Tesla is making progress in a concentrated buildout of the V3 Superchargers
The first concentrated buildout of the superchargers will be in Canada along the Trans-Canada highway with 26 of the 46 chargers along the cross Canada route being the V3 Superchargers. A recent article notes: “With the latest expansion of the Supercharger network, Tesla is starting to finally build its long-awaited Trans-Canada Supercharger route to enable coast-to-coast travel in the great white north. Tesla’s Supercharger network in Canada has been limited to enable travel between a few large metropolitan areas. Unlike in the US, Canadian Tesla owners couldn’t solely rely on Tesla’s own fast-charging network to go across the country.”
However, even with these added chargers there will still be gaps with only one V3 in all of Saskatchewan. In Ontario north of Lake Superior along the trans-Canada there will be no V3 chargers except one at Thunder Bay it appears.
Tesla says it plans to launch the V3 chargers in Europe and Asia in the fourth quarter of this year.
Fast-charging network has grown enormously
Since the first Supercharger station was introduced back in 2012 Tesla has built up one of the largest networks of EV chargers in the world. There are 14,081 superchargers across 1,604 stations in 36 different countries.
Since that first fast charger made its debut in 2011 there have been more than 30 million charging sessions on them. There is an average of 64,000 sessions a day or 2.25 GWh of energy a day. The average charging session is about 35kWh even though battery capacities range from 50kWh to 100kWh. Many customers charge only enough to get them to where they are going but do not fully charge the battery. No doubt some also fully charge while the battery still had plenty of charge.
ChargePoint
In comparison to Tesla, ChargePoint one of the most widely distributed global charging networks has more than 1,476 fast chargers throughout the world and 100,700 chargers altogether. The company based in California says it has powered more than 62,879,120 charging sessions in the 12 years since it was founded.
However, Charge Point has mostly slower level 2 chargers so that over the 12 years it has delivered a total of just 563,125MWh worth of energy whereas the Tesla Superchargers can match that output in about 250 days. The average Chargepoint charging session is close to only 9kWh.
The solar panel plans for the Superchargers
Tesla planned to outfit its Superchargers with solar panels from Solar City which it later acquired. It planned to generate more electricity from the solar panels than the Superchargers used. However, only about six of the stations were hooked up to solar panels in 2017. Tesla has yet to see a fully off-grid Supercharger setup. So far there is nothing like what CEO Elon Musk had originally conceived.
