EDITOR’S NOTE: This article comes to us courtesy of EVANNEX, which makes and sells aftermarket Tesla accessories. The opinions expressed therein are not necessarily our own at InsideEVs, nor have we been paid by EVANNEX to publish these articles. We find the company’s perspective as an aftermarket supplier of Tesla accessories interesting and are happy to share its content free of charge. Enjoy!
Tesla’s initial goal for Supercharger expansion was to have an ambitious 18,000 chargers globally by the end of 2018. After falling shy of that goal, the company, instead, finished 2018 with around 12,000 chargers. That number jumped to about 15,500 in 2019. In 2020, Tesla currently has 15,911 chargers globally (via 1,804 stations).
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Tesla has been on the vanguard of EV charging network growth globally. That said, expansion had slowed a bit. We now suspect that was due to Tesla’s new high-speed charger development. After all, why continue producing slow chargers if a new, far faster one is right around the corner? In fact, Musk first hinted at Tesla’s Supercharger V3 way back in 2016.
In March of last year, Tesla unveiled an industry-leading charge rate. With Supercharger V3 outputting 250 kW, Tesla owners can gain 75 miles of range in a mere 5 minutes. The lack of charge splitting allows for every vehicle at the station to charge without limitations. Tesla is poised to release these new stations around the globe. Moreover, the company is on the cusp of converting existing V2 stations to V3.
New V3 chargers have already started showing up, albeit slowly, as the company most likely wanted to test for any issues before rolling out en masse. Only one full-fledged Tesla Supercharger V3 location was completed in a span of six months. Two other stations have a limited amount of V3 chargers placed within an existing Supercharger location.
Above: Tesla’s new V3 charger at London Park Royal (YouTube: EV-Tech Explained)
At this stage, we’ve only seen one Supercharger V3 location opened in Europe (see above) and another in Asia. As of now, there are no new permits or construction taking place in those markets (yet).
At the time of this writing, supercharge.info is showing over 50 stations already opened with 250 kW charging availability. Roughly 20 are currently under construction with about 10 in the permit stage. All locations are verified with 250 kW Supercharger V3 according to the site. There could possibly be even more under permit without specification on the charging rate.
Overall, it seems like Tesla is just about ready to initiate a major Supercharger transition over to V3. The majority of new North American charging locations opened in the last couple of months have had 250 kW power. And yesterday, Elon Musk confirmed (via Twitter), “V3 Supercharger deployment will accelerate considerably this year.”
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An earlier version of this article appeared on EVBite. EVBite is an electric vehicle specific news site dedicated to keeping consumers up-to-date on any developments in the ever-expanding EV landscape.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article comes to us courtesy of EVANNEX, which makes and sells aftermarket Tesla accessories. The opinions expressed therein are not necessarily our own at InsideEVs, nor have we been paid by EVANNEX to publish these articles. We find the company’s perspective as an aftermarket supplier of Tesla accessories interesting and are happy to share its content free of charge. Enjoy!