Tesla introduces faster V3 Supercharging

Tesla unveiled V3 Supercharging, the next step in the growth of Tesla’s Supercharger network. V3, born from the company’s experience building the world’s largest grid-connected batteries, enables Tesla vehicles to charge faster than any other electric vehicle on the market today.

Tesla has more than 12,000 Superchargers across North America, Europe, and Asia and their network continues to grow daily: more than 99% of the U.S. population is covered by the network, and the automaker anticipates similar coverage in Europe by the end of 2019. Recently, they passed 90% population coverage in China and are growing that number quickly. However, in order to drive continued electric vehicle adoption and further accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy, charging needs to be even faster, and the number of vehicles able to charge at a location in a day needs to be significantly higher.

V3 is a completely new architecture for Supercharging. A new 1MW power cabinet with a similar design to Tesla's utility-scale products supports peak rates of up to 250kW per car. At this rate, a Model 3 Long Range operating at peak efficiency can recover up to 75 miles of charge in 5 minutes and charge at rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour. Combined with other improvements, V3 Supercharging will ultimately cut the amount of time customers spend charging by an average of 50%, as modeled on our fleet data.

Supercharger stations with V3's new power electronics are designed to enable any owner to charge at the full power their battery can take - no more splitting power with a vehicle in the stall next to you. With these significant technical improvements, it is anticipated that the typical charging time at a V3 Supercharger will drop to around 15 minutes.

Beginning this week, Tesla is rolling out a new feature called On-Route Battery Warmup. Now, whenever one navigates to a Supercharger station, their vehicle will intelligently heat the battery to ensure it arrives at the optimal temperature to charge, reducing average charge times for owners by 25%.

This combination of higher peak power with V3, dedicated vehicle power allocation across Supercharger sites, and On-Route Battery Warmup enables customers to charge in half the time and Tesla to serve more than twice the number of customers per hour. Additionally, the automaker is also unlocking 145kW charge rates for 12,000+ V2 Superchargers over the coming weeks.

With Model 3 now shipping globally in high volumes and Model Y on the way, V3 Supercharging enables Tesla to deliver the fastest production charging experience at an unprecedented scale compared to other electric vehicle manufacturers. By increasing the number of vehicles they are able to charge at each Supercharger in a day, the investment the company is making in their network will go significantly further with every V3 station deployed.

Paired with other savings, these efficiencies will translate to an increased pace of investment for Superchargers moving forward, with a continued focus on getting to 100% ownership coverage across all regions Tesla operates. With thousands of new Superchargers coming online in 2019, the launch of V3, and other changes, the Supercharger network will be able to serve more than 2x more vehicles per day at the end of 2019 compared with today - easily keeping pace with Tesla's 2019 fleet growth.

Tesla is opening the first public beta site in the Bay Area, which will incrementally be made available to owners in Tesla's Early Access Program. Tesla is launching V3 Supercharging for Model 3 and will increase Model S and X charging speeds via software updates in the coming months. V3 Supercharging will roll out to the wider fleet in an over the air firmware update to all owners in Q2 as more V3 Superchargers come online.

The first non-beta V3 Supercharger site will break ground next month, with North American sites ramping in Q2 and Q3 before coming to Europe and Asia-Pacific in Q4.