Tesla has unveiled V3 Supercharging, the next step in the growth of Tesla’s Supercharger network. The company in statement said that V3 is born from it’s experience of building world’s largest grid-connected batteries, enables its vehicles to charge faster than any other electric vehicle on the market today.
Tesla has over 12,000 Superchargers across North America, Europe, and Asia ,more than 99% of the U.S. population is covered by the network, and the company anticipate similar coverage in Europe by the end of 2019. Recently, Tesla passed 90% population coverage in China and are growing that number quickly. In order to drive continued electric vehicle adoption and further accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy the company has introduced V3 Supercharging.
The company said that V3 is a completely new architecture for Supercharging. A new 1MW power cabinet with a similar design to our 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 we’re announcing today, 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. With these significant technical improvements, the company expects the typical charging time at a V3 Supercharger to drop to around 15 minutes.
Tesla is also rolling out a new feature called On-Route Battery Warmup. Now, whenever you navigate to a Supercharger station, your vehicle will intelligently heat the battery to ensure you arrive at the optimal temperature to charge, reducing average charge times for owners by 25% said the company.
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, Tesla is also unlocking 145kW charge rates for its 12,000+ V2 Superchargers over the coming weeks.
Tesla in a statement said “With Model 3 now shipping globally in high volumes and Model Y on the way, V3 Supercharging enables us to deliver the fastest production charging experience at an unprecedented scale compared to other electric vehicle manufacturers. By increasing the number of vehicles we’re able to charge at each Supercharger in a day, the investment we’re making in our 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 we operate. With thousands of new Superchargers coming online in 2019, the launch of V3, and other changes we’re making to improve throughput, 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 our 2019 fleet growth.”