Tesla’s rollout of new Supercharger V3 stations has been slow, but it is about to ramp up – including with a large new 28-stall station to connect Los Angeles and Phoenix.
CEO Elon Musk said that he wants the Supercharger network to cover “95% to 100% of the population in all active markets”.
They had the goal to have 18,000 Superchargers around the world by the end of 2018.
Unfortunately, Tesla ended up having only about 12,000 Superchargers at the end of last year and now they are currently at just over 14,000 – still very far from the goal from last year.
We partly attributed the delay to Tesla waiting for its new Supercharger V3 technology to be ready.
In March, Tesla finally launched the new version of its Supercharger to enable a new top charge rate of 250 kW.
The update has been long-anticipated because Tesla has been talking about it since 2016.
After unveiling the new Supercharger V3 earlier this year, Tesla only opened a few Supercharger V3 stations, but it’s now about to change with dozens of V3 stations in the works.
We have now learned of one particularly interesting station, which might become the biggest Supercharger V3 station to date with 28 stalls.
Electrek reader Chance Howard spotted Tesla’s sign announcing the upcoming new station in Quartzsite, Arizona:
The goal appears to be connectnig Los Angeles and Phoenix – the former being one of Tesla’s biggest metropolitain markets.
It’s a 372-mile drive that is already covered by a few Supercharger stations, including one in Quartzsite, but it’s an 8-stall V2 station.
Tesla used a lot of data from its fleet to find out where to deploy Supercharger stations and they probably figured out that it wasn’t enough to support the fleet’s travel between the two cities.
A new Supercharger V3 with almost twice the capacity of the current station should reduce the travel time between Los Angeles and Phoenix, especially for Model 3 owners who can use the full power of the Supercharger V3 stations.
Installing 28 stalls is quite unusual for Tesla, which mostly installs Supercharger stations with fewer than 20 stalls, but the automaker’s average charging point per station is already way higher than the rest of the industry.
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