,
8 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
Tesla's Supercharger upgrade is a pretty big deal. Once again, charging time has been cut in half. The 250kW charge rate isn't the industry fastest—others networks are being deployed capable of 350kW max—but there’s a key difference 1/
The difference is that Tesla already has a fleet of cars on the road that can actually handle 250kW charging. Most EVs today top out at 50kW, and most cars under development for the next few years max out at 100-150kW. Only the Porsche Taycan will be capable of 350 kW. Also 2/
Another breakthrough for Tesla is navigation-based thermal management for the battery. When a driver is headed to a Supercharger, the battery will pre-heat on approaches. Tesla says this improves charge time by 25%. If accurate, that’s an extremely low-cost charging innovation 3/
Teslas will get the battery preconditioning feature through an over-the-air software update. That's a 25% charge-time improvement (Tesla says) with no new hardware or utility upgrades required. The feature will be difficult for competitors to emulate because 4/
Tesla runs its own navigation software and its own charging network and integrates the two in house. The thermal-management part might be easy for others to match, but the real trick is the seamless integration with navigation so the driver doesn’t have to think about it 5/
One thing that doesn’t seem to have changed is the battery taper curve. From social media videos last night, Tesla's charge rate seems to drop below 100kW at 66% charge. That’s still blazing fast, but some upcoming competitors seem to be delaying the curve better 6/
Audi’s e-tron was seen getting its max 150kW while 75% full (it plummets around 80%). That’s probably the result of an oversized battery that’s software limited, which would be an expensive way to do it—but it shows that Tesla isn't the only car company making big improvements 7/
The takeaway is that this next generation of chargers will go a long way in removing one of the biggest hold-backs for electric cars. The new ratio of 15 minutes of charging for every 3 hours of highway driving is pretty good, and the technology is still evolving rapidly 8/
