The California-based American automotive and energy company Tesla brings out its highly anticipated third version of supercharging, which, as stated in the official post by the Tesla team, is ‘the next step in the growth of Tesla’s Supercharger network. V3, which is born from our experience building the world’s largest grid-connected batteries, enables our vehicles to charge faster than any other electric vehicle on the market today.’
V3 supercharging ups its game by bringing in two enhanced attributes to the domain of supercharging:
1. Faster Power Charging without the need for power splitting:
The new and improved architecture includes a 1MW power cabinet with a design like our utility-scale products, thereby allowing peak rates of up to 250kW per car, which can boost the operational efficiency of giant-energy cars such as Model 3 Long Range by providing 75 miles of charge in 5 minutes and charge at rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour.
V3 is expected to ultimately save the time customers spend charging by an average of 50%, which is nothing sort of excellent news for the Tesla customer base. Furthermore, V3’s supercharger station with the new power electronics is configured to enable an owner to charge at the full power their battery can take, doing away with the need for power-sharing with a vehicle in the stall next to you. Powered with all these technical upgrades, Tesla estimates the typical charging time at a V3 Supercharger to plop down to an impressive 15 minutes only.
2. On-Route Battery Warmup
Starting this week, Tesla is introducing another new feature to the world called On-Route Battery Warmup. This will enable a customer at a Supercharger station to have his/her vehicle intelligently heat the battery to reach the optimal temperature to charge, thereby cutting average charge times for owners by 25%.
V3’s higher peak power and its On-Route Battery Warmup allow customers to charge in half the time, and therefore Tesla serves more than twice the number of customers per hour. What with the 145kW charge rates for our 12,000+ V2 Superchargers to be unveiled over the coming weeks by Tesla, which will provide the much-needed power support to Model 3 and Model Y sales? Tesla will now be able to deliver the fastest production charging experience at an unprecedented scale compared to other electric vehicle manufacturers, paving the way for higher investments through the increasing number of vehicles that can be charged at each Supercharger in a day, in line with other anticipated parameters set up in its 2019 fleet growth.
Tesla aims to increase Model S and X charging speeds via software updates in the coming months and roll out V3 Supercharging to the wider fleet in an over-the-air firmware update to all owners in Q2 as more V3 Superchargers come online. Its first non-beta V3 Supercharger site is set to be introduced next month, with North American sites ramping in Q2 and Q3 before coming to Europe and Asia-Pacific in Q4
As stated in the post, Tesla gets going towards its drive to ‘drive continued electric vehicle adoption and further accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, by introducing the world’s largest grid-connected batteries through its V3 Supercharging making vehicle charging faster, smoother and energy-efficient. Way to go!
