Elon Musk has teased the release date of Supercharger V3, the company’s next-generation charging stations. Responding to Teslarati‘s Christian Prenzler while announcing information about the Model 3 dual-motor AWD specs on Twitter, Musk stated that the next-generation Superchargers will likely be available late summer.
Exactly! Will probably unveil next gen Supercharger late summer. Major improvements all round.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2018
The upgrade to the Supercharger was mentioned in Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call. During the call, Musk and CTO JB Straubel talked about the next-generation Superchargers and how they compare to Porsche’s IONITY network, which is designed to have an output of 350 kW. According to Musk, Porsche’s 350 kW output would not be beneficial for high-energy battery packs. Thus, for Tesla’s Supercharger V3, Musk stated that the company would be designing them to have an output of 200-250 kW.
“We’re definitely going to be improving our Supercharger’s technology. The thing about a 350 kW charger is that it doesn’t actually make a ton of sense, unless you got a monster battery pack or have like a crazy high C rating… We think 350 kW for a single car; you’re gonna frag the battery pack if you do that. You cannot charge a high-energy battery pack at that rate, unless it’s a very high kW battery pack. So, (for us), something along the couple of hundred, 200-250 kW, maybe.”
Tesla CTO JB Straubel added that Tesla has explored the idea of rolling out ultra-high output charging stations. According to Straubel, a charging system along the lines of IONITY’s output will have tradeoffs in the electric car itself.
“That’s definitely sort of the power level that we’ve discussed and explored. Some of it also comes down to an optimization around utility versus cost, and tradeoffs in the car itself. There is a tradeoff, fundamentally, between charge speed and essentially range, and cost of the battery. We look at that pretty carefully. We understand the tradeoff. We could design cells and a pack that could charge at, you know, faster than 300-400 kW, but it’s not a very useful tradeoff to the customer.”
The IONITY charging station is a collaboration between the Volkswagen Group, BMW Group, Daimler AG, and Ford Motor Company. First revealed at the 2018 Geneva International Motor Show, the concept would allow electric cars to travel across Europe. The first station launched earlier this year in Germany with one recently spotted in Switzerland. IONITY has a goal of 400 fast stations across Europe by 2020.
Tesla currently has 1,229 Supercharger Stations and nearly 10,000 individual Superchargers located around the worldwide, allowing owners to make long distance travel without needing to charge for prolonged periods of time or overnight. In addition to Superchargers, Tesla offers Destination Chargers located at hotels, restaurants, and shopping centers for drivers to take advantage of in local driving.
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0 likes 4 days ago
As Tesla will release their Roadster2 in 2020 with 200kWh battery, then it could charge at 240kW with same 1.2C, so moving Superchargers network to same 200-250kW range would be optimal for them. Then assuming each charger is shared across 2 x stalls as today, beyond being perfect to charge 1 Roadster2 at full speed when alone on a charger (nobody on 2nd stall of same charger), it would also allow current best Tesla Model S&X with 100kWh packs to charge at full speed # 120kW each, even when 2 of them share one charger and both arrive at the same time, which today adds significant delays to both (Rare but can happen more frequently at rush times, as more and more Teslas are sold). This also allows to stay at # 400 Volts instead of 800 Volts required by Porsche, with all associated safety and cost benefits.
Only worry for me is 250kW at 400 Volts still means 625 Amps that sounds a HUGE LOT, requiring very heavy liquid cooling of the charging cables and nozles all the way through, or a robotized solution like some Tesla patents have eluded to. So lets see the other surprises this unveal could bring…
This all said, I’m still interested to know more on Tesla Truck MegaChargers expected to deliver 1000kW to 1600kW, l or may be 1400kW nominal, split across 4 pairs of very thick DC-only pins, expected to provide say nominal 4 x 350kW = 1400kW combined. Will the Roadster2 and future Tesla Model S & X with 200kWh packs be able to charge on at least 1 pair of these Megacharger pins to use up to 350kW ??? Will that be on 800 Volts with some compatibility with Porsche HPC350 CCS standard, or more ?
Plus as a very happy user of a Tesla Model X 100D since last Sept, I’m still expecting for Europe that Tesla offers some sort of CCS Combo cable or plug so current Teslas can charge on new IONITY HPC150 400 Volts chargers at up to 150kW. When should that be expected in Europe and at what price ?
0 likes 4 days ago
The reason for the rename is because it’ll be fully autonomous. Existing superchargers were built with humans plugging the cars in in mind. New superchargers will be built with the cars plugging themselves in in mind. FSD is coming, and it can’t be here until the charging is fully autonomous. That’s why the charge door is motorized on the 3 – otherwise they could have easily cut costs by making it manual.
