Tesla to deliver its largest privately-owned Supercharger station to a taxi fleet in Montreal

Tesla owns and operates almost all of its more than 700 Supercharger stations around the world, but it also offers a version of its DC fast-charging station for sale to private fleets. Now the automaker is about to deliver its biggest one yet, 12 stalls, to an all-Tesla Model S taxi fleet based at the Montréal-Trudeau Airport.

Last year, we reported on the startup Taxelco acquiring the second-largest taxi company in Montreal, a fleet of 500 cars and 1,000 drivers, with the intention of going all-electric and offering the service through a Uber-like app called Téo.

The company soon started taking delivery of Kia Soul EVs, Nissan LEAFs and Tesla Model S’s in order to launch its new service. It has since bought a second large taxi company in Montreal to give itself about one-third market share in the city.

Taxelco says that it is done expanding in Montreal and it should soon turn its attention to other markets, but in the meantime, the company is still establishing its offering in the region by replacing more gas-powered cars by electric vehicles and installing new charging infrastructure.

The latest of which will be the startup’s own Tesla Supercharger station with 12 stalls for its fleet of Tesla Model S taxis based at the Montréal-Trudeau Airport as part of a pilot program launched earlier this summer.

While the Supercharger owned and operated by Tesla can deliver up to 120 kW (with a capacity of 145 kW), the ones sold to private companies by the automaker are capped to 60 kW for some unclear reasons. A typical Supercharger is equipped with 12 stackable chargers and the capacity is split between two stalls.

If only one is in use, it will deliver the full charge, if both are in use at the same time, the capacity is split between the two. But for the privately owned 60 kW Supercharger, the capacity of both stalls are always capped at 60 kW.

It’s the equivalent of your average CHAdeMO or any other DC fast-charging station, but they look exactly like a Tesla Supercharger. They can still add over half a full charge in about 1 hour.

Tesla doesn’t disclose the price of the 2-stall 60 kW Supercharger system, but the price tag of ~$60,000 has circulated among interested buyers. Also, Tesla has been known to offer one for free at the purchase of a fleet of 10 or more vehicles.

Taxelco already has more than a dozen Teslas, including 10 assigned to the pilot program with the Montréal-Trudeau Airport for the purpose to ferry users to and from the airport. Now that they will have 12 Superchargers at the airport, Taxelco will also base the rest of the Tesla vehicles in its Téo taxi fleet at the airport to see how big of a fleet can be supported by 12 chargers.

The new installation will obviously facilitate the work of Taxelco and likely improve its Téo taxi service to customers, but it also has a less obvious benefit to current Tesla owners in the region. Large fleets of Tesla taxis can sometimes become a problem in metropolitan areas by occupying Supercharger stations. For example, it has been a problem in Amsterdam where there’s a large fleet of 200+ Tesla Model S taxis.

These company-owned stations free up the existing Tesla-owned Superchargers for Tesla owners.

Aside from Taxelco’s new station, Montreal recently got its first “real” Tesla Supercharger, a 12-stall station in Place Vertu, in addition to a small 2-stall Supercharger at Tesla’s Montreal store.