Tesla Supercharger network reaches 1,000 stations worldwide and ~7,000 chargers

Tesla’s Supercharger network just reached a new milestone today: 1,000 Supercharger stations worldwide.

While it’s a significant milestone for what is undoubtedly the most extensive DC fast-charging network in the world, Tesla still has a long way to go to reach its year-end goal.

The milestone was achieved by opening a new Supercharger station in Franklin Park near Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania today.

It became the 1,000th Tesla Supercharger location in the world with a total of 6,934 Supercharger stalls.

It was also the 226th new station that Tesla brought online this year alone, which shows that they are growing the network rapidly but is it fast enough to reach Tesla’s ambitious goal of having 10,000 Supercharger stalls by the end of the year?

Here’s the growth of Tesla Supercharger stations over the years via Supercharge.info:

But Tesla’s goal is not based on stations, but on the total number of charging points and that gives the company an advantage.

The automaker changed its strategy this year and introduced two new types of Supercharger stations with significantly higher numbers of Superchargers per station.

There are the new mega Supercharger stations with 40+ stalls that are being installed along popular routes and the new ‘urban Superchargers’ with the new design that are being installed within cities.

Tesla started out the year with an average of 6.6 Superchargers per station and now it’s up to 6.9 per station. The change is more obvious when only accounting for the stations installed this year, which have an average of 8.5 chargers per station.

That average is expected to increase significantly before the end of the year as Tesla is currently building several stations with 20 or more stalls, even a few with 40 to 50 stalls as previously mentioned.

Nonetheless, Tesla needs to install as many Superchargers in just 3 months as it did over the first 2 years of its Supercharger network deployment.

It’s not impossible, but it’s going to require lots of effort. According to Supercharge.info, Tesla currently has 59 stations under construction and 27 more in the permitting phase.

As Tesla demonstrated with the new Supercharger corridor going to its giant Powerpack project in Australia, which they deployed in just 2 weeks, they can bring stations online quickly on occasion, but it’s not always the case.

There are a lot of things that need to come together for Tesla to bring a Supercharger online. They need to arrange for a location with the property owner, acquire a permit with the city, ship the hardware, which is built in California, hire a contractor to install the hardware, and arrange for a connection with the electric utility.

We have seen projects stuck in the permitting or construction phases for months to even a year based on the locality.

But at this point, Tesla has 5 years of experience building those and they have deals with hundreds of electric utilities and contractors. They certainly have had the opportunity to streamline the process and it shows.

Let’s see what they can do in the next 3 months. What do you think? Can they get to 10,000 Superchargers? Let us know in the comment section below.