1000 on Easter Monday. There is also a far shorter periods of congestion of around 15 minutes in the middle of the 10th April, and just over an hour on 12 April, likely indicating people heading home after their holidays.

An Australian Tesla V4 Supercharger consists of a 250kW power cabinet connected to either 3 or 4 charging stalls, each of which has a single CCS2 charging handle. In the case of Coolac, NSW, there are three power cabinets connected to 4 stalls each. This means that assuming optimal distribution, at occupancy levels of over 25%, vehicles will be sharing power and possibly experience longer charging times. For example, if four vehicles arrive simultaneously with a low state-of-charger (SoC) then each will receive a maximum of 250/4 = 62.5kW of charging power. The chargers vary power delivery depending on demand from the connected vehicles, so a vehicle that has a slower charge rate, or one that is nearly full will demand and receive less power.

It is worth noting that the Coolac charging station, like many other Tesla Superchargers, implements congestion charging which for this site adds an additional $0.50/min when the vehicle SoC is over 80% and the site is “busy”, this charge also accrues if the vehicle has stopped charging and is still connected. This discourages behaviour such as “charging to 100%”, since on many EVs, it takes a similar time to charge from 80-100% as it takes to charge from 5-80%. In reality, a few people charging to 100% at a time will not greatly affect the throughput of a charging site since the other vehicles attached to the charger will just get a larger proportion of the available power and will hence charge faster.

If we assume that the congestion fees are doing their job, the site will have been delivering the rated total of 750kW continuously for each of the 8-hour congestion periods. Assuming an average battery size of 80kWh and people charging from 10-80%, so around 56kWh per vehicle, the site has a throughput of approximately 13 vehicles per hour, with each vehicle receiving enough energy for around 300km of highway driving.

What could those affected have done to avoid congestion?

So, what options did those queueing at Coolac have over the Easter weekend? Could they have moved on to another charging station? To answer this question, we look at all DC chargers that are close to the Hume Highway within 100km of Coolac of any power, since charging at any speed is better than sitting in a queue. The following chargers meet these criteria:

As can be seen from the graphs above, all of the chargers within 100km and adjacent to the Hume Highway were experiencing congestion when the Tesla Supercharger at Coolac, NSW was congested, so there was little point in moving on for those affected.

So, it is fairly accurate to say that charging infrastructure along the busiest highway in Australia is inadequate for peak travel periods such as Easter, however, the overall picture is not so dark, where the occupancy of the Coolac, NSW test site appears as follows:

The site has high occupancy (90%+) just 0.65% of the time during the sample period from late January 2026 to date, and an average occupancy of 10.3%^. Occupancy is, however, trending upwards as it is at most sites.

Urban charger occupancy

By comparison, the 12-stall urban supercharger in Box Hill, Vic shows a very different occupancy pattern, with only 0.4% congestion against an average utilisation of over 30%. This may be that many people are opportunistically charging; and will not bother charging if the site looks full.

Conclusion

It is clear that charging infrastructure on popular interstate routes is falling behind EV adoption to the point where high travel periods are becoming an issue. The only solution is the build more, larger and higher power charging stations. There are at least 9 petrol stations in the sample area, each with between 6-30 fuel bowsers, each capable of servicing 10+ vehicles per hour, so even the smallest service station can handle more than 4 times as many as the largest EV charging station in the area (the 12-stall at Coolac, NSW). The demand is obviously there, both during peak times and quieter times. A rough “back of an envelope”estimate of revenue from charging sessions during the congestion period on Friday 3rd April at the Coolac, NSW Supercharger would be in the order of 8 hours x 750kW x $0.6/kWh = $3600 and total revenue YTD in 2026 for that site would likely be around 10.3% utilisation x 750kW x 0.8 capacity factor x $0.6/kWh x 24 hours x 83 days x  = $73,863. This revenue will only continue to grow with EV adoption exceeding 15% of new light vehicle sales.