Supercharger

As more and more consumers make the green decision to forego their combustion engines for electric vehicles, they may not be as in tune with charging standards. kW, voltage, and amps might sound like jargon compared to miles per gallon, but these are essential units to understand to get the most efficiency out of your shiny new EV.

Let the following serve as a guide, offering all you need to know about the various charging options out there and how they differ.

Screenshot via supercharge.info

I recently complained about the inability to drive a Tesla direct from New York City up the Hudson River and to Montreal directly to the EV29 show, without going around Lake Champlain into Vermont. In the month since I complained, Tesla has opened up a Supercharger in Plattsburgh, NY near the Canadian border and it looks like another is being readied (image below via sheltz32tt) north of Albany in Queensbury near affluent Sarasota Springs. Now, I can move on to complaining about lighting up route 80 from New York to Cleveland thru Pennsylvania…

Tesla is also bolstering its Superchargers north of the border, today announcing another location in the heart of Montreal (Place Vertu Shopping Centre 3131 Cote Vertu Boulevard Montréal H4R 1Y8) and another in Magog (Carrefour Sante Globale 2381 Rue Principale Ouest Magog J1X 0J4) that will help Tesla owners in the Northeast US get to and from Quebec City.
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Tesla and Ruby Tuesday, a popular chain of restaurants in the US, announced a partnership to open a series of new Supercharger Stations at its locations along important routes across the US. The news comes just a few days after Tesla acknowledged being in talks with gas station and restaurant chains about expanding its network of fast-charging stations.
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In a future where the world’s car fleet is rapidly transitioning to electric vehicles, gas stations will be forcefully downgraded to simple convenience stores and consequently, they will lose a significant revenue stream brought in by people stopping for gas but buying something at the convenience store. Now it looks like Tesla is offering a lifeline to the industry as we learn that the electric automaker is talking with gas station chains about installing Superchargers at some of their stations in the US.
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Yesterday, Tesla inaugurated its 100th Supercharger in China located at its ‘Tesla experience center’ in the business district in Beijing, and for the occasion, the automaker announced the official launch of  ‘Tesla Public Charging Partner Program’ in the country.

Under the program, Tesla is inviting hotel groups, commercial real estate companies, industrial parks, office buildings, banks, resorts, and other businesses across the country to participate in Tesla’s Supercharger and Destination Charger networks.
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The Tesla Supercharger in Newark, Delaware, is an important charging spot for Tesla owners traveling on the east coast. It is one of Tesla’s biggest location, with 12 Supercharger stalls, and it is strategically located on I-95 between Washington and New York.

Earlier this month, someone backed into one of the stalls and damaged it. A week later, the station came offline and has been down for the past 4 days . Now with the fourth of July coming, a lot of traffic is to be expected along Tesla’s Supercharger routes and owners are starting to worry about the response time to fix any issues with the charging network.

Update: the station finally came back online around midnight last night (June 25).
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Last month, we reported on how Tesla announced its first location for a Supercharger in Mexico in the most subtle, weird, but awesome way. We now learn that the automaker brought the Supercharging station online, making it its first DC fast-charging station south of the US border, and just in time for the introduction of the Model X in Mexico.
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A parked Model X at the Newark, Delaware Tesla Supercharger prompted a lot of reactions from the Tesla community over the weekend. The Model X in question decided to block 3 Supercharger stalls instead of removing its bike rack, which is seen as a breach of the unofficial Supercharger etiquette.
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Audi plans to release an all-electric luxury SUV, the e-tron quattro, in 2018. The vehicle is expected to become the first all-electric competitor to Tesla’s Model X. Earlier this year, we reported on one of the first Model X in Europe spotted near to Audi’s headquarters in Ingolstadt (pictures above), where the german automaker is believed to be reverse-engineering or benchmarking Tesla’s SUV – something it also did with the Model S.

Now a Model X reportedly driven by an Audi engineer has been spotted again over the weekend, but this time in a more interesting context.
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After Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the Model 3 last week and went through a few of the car’s features, it would have been difficult to find an EV enthusiast disappointed by the event. But now a week later, the automaker has been altering the language around the Model 3’s features and it has raised a few eyebrows.

Tesla changed the wording around the Model 3’s safety rating, Autopilot and Supercharging capabilities, which are arguably Tesla’s three best-selling points.
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Real-time Supercharger availability data is a feature Model S owners have been asking Tesla to implement for a while now. It’s something we know to be possible since the automaker already displays the data of each charger stalls of its most popular Supercharger locations in real-time on the ‘Supercharger Dashboard’ located in its design studio in Hawthorne (see above), but the feature is not available in Tesla vehicles.
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Update: Tesla confirmed now having “attendants” at certain Supercharger stations, but it is not calling the service “valet charging” since they claim that “they will not be driving the vehicles or taking the keys”. As you can read below, we received direct reports from Tesla owners claiming to the contrary, but you can also read the full statement from a Tesla spokesperson below./

Tesla is rolling out a new valet service to facilitate charging at a few stations of the Supercharger network, the automaker’s network of fast-charging stations. Tesla owners arriving at a Supercharger when all stalls are occupied will be offered to have a valet park their car until a stall becomes available and then the valet can move the car and starts the charging session.

The service will likely be especially useful at Tesla’s busiest charging stations in California and other regions where Tesla’s vehicles are becoming increasingly popular.

The possibility of such a program being implemented first came up late last year when Tesla started looking to hire people in a new role called “Charging Experience Specialist” to “manage onsite customer demand at Tesla Supercharger Stations”.
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Currently, a Model S has a 1 in 2.5 million chance of burning down while charging at a Tesla Supercharger but that’s really not something Tesla owners need to worry about. This statistic is simply based on the fact that Superchargers have been used 2.5 million times with only one report of a fire earlier this year in Norway. Though it was quite a significant fire, burning the car to the ground,  no one fortunately was injured.

We have been following the investigations, which have not been very fruitful – likely due to the condition of the vehicle, but the authorities believe that the fire originated “inside the vehicle” and not from the Supercharger itself.

Today Tesla revealed that it concluded its own investigation and confirms that the cause of the fire was a short-circuit in the car and though the automaker doesn’t know why the short-circuit happened, and again the odds of another fire are extremely low, it will nonetheless push a software update to its fleet to “provide extra security during charging”.
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Martin Hansen, a Tesla enthusiast from Northern Germany, designed his own miniature 3D version of a Tesla Supercharger fitted with a USB cable to charge your smartphone.

DIYers will be happy to know that Hansen released the .stl files of all the components so you can make one yourself at home.
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Update: Tesla misreported and didn’t triple the book value of its Supercharger network

By enabling long distance travel for its fleet of electric vehicles, Tesla’s Supercharger network of DC fast-charging stations is one of the company’s greatest assets, which is now reflected very clearly on the company’s balance sheet according to a recent SEC filing.

In its 2015 financial report filed last week, Tesla confirmed attaching a book value of $339 million to its Supercharger network, up from $107 million just a year ago.
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Charging protocols and standards are fuelling an ever evolving debate in the electric vehicle industry. Some are calling for a global standard, while others are just fine with multiple infrastructure efforts using different adapters. Where does Tesla fit in this debate? The company has been developing its own charging infrastructure called “Superchargers“, while offering a range of adapters to let Tesla owners use other charging networks.
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A Tesla Model S caught fire while charging at a Supercharger in Norway on New Year’s day. No one was in the car when the fire started and fortunately nobody was harmed, but the car almost completely burned down.

The authorities and Tesla launched investigations to determine the cause of the fire. Last week, the police released the scene of the Supercharger for the ‘crime technical examination’. Today we learn that the ‘Accident Investigation Board’ (AIBN) is shutting down the investigation, but not before disclosing that they found indications that the fire “originated in the car”.
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A Tesla Model S caught fire while plugged-in at a Supercharger in Norway, and almost completely burned down to nothing. The event happened at 14.30 Friday afternoon (local time) at a Tesla fast-charging station in Gjerstad, Norway
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It’s a feature Model S owners have been asking Tesla to implement for a while now. We know it’s possible since the company displays available stalls in real-time on the “Supercharger Dashboard” located in its design studio in Hawthorne, but the feature is not available in real-time in the car itself, where it could actually be extremely useful.

A third-party app is looking to fix the problem, or at least pressure Tesla to finally release the feature.
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A Smart EV owner traveling in Germany claims that he “accidentally” plugged his electric Smart at a Tesla Supercharger and couldn’t unplug it. The owner sent the picture seen above to German publication Electrive.
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Jordan, a small Middle Eastern country of about 8 million people, is popular in the media these days for its role in the Syrian refugee crisis. The country is providing asylum to about 1 million refugees according to the UN Refugee Agency. Some, including Britain’s Prince Charles, see climate change as the root cause of the civil war in Syria, which sparked the refugee crisis.

An extreme drought believed to have been caused by climate change forced as many as 1.5 million people between 2006 and 2009 to migrate away from lands and into the cities. The sudden urbanization caused social stresses which eventually led to the March 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Arguably, Jordan is doing more than its part by offering asylum to so many refugees, but the country is also addressing the root cause by accelerating its plans to curb emissions. The government recently announced a tax and custom duties exemption for electric vehicles and charging equipment. Tesla is one of the first company to take advantage of the new policy.
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