Tesla Supercharger Network Still Growing

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Combing by means of Tesla’s newest quarterly report, one thing jumped out to me that Tesla didn’t spotlight however I believe is price highlighting. The corporate’s Supercharger community continues to develop considerably.

That is notably fascinating to me for a few causes. To begin with, there was that entire dramatic occasion a bit over a yr in the past the place Elon Musk bought upset on the head of Tesla’s Supercharger division and abruptly fired nearly the entire crew of a whole bunch (solely to then go rent a bunch of them again — a steady work surroundings if I ever heard of 1). Tesla was additionally purported to halt exploration and set up of recent Supercharger stations (however nonetheless including Supercharger stalls to sure present stations), and there was a query about the place issues had been heading after years of stable progress growing a charging community that was vital to Tesla’s success promoting electrical automobiles.

Nicely, no matter adopted internally at Tesla appeared to get issues again on observe pretty shortly. Tesla’s Supercharger community continues to develop, considerably. There are two line objects within the “Operational Summary” part of Tesla’s monetary report that present progress on this. They present a 14% enhance yr over yr within the variety of Tesla Supercharger stations and a 17% enhance yr over yr within the variety of Tesla Supercharger connectors (or stalls, or cost factors). And understand that this was in a yr of declining gross sales. Tesla went from 6,249 Supercharger stations to 7,131 stations, and from 57,579 Supercharger connectors to 67,316.

Who is aware of why there was the sudden meltdown round Supercharger enlargement final yr? I assume that declining gross sales hit Elon Musk fairly arduous emotionally and mentally, resulting in an excessive response. However who is aware of?

The second motive this progress is especially fascinating to me is due to all of the partnerships Tesla arrange with different automakers to provide EV drivers from different manufacturers entry to Superchargers. After years of Tesla basically having a critical “moat” within the US market of essentially the most widespread and dependable quick charging community, different automakers had been lastly partnering with Tesla so as to present their EV consumers with a greater charging expertise. After which there was the sudden lower within the Supercharger division. Odd…. Nicely, it seems issues look like working kind of like regular. Superchargers are getting put in consistently.

That’s nice information for the various Tesla and non-Tesla EV consumers who anticipate to depend on the Supercharger community both for normal use of their house metropolis (presumably as a result of they don’t have house charging or as a result of they work in a enterprise that entails tons of driving across the metropolis — just like the taxi enterprise) in addition to those that anticipate to depend on Superchargers for long-distance journey. Nicely, even when a purchaser has no expectations on this matter, they’ll most likely discover it useful that the Supercharger community retains rising — fairly shortly, in actual fact.

So, yeah, it’s nice to see Supercharger enlargement rolling robust. That mentioned … taking a look at Tesla’s declining gross sales, one has to marvel if Supercharger enlargement will get considerably lower in some unspecified time in the future if Tesla can’t return to the expansion charges it had gotten used to.