Tesla reaches new Supercharger milestone as it still dominates charging

Tesla has reached a new Supercharger milestone with 45,000 stalls as it still dominates fast charging, especially in the US.

The Supercharger network is a big part of Tesla’s success. The automaker was so early in electric vehicles that it couldn’t rely on third-party charging networks, and it had to develop its own.

That turned out to be the right move as the Supercharger network became one of Tesla’s biggest advantages over other automakers.

It’s the only global DC fast-charging network and is the biggest network in many markets. The Supercharger network has also been growing at an incredible pace. In June 2022, Tesla had 35,000 Supercharger stalls.

Now, less than a year later, Tesla has announced that it has deployed its 45,000th Supercharger stall:

Those 45,000 Supercharger stalls are spread across nearly 5,000 locations all around the world.

In the US, Tesla is dominating DC fast-charging installations. In the first quarter of 2023, Tesla installed more DC fast-charging stations in the US than all other charging companies combined. That’s not a small feat, considering how many companies are now working to deploy charging capacity to support the growing fleet of electric vehicles in the US.

Tesla is now supplying 1.5 million Supercharging sessions every week. This number is expected to grow significantly this year as Tesla’s own customer fleet grows and also opens up the network to non-Tesla electric vehicles.

Along with more EVs and more chargers, Tesla has also been able to reduce the time per Supercharging session:

Tesla is not only achieving that through faster charging stations – such as the latest 250 kW Supercharger V3 – but also by making its electric vehicles more efficient and, therefore, needing less energy to travel long distances.

It has also integrated battery preconditioning into its trip planner, which enables Tesla vehicles to prepare the battery pack for charging ahead of time if the driver puts the Supercharger location in the vehicle’s navigation system.

This strategy is going to be harder to apply to non-Tesla vehicles being added to the network, but the automaker is trying to compensate with larger charging stations that feature more stalls in order to avoid wait times.

Electrek’s Take

It’s hard to overestimate the value of the Supercharger network. I give it a lot of credit for encouraging sales of electric vehicles, especially in North America where Tesla obviously still dominates the EV market.

It has shown people that you can travel long distances easily with an electric vehicle.

Now, it is finally starting to get some decent competition, and I hope Tesla opening up the network to other EVs is going to encourage those other networks to improve.

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