Hello and welcome to the Electric Vehicle Experience
Today I want to talk about something exciting, this is big: Tesla’s V4 Supercharging stations.
For years and years, the Supercharger network was a competitive advantage for Tesla cars. You just knew that going long distances was backed up by a network of charging stations that would offer many charging stalls and high charging speeds. Also something else: reliability. You knew that by the time you left it, you had your battery topped up or so.
If you don’t have a Tesla or are not thinking of owning one, you might be wondering what good is this for you.
You may be a Tesla customer without driving a Tesla. You can be a user of their Supercharger networks.
It’s a win-win situation.
For you, you get access to a widely available network of charging stations. Granted, they’re not always as abundant and as well distributed as we would wish for. Still, in most situations, it significantly adds to your charging options, you get a lot more flexibility and reliability.
Yes, remember we’re talking about the world’s most reliable charging network. By far. Its uptime for the last 5 or 6 years is above 99%. Check out my episode 09 on that topic.
There’s more. You get access to charging stations with multiple stalls. That means that you’ll probably be looking at somewhere between 8 to 20 charging points, maybe more. There are Supercharger stations with over 100 stalls.
If one of them doesn’t work for any reason, you have several others just a few steps away.
You also get very high charging speeds. I think you got 105kW on the V1 stations but I’ve never even seen one. The V2 stations provide up to 150kW, while the V3 go up to 250kW.
For Tesla it’s also good because their Supercharger network will become more useful, it will have more cars charging, more usage and that means more revenue for them.
And because that’s a product on its own, it’s a great incentive for Tesla to deploy even more Supercharger stations.
Which, again, is great for all of us who drive electric cars.
What I’m trying to say is that the Tesla SuC network started as a way to enable EV drivers to travel long distances. But it was only for people who drove the Tesla Model S… then the X… then the 3…. and now we also have the Y.
Tesla has been working for a while now on opening up their network to the whole market of electric vehicles.
So what’s new about the V4 Supercharger network?
To start off, although they’re starting at 250kW, they’re expected to increase charging speed as time goes by. It is rumored that it might go up to 350kW, only time will tell.
They also bring along some upgrades. When only Tesla cars used it, you didn’t need a screen on the charger. You could check the changing progress on the car’s screen or your phone app. You’d even get a notification when the charging was done.
You also didn’t need a contactless payment device for your bank card.
Guess what? You’ll now be able to pay with a contactless bank card. You get the car, use your card, charge your car, and go.
I think this means that in the future, for non-Tesla cars, you won’t need the Tesla app or even a Tesla account, you can just pay on the spot.
This opens up all the conveniences of the Tesla Supercharger network for non-Tesla drivers.
And there’s more. The cable length is now considerably longer, it seems to be around 2,5 meters, about 100 inches. You might wonder why this is.
It’s because Teslas have their charging ports on the left rear corner, near the left taillight.
But different cars have them in different places. A Kia eNiro will have it right in the front. A Porsche Taycan or Audi etron GT will have it on the front right section of the body. A VW ID3? Rear right section, just after the rear door. Some Mercedes plugin hybrids have their charging port on the rear bumper.
Tesla’s Supercharger network was built so that every Tesla car would be parked and using the stall on its left rear section. But because of this multitude of charging port locations, there has been some trouble. It leads to some cars using the cable out of a particular stall but occupying the spot on its side, which is not the spot that was originally designed (at least for Tesla cars).
For a while, this can be a bit confusing and unpleasant but V4 Superchargers will make everything work.
V4 Superchargers will be something awesome for every electric vehicle driver and will take a big hit on one of the biggest objections to electric vehicles, the charging infrastructure availability and reliability.
By the way, if you’re thinking of buying a Tesla, I’d be very thankful if you were to use my referral link which I’ll leave in the description.
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Thank you for watching and I’ll talk to you soon