Elon Musk teases new Tesla Supercharger V3 for late summer release

Elon Musk has teased the release date of Supercharger V3, the company’s next-generation charging stations. Responding to Teslarati‘s Christian Prenzler while announcing information about the Model 3 dual-motor AWD specs on Twitter, Musk stated that the next-generation Superchargers will likely be available late summer.

Exactly! Will probably unveil next gen Supercharger late summer. Major improvements all round.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2018

The upgrade to the Supercharger was mentioned in Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call. During the call, Musk and CTO JB Straubel talked about the next-generation Superchargers and how they compare to Porsche’s IONITY network, which is designed to have an output of 350 kW. According to Musk, Porsche’s 350 kW output would not be beneficial for high-energy battery packs. Thus, for Tesla’s Supercharger V3, Musk stated that the company would be designing them to have an output of 200-250 kW.

“We’re definitely going to be improving our Supercharger’s technology. The thing about a 350 kW charger is that it doesn’t actually make a ton of sense, unless you got a monster battery pack or have like a crazy high C rating… We think 350 kW for a single car; you’re gonna frag the battery pack if you do that. You cannot charge a high-energy battery pack at that rate, unless it’s a very high kW battery pack. So, (for us), something along the couple of hundred, 200-250 kW, maybe.”

Tesla CTO JB Straubel added that Tesla has explored the idea of rolling out ultra-high output charging stations. According to Straubel, a charging system along the lines of IONITY’s output will have tradeoffs in the electric car itself.

“That’s definitely sort of the power level that we’ve discussed and explored. Some of it also comes down to an optimization around utility versus cost, and tradeoffs in the car itself. There is a tradeoff, fundamentally, between charge speed and essentially range, and cost of the battery. We look at that pretty carefully. We understand the tradeoff. We could design cells and a pack that could charge at, you know, faster than 300-400 kW, but it’s not a very useful tradeoff to the customer.”

The IONITY charging station is a collaboration between the Volkswagen Group, BMW Group, Daimler AG, and Ford Motor Company. First revealed at the 2018 Geneva International Motor Show, the concept would allow electric cars to travel across Europe. The first station launched earlier this year in Germany with one recently spotted in Switzerland. IONITY has a goal of 400 fast stations across Europe by 2020.

Currently, there are 1,229 Supercharger Stations located around the world. They allow Tesla owners to travel cross country without having to charge overnight. With Superchargers, it takes roughly 30 minutes to charge the car or give it enough juice to make it to the next station or the destination. There are also Destination Chargers located at hotels, restaurants, and shopping centers for Tesla drivers to take advantage of.