At the launch of Supercharger V3 earlier this year, Tesla announced that it will also unlock more power in existing Supercharger stations (from 120 kW to 145 kW).
Tesla confirms today that it will actually be able to push the power output even higher (150 kW) and it started expanding the rollout of other charging features announced at the event.
With the launch of the Supercharger V3, Tesla introduced its next-generation fast-charging station that can charge all Model 3 vehicles at up to 250 kW and new Model S and Model X vehicles at up to 200 kW.
But along with the new generation Supercharger, which Tesla is slowly deploying, the automaker also launched a few interesting new features related to charging.
Most notably, the new On-Route Battery Warmup, which automatically thermally prepare a battery pack ahead of arriving at a Supercharger if it has been entered in the navigation system in order to be able to achieve the peak charge rate faster and for the longest time once at the Supercharger station.
Today, Tesla has started rolling out the new feature to Model S and Model X vehicles globally.
Those vehicles are now going to be able to reduce their average Supercharging charge times by up to 25% with this simple feature pushed over-the-air.
The other big surprise at the Supercharger V3 announcement was that Tesla has validated some vehicles to be able to take more power out of the current Supercharger V2 stations.
At the time, Tesla said that it will increase from 120 kW to 145 kW, but now a Tesla spokesperson confirmed to Electrek that they have been able to push the new peak charge rate to 150 kW.
With a new software update coming out this week, Model 3 Long Range vehicles, as well as Model S and Model X vehicles with 100 kWh battery packs, are going to be able to take advantage of the new 150 kW charge rate.
The automaker says that it will continue to validate other versions of its vehicles in order for them to also achieve a higher charge rate.
Electrek’s Take
As I’ve stated before, I felt like the Supercharger V3 announcement was a little rushed. It didn’t make much sense that they announced that the new stations would enable a much higher charge rate for Model 3, but not for Model S and Model X, Tesla’s two flagship vehicles.
It sounded like Tesla needed the new feature to boost Model 3 sales at the end of the quarter, but it destroyed Model S and Model X sales in the process.
With several new announcements this week, I feel like we are now seeing the more complete picture around the Supercharger V3 launch.
New Model S and Model X can use the new Supercharger V3 up to 200 kW and Tesla actually managed to push Supercharger V2 to 150 kW — an impressive 25% improvement.
The second part has a much bigger impact on the short-term because Tesla is slowly rolling out its new Supercharger V3 while there are already thousands of V2 Superchargers deployed around the world.
It’s quite incredible that Tesla is able to enable a higher charger rate at those stations through a software update after feeling more comfortable with the power output following data validation after years of utilization.
The Supercharger network, which is already by far the best fast-charging network out there, just got a lot better.
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