Supercharger

Elon Musk has long promised that Tesla will deploy solar and batteries to all its Supercharger stations in order to reduce their dependence on the grid. It has yet to happen, and now we are seeing some examples of why it should happen sooner rather than later. There are several reasons why you would want to deploy batteries and solar power at electric vehicle charging stations. From a financial standpoint, a large part of the cost of running an EV charging station consists of demand charges, which is a higher rate…

After recently expanding its Supercharger pilot program for non-Tesla EV owners, the Supercharger network became the ‘largest 150 kW+ public fast-charging network’ in Europe overnight. It’s quite impressive that Tesla did that basically by just flipping a switch. Tesla was early in investing in charging infrastructure, which led to the Supercharger becoming the largest global fast-charging network. The company has been criticized for only providing charging for its own customers when most other networks are for…

Tesla has reportedly filed plans for a 29-stall supercharger and diner/drive-in theater location in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. The location is at 7001 Santa Monica Boulevard at the intersection with Orange Drive. Tesla originally planned to build the diner in the coastal city of Santa Monica, but then moved the plans to Hollywood. Now, perhaps a little confusingly to out-of-towners, we’ve learned the diner will still be in Hollywood… but on Santa Monica Boulevard, one of the main streets in town. The old…

Tesla has started building a new Supercharger station in the Mojave Desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas that will likely become tied for the largest Supercharger station in the world. Tesla is currently growing its Supercharger network at an impressive rate. The automaker went from 23,277 Superchargers at 2,564 stations at the end of 2020 to 31,498 Superchargers at 3,476 stations at the end of 2021. That’s growing at a 35% year-over-year pace. However, it is lagging behind vehicle deliveries, which grew 87%…

Tesla is expanding its open Supercharger pilot program in Europe that lets owners of non-Tesla EVs take advantage of the company’s extensive charging network. Previously, the pilot consisted of select stations in The Netherlands, Norway, and France, but now it’s also available in the UK, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, and Austria. Non-Tesla owners in both Belgium and Germany originally could only take advantage of Tesla’s network if traveling to a country that has the open Superchargers. With Belgium now added to the program,…

Tesla has significantly expanded its Supercharger pilot program for non-Tesla EV owners to several more European countries, including the UK and Spain. Over the last year, we have been reporting on Tesla ramping up its effort to open the Supercharger network, its extensive global network of fast-charging stations, to electric vehicles from other automakers. In November 2021, we saw Tesla take its first step in that direction with a pilot program running at 10 Supercharger stations in the Netherlands, where…

This week on the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. This week, we discuss our first drive of the Ford F-150 Lightning, Tesla’s plan to open its Supercharger network, Rivian’s Q1 2022 earnings, and more. This week’s episode is sponsored by TeslaShields.com: 10% off Tesla floor mats, trunk and frunk kits and other Tesla accessories with Code: ELECTREK The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel. As a reminder, we’ll have…

Tesla will add CCS connectors to its Supercharger stations in the United States to let non-Tesla EV owners access the extensive charging network. The company already announced plans to open its Supercharger network to all-electric vehicles globally, but the rollout of the initiative has been slow and is currently limited to Europe. The move makes sense considering Tesla has adopted the CCS standards in Europe like all other automakers and its Supercharger stations are already equipped with CCS connectors. In North…