Tesla has announced all V4 Superchargers can now charge up to 325kW in North America, but for now, only the Cybertruck can take advantage of the upgraded power output.
The current Supercharger situation can be quite confusing.
Tesla has four different generations of its Superchargers, but things got mixed up with the latest V4 generation.
Back in 2016, when talking about Supercharger V3, I asked if the new version of the fast-charging station would be capable of 350 kW charging, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that 350 kW would just be a “children’s toy”:
However, Supercharger V3 ended up limited to 250 kW. That worked for Tesla vehicles, but Tesla is now opening the network to non-Tesla EVs, and many of them are capable of charging at 400 kW, and several other charging stations are capable of that charge rate.
Tesla has since moved on to deploying the Supercharger V4, but that has been somewhat disappointing because Tesla has so far mainly deployed new V4 charging stalls with V3 cabinets, which provide the power for Superchargers.
These stations are called Supercharger V3+.
Last summer, Tesla said that it was working to enable these V3+ Superchargers to charge at over 300 kW.
Top comment by KerrySkates
That brand new Launch Model Y… yeah. Only 250kW max for you.
That brand new Model 3…. Only 250kW for you.
That brand new Model S or Model X… 250kW max for you too.
Feels like a big miss with their current lineup. Only the most controversial vehicle supports anything faster, the other cars charging curves drop off a cliff early in the curve and never reach peak when starting at anything higher than 30% SoC.
DCFC is arguably the least important for most days, but when you’re on a road trip or if your life is on the road, then DCFC is super important. Better DCFC also helps reduce congestion at sites.
Tesla is getting up-staged by the competition on their own charging hardware and they didn’t even take the chance with their newest vehicles to change that.
Tesla has now announced:
All V4 posts in North America can now charge up to 325kW for Cybertruck.
The announcement specifically mentions “V4 posts”, which would mean the V3+ stations with V4 stalls and V3 cabinets.
For now, the Tesla Cybertruck is the only vehicle in Tesla’s lineup that can take advantage of the higher power output, but there are plenty of non-Tesla EVs that will be able to use it.
More recently, Tesla announced that it is now starting to deploy full V4 Supercharger stations with V4 cabinets capable of 500 kW.
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