Tesla plans expansion of Fremont factory Supercharging station – making it the biggest in America

Over the last year, Tesla has changed its Supercharger network strategy to significantly increase the number of charge points per station.

Now they are bringing those high numbers of charge points to the mothership by expanding the Fremont factory Supercharger station – making it one of the largest stations in America.

Tesla’s three world’s biggest Supercharger stations each with 50 stalls are all located in China.

In America, Tesla’s biggest stations have 40 stalls.

The company has two of them – both located in California and one of them features a whole new concept with a lounge.

Now we learn that Tesla is planning to also expand its Fremont factory Supercharger station with 40 stalls.

The company applied for a building permit a few months ago (City of Fremont via emupilot):

Tesla gives the address of the factory, where it already has a 12-stall Supercharger station, in the permit application, but it’s not clear if the new 40 stalls will expand on those 12 Superchargers, making it the biggest station in the world, or replace the current 12 stalls, making it the biggest station in North America equal to the two other previously mentioned stations.

The automaker has another big Supercharger station under construction just down the road from the factory, but it has been under construction for almost a year without ever being completed.

Tesla has several other Supercharger stations under construction in the Bay Area to support its growing fleet with the introduction of the Model 3.

Last year, the company grew its Supercharger network to over 8,250 Superchargers at 1,120 locations around the world.

It fell short of its goal to have 10,000 Superchargers in operation, but it was still a record year for deployment and it started 2018 strong with already about 50 new stations – many of them with high numbers of stalls per station.

Electrek’s Take

That’s good news since more Superchargers (accessible to customers since Tesla also has some for factory operations) at the factory are certainly needed.

The current station is located next to Tesla’s store at the factory and many customers use it when they go to the location on top of general long-distance travel use.

The station on Kato road just outside of the factory would have probably fixed that, but it’s unclear why the station has been stuck in the construction phase for so long.

Hopefully, things go smoother at the factory’s 40-stall station. I think Tesla is going the right way with those new stations with many charge points. Third-party charging networks have to focus on maximizing use so they can’t build stations with a ton of charge points that don’t get used outside of rush hours or busy traveling seasons.

It’s why we see only 2 to 4 charge points per station with those networks and why there’s such an important contrast with Tesla’s Supercharger network.