Monthly Archives: November 2022

Tesla has revealed that they’ve unlocked a 30% faster charge time at its Superchargers using a combination of hardware, software, and customer education. There are six primary reasons for Tesla improving its charging times:

Transition to V3

Tesla Superchargers were upgraded in 2019 to V3, and this increased speeds to about 250 kW. At the time, on March 6th, 2019, Tesla had about 12,000 Superchargers world-wide. V3 is a completely new architecture for supercharging. The cabinet is a 1 MW power cabinet with a similar design to the utility scale products that Tesla offers.

A Model 3 long range operating at peak efficiency can recover up to 75 miles of charge in 5 minutes and charge at rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour. With other improvements, Tesla cut the amount of time customers spend charging by an average of 50% according to their fleet data.

Efficient Routing With Trip Planner

Trip Planner is a very useful tool when taking a road trip. It lets you enter a location and a destination and will tell you all your stops along the way, depending on which vehicle you are driving. The trip planner will maximize your charging efficiency and times.

For instance, I set a trip from where I live in Utah to Kalamazoo, MI, and I got these locations to charge at:

• Evanston, WY: 50 min. charge
• Rawlins, WY: 25 min. charge
• Laramie, WY: 55 min. charge
• Ogallala, NE: 55 min. charge
• Grand Island, NE: 50 min. charge
• Council Bluffs, IA: 45 min. charge
• Altoona, IA: 55 min. charge
• Davenport, IA: 75 min. charge
• Michigan City, IN: 25 min. charge
• Kalamazoo, MI

The duration of the trip ends up being about 30 hours and 15 minutes for a total of 1,557 miles. I have done this trip before, and it took me about 24 hours in a gas car. The extra 6 hours comes here for charging my Model 3 RWD, which is the slowest charging Tesla vehicle.

If I had a Model 3 long range or other high-end vehicle, the charging times are halved and the trip takes a few hours less. You can use the Tesla trip planner here.

Supercharger Density Increasing

Tesla V3 Superchargers saw an increase in peak power from 250 kW to 324 kW. This is close to a CCS charger that gets about 350 kW. Tesla increased the power that these chargers have compared to its older versions.

Despite being more than $30,000 less expensive than the next car up in the Lucid Air range the Touring loses none of the magic according to the latest Lucid review from InsideEVs.

IEV’s Daniel Golson has been putting some miles on the Lucid Air Touring, which fits between the Air Grand Touring and base model Pure in the range. The results are good for the American automaker. He mentions previously wondering if the Lucid Air Dream Edition’s magic would be watered down with the more accessible trim levels and states that these worries were ultimately unfounded as the Touring still packs everything that makes the Air a great luxury sedan.

Performance
The Air Touring features a pair of electric motors with a total output of 620 horsepower and 885 ft.-lb. of torque. Unsurprisingly, huge horsepower and enough torque to reverse the planet’s rotation mean that the Touring never leaves its driver wanting for performance. Special mention is given to the Air’s ability to accelerate out of corners and pick up speed on the highway which is done with addictive immediacy and loses none of its surge as speeds climb higher.

The Air Touring also shines because of its chassis and steering, the latter of which was benchmarked against the Porsche 911 GT3. The handling makes it a joy to attack the corners in this 5200 lb.+ super sedan with the supple, composed ride and near-limitless grip inspiring confidence and driving joy. Golson also points out that the Air achieves all this without fancy air suspension, active anti-roll bars or rear-wheel steering. Kudos to you, Lucid handling department. Also helping out is the fact that the Touring weighs about 250 lbs. less than the GT.