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.