Electric cars have yet to become widely adopted in Australia but as more options become available and charging stations become more accessible, it's worth taking a look. Here's what you need to know about electric cars.

There is no denying the 2018 Tesla Model 3's importance. It is intended to be Tesla’s volume-seller, the car that will hopefully make luxury electric cars more accessible to more people, especially when the long-promised $US35,000 version hits the market. It is the key to Tesla’s future, the source of many of its struggles this year, and an EV—hell, a car, period—truly unlike any other.

Equipped as you see here with distance driving in mind, the Model 3 Long Range further normalizes electric cars by offering a truly capable machine with a mix of power, performance, price, range and convenience no other electric cars currently match. For right now, anyway.

The Tesla Model 3 is likely one of the most important cars of the decade. When the planned $US35,000 version finally hits the market, it will truly be a luxury electric vehicle for (most of) the masses. But until that happens, we’ll have to contend with the more expensive Long Range version. Here are five things about the Model 3 that you might not have known.

This week, Elon Musk's company SpaceX revealed more details about how it plans to transport colonists to the planet Mars. There are a lot of open questions about how this will work, technically speaking, and who will pay for it. But there's another fundamental issue that must be addressed before anybody can reserve a seat on the first spaceship out: Is going to Mars even legal?

Until now, Tesla owners wanting a rapid refill had only two options - the six bays at Tesla's St Leonard's store to the north, and eight bays at Broadway Sydney that opened up in March. This is where the company's unique mobile technician service comes in.

Tesla is a bit of a control freak when it comes to repairing its electric vehicles. If you try to buy parts to make your own repairs, they won't let you. The company views it as a way of protecting its reputation and ensuring quality. But YouTuber Rich Benoit believes Tesla owners should be able to work on their own cars, so he found a way to do it.

During the announcement made by Elon Musk about the next version of the Tesla operating system, he mentioned the update would allow owners of Tesla vehicles will have access to classics Atari games through the infotainment system. While that may sound cool, it seems like a waste of resources and adds uneccesary complexity to the software. Given all the production delays, it sounds like the emperor is fiddling while the city burns.

Bloomberg is out this morning with a a well-reported, well-sourced deep-dive into Tesla’s ongoing Model 3 production hell, which is worth reading in full. I will highlight a few passages here, though, one revealing an episode of absurdist horror and the other, well, the other is just very, very bleak.

Tesla has been building cars for nearly 15 years, but it's still learning the best way to do that as it ramps up production of the make-or-break Model 3 to the target of 5000 cars per month. It's much more a running work in progress than you might think.

As Tesla's have become increasingly popular in Australia over the last few years, the need for more chargers and superchargers around the country has increased. But you may not know they're there unless you know where to look. We can help with that.

Here is every Tesla charger currently up and running in Australia, broken down by state.

For years, we've heard criticisms about Tesla's fit and finish, but now Sandy Munro - CEO of a Detroit-area consultancy that tears apart and studies automobiles - has seen a new Model 3 up close. His thoughts: "I can't imagine how they released this."

I let a Tesla drive me up the highway from Sydney to the Hunter Valley and I was absolutely shitting myself.

I've always wanted to drive a Tesla. Silent electric motors, instant torque and autonomous driving capabilities? Sign me up. As luck would have it, during my Christmas vacation spent at my partner's parent's home, I was able to drive their Tesla Model S for a week. The experience was, in a word, magical -- primarily because of the differences between a Tesla and a traditional automobile.

Earlier this month Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully launched Falcon Heavy, the company's most powerful rocket yet. Inside was a red Tesla Roadster sports car with built-in cameras for capturing what it sees as well as a copy of Isaac Asimov's science fiction book series Foundation, and a plane engraved with 6,000 SpaceX employee names. The car's destination: Mars.

Traditional electricity generation has been built around large plants that create large volumes of power that are distributed over transmission and distribution networks to consumers. Even most of the large renewable generation assets work in the same way, although they use sustainable sources like the sun or wind rather that carbon-based sources that leave us with emissions and other problems.

The idea of a Virtual Power Plant changes that. Elon Musk and the Premier of South Australia are redefining the nature of power generation and distribution.

Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers, including: seven "healthy" breakfasts that are actually bad for you, the most impressive things Tesla's cars can do in Autopilot, Intel's never ending Spectre saga.

It’s just over one month since the Hornsdale power reserve was officially opened in South Australia. The excitement surrounding the project has generated acres of media interest, both locally and abroad.

The aspect that has generated the most interest is the battery’s rapid response time in smoothing out several major energy outages that have occurred since it was installed. Indeed, the battery is outperforming expectations - and the model is set to be emulated in Victoria.

Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers, including: best sci-fi movies you probably missed in 2017.

As reported by Bloomberg, and again by Electrek, Tesla is in the running to build yet another of its giant battery Powerpacks, this time in an attempt to bolster Queensland's power station output.