TESLA’S 20,000TH SUPERCHARGER STALL

Tesla commissioned its 20,000th supercharging stall at one of its more than 2,200 global Supercharger Stations last month.

Tesla introduced its Supercharger network in 2012 to coincide with the release of the Tesla Model S. At the time, no other automaker or third party offered a compelling charging network for EVs, and although other third party networks are now catching up, Tesla still enjoys an ever increasing advantage over other carmakers as the only carmaker to offer its own charging network.

Initially, Tesla employed a 120 kW protocol for all its superchargers, but soon increased that to 150 kW for its V2 network, and last year the California company started rolling out its latest V3 superchargers, capable of 250 kW of power for true rapid charging. The Tesla Supercharger network has since become the gold standard for rapid charging, with a global reach and ease of use that would be difficult to match by any other charging network.

With Tesla aiming to sell 500,000 cars in 2020, and likely more than one million cars in 2021, the company has steadily been increasing the number of Supercharger Stations and stalls, and plans to continue expanding its charging network at an exponential rate in order to meet the demand of new Tesla owners across the globe.

If anything, Tesla has learned an important lesson from history. In the early 1900s, when the car replaced the horse as a primary means of transport, automakers chose to “outsource” the fuel supply of the vehicles they were manufacturing to the fledgling oil industry, which soon turned into a multi-billion dollar industry. Tesla is not about to make the same mistake, and given its obsession with vertical integration, its Supercharger network is central to the company’s ideal of becoming a vertically integrated energy company by supplying the electricity needed to power the cars rolling off its assembly lines across the globe.