In response to the U.S. Division of Vitality (DOE) knowledge, simply over 2,200 Tesla Supercharger areas throughout the U.S. are outfitted with almost 25,000 charging stalls as of at the moment. The Supercharger community is rising exponentially, not simply within the U.S., however worldwide.
Non-Tesla drivers even have entry to Superchargers now, however some customers on X, the platform previously often known as Twitter, questioned what number of of those are literally accessible to different EV house owners provided that the 25,000 quantity is a mixture of V2, V3, and the newest V4 stalls.
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After Tesla opened its Superchargers to non-Tesla house owners final yr, dozens of automakers signed as much as give their prospects entry to America’s most expansive and dependable charging community. Ford and Rivian house owners have been the primary to realize entry, and others will quickly as nicely.
Rohan Patel, the vice chairman of public coverage and enterprise improvement at Tesla, set the document straight final week. He mentioned that simply over 16,000 dispensers are open to Ford and Rivian house owners, who’ve been cleared to make use of Superchargers with an adapter that enables Tesla’s North American Charging Normal (NACS) connectors to plug into CCS1 ports.
Almost each different main automaker within the U.S. can even present their prospects entry to this community within the coming months.
Rivian is even working advertisements stating that R1T and R1S house owners can now entry 15,000+ Supercharger stalls with a NACS to CCS1 adapter. (Notice that the rollout continues to be underway and never all Superchargers may be adapter-compatible proper now, even for Ford and Rivian EV house owners.) Patel added that roughly 11,000 stalls are just for Tesla prospects, however they’re largely V2 stalls.
“Older charging stations would require extra funding and technical work to open to non-Teslas. Significantly better to concentrate on speedy progress in new/higher Superchargers and customarily a lot bigger stations with extra stalls,” he mentioned within the thread, indicating that non-Tesla drivers will solely have entry to V3 and V4 Superchargers, that are each sooner and extra environment friendly than the older variations.
When one X consumer requested if Tesla would speed up funding in Stage 2 chargers—that are slower than DC quick chargers however preferrred for dwelling or workplace purposes—Patel mentioned increasing Tesla’s L2 charger enterprise for industrial, office, and multi-family use circumstances was a “main precedence” for the automaker.
He additionally mentioned that Tesla was including a number of new charging stations each week, however the time-consuming utility interconnection course of was a limiting issue.
Putting in public DC quick chargers at such an enormous scale isn’t as simple because it might sound. By utility interconnection, Patel meant that connecting these charging stations to {the electrical} grid operated by a utility firm takes a very long time.
Broadly talking, a number of steps are concerned on this course of, together with an utility and approval that particulars the situation, specs, and different related knowledge, a technical evaluation, set up and commissioning, and monitoring and upkeep.
That mentioned, the charging expertise for 1000’s of non-Tesla EV customers is on observe to enhance this yr after dozens of carmakers agreed to undertake the NACS normal. Within the quick time period, house owners can have NACS to CCS1 adapters. From subsequent yr onwards, many EVs can have the NACS port constructed natively from the manufacturing unit.
InsideEVs contributor Tom Moloughney was among the many first drivers to check Ford’s NACS adapter early this month at a Tesla Supercharger, and his expertise juicing up an F-150 Lightning was seamless. Charging Rivian EVs at Superchargers has additionally confirmed fairly simple for early testers.
Nevertheless, wider entry to Superchargers is unlikely to be a magical treatment for charging—software program and compatibility points would possibly come up sooner or later. Nonetheless, total, it is a optimistic step ahead.