First look at Tesla’s new V3 Supercharger in action

Tesla launched V3 Supercharging for Model 3 yesterday and it’s not just an announcement. The first station is available to some Tesla owners in an early access program and now we can see the new Tesla fast-charging station in action.

The automaker installed the first V3 Superchargers at its Fremont factory Supercharger station and gave access to the new charging capability to some Model 3 owners in a new version of the ‘Early access program’ through a software update.

As we reported yesterday in our post about Tesla’s Supercharger V3, the biggest new feature is the higher charge rate of 250 kW, which results in 1,000 miles of range per hour of charging in a Model 3 with a Long Range battery.

Now that some Model 3 owners have been able to try the new station, we can see how long they can maintain the new charge rate and what a new charging session at a Supercharger V3 looks like for a Tesla owner.

A Model 3 owner going by ‘privater’ on Twitter posted a chart of his V3 Supercharging session based on kW over time versus a charging session on V2 Supercharger:

As you can see, the charge rate actually goes a little higher than 250 kW, but it quickly declines significantly below those levels after only about a 18% state-of-charge.

Another interesting point is that V3 appears to achieve its top charge rate much faster than V2. That might be the result of the new ‘On-Route Battery Warmup’ feature, which prepares the battery pack for charging ahead of arriving at the station.

That said, the new feature should also result in improvements at V2 Superchargers.

Overall, the Model 3 owner saw the charge time reduced by 20 minutes to charge from 8% to 90%:This is representative of a typical charging session as part of a long distance trip in a Tesla vehicle.

Another Model 3 owner showed the new V3 Supercharging rate in action from inside the vehicle with a look at the charging screen during the launch yesterday:

Tesla is now expected to gradually expand access to the stations through software updates and as they deploy more V3 Supercharger stations around the world.