Blog Tesla Planning to Triple Supercharger Network

As the number of Tesla vehicles on the road continues to swell, the company is giving some serious consideration to its charging network.

On the company’s Q3 earnings call, the company said it plans to triple the size of its charging network around the world.

“We are executing on accelerating expansion plans globally,” said Drew Baglino, Tesla’s senior vice president of powertrain and battery engineering. “The network has doubled in the last 18 months, and we are planning to triple it over the next two years. And even so on an individual-site basis to combat existing congestion more quickly where it is isolated and problematic, we expedite local relief sites, deploy mobile Superchargers, and we try to introduce pricing strategies that encourage more off-peak usage to avoid the waiting.”

Tesla currently has about 29,281 Superchargers at 3,254 locations around the world. In addition to serving Tesla vehicles, the company recently announced that the network will also accommodate electric vehicles from other automakers. 

 

[ThomasD]

Tesla does claim up to 200 miles in 15 minutes. So cars shouldn't be sitting that long at superchargers

Supercharger | Tesla

Supercharger keeps you charged when you’re away from home. With a reliable global network, you can go anywhere and conveniently fast charge. Simply plug in, charge and go.

www.tesla.com

 

[Xelloss99]

You are using incorrect numbers. Tesla claims to have 25,000 superchargers (connectors) world-wide today, and this is Tesla, so they might be counting ones in boxes in some warehouse (see prior Tesla claims like driverless FSD is ready and only pending validation and regulation in 2016, or how they compared P85D horsepower, etc). But, for this argument let's assume the 25,000 is correct and counting live Tesla DC chargers around the world.

Second, you cannot use Tesla world wide numbers. EA is USA only, so you cannot compare world-wide chargers to USA chargers only. From wikipedia:

So, that's just shy of half the supercharging stations in the USA, so let's assume 12,500 connectors for simplicity. That is not as rosy of a picture as you say when comparing to 3,500 EA connectors. EA deployed their first 3,000 connectors much quicker than it took Tesla to do their first 3,000 connectors, and their connectors are faster (up to 350KW) and don't share power as often as Teslas (all supercharger v2 has shared A/B power), so total charging capacity in KW comparison looks even less rosy. Also notice that EA is also not the only fast charging network in the USA, others are here and expanding too. If you are going to judge Tesla's lead in DC charging, you must include all of the competition, not just the leader. The competition is also interoperable, meaning competition cars can charge on any of their networks, not tied to EA. Competition, especially EA has had a bunch of early deployment issues, most of them stemming from lack of standardization and the fact that they are a consortium so operate like a democracy vs, Tesla dictatorship by Elon, which has a lot of advantages in situations like that. However, the plug-and-charge standard is finally here, and car companies are signing on to use it, meaning it will work like with Tesla superchargers, you plug-in and your account gets billed.

For a current count of Superchargers, you can use supercharge.info. The site itself has some basic statistics and graphs, and you can download the data to do a deep dive like the below.

supercharge.info

Note that the counts below might be slightly different than the site page, the below counts are using the JSON raw data from today rather than the charts.

There are currently 27759 open (installed and operational) Supercharger stalls among 3092 sites worldwide.
This does NOT include the 1410 stalls under construction on 128 sites, nor the 2168 known planned (permit) stalls on 193 sites. There's also 3 temporarily closed sites not counted.

Doing a quick date check, there were 10728 Supercharger stalls on 1249 sites added in the last 18 months (548 days) worldwide as of today

Note that the figures they quoted would have been a different time frame with possibly more stalls added at an earlier date that would have dropped off the window I am using. I don't know the time frame they used so this is what I have. Also note the completion date is the date it was added to Supercharge.info using crowdsourced data, so it may be off by a few days.

---

For the USA alone, there are 11809 open stalls with 1173 sites in the USA.
This also does not include the 822 stalls on 75 sites that are under construction in the USA or 1712 stalls on 143 sites that are planned (with "permit" status) nor the 2 temporarily closed sites.
The new Superchargers in USA in the same 18 month range as of today is 3925 stalls on 369 sites.

 

[Xelloss99]

For a current count of Superchargers, you can use supercharge.info. The site itself has some basic statistics and graphs, and you can download the data to do a deep dive like the below.

supercharge.info

Note that the counts below might be slightly different than the site page, the below counts are using the JSON raw data from today rather than the charts.

There are currently 27759 open (installed and operational) Supercharger stalls among 3092 sites worldwide.
This does NOT include the 1410 stalls under construction on 128 sites, nor the 2168 known planned (permit) stalls on 193 sites. There's also 3 temporarily closed sites not counted.

Doing a quick date check, there were 10728 Supercharger stalls on 1249 sites added in the last 18 months (548 days) worldwide as of today

Note that the figures they quoted would have been a different time frame with possibly more stalls added at an earlier date that would have dropped off the window I am using. I don't know the time frame they used so this is what I have. Also note the completion date is the date it was added to Supercharge.info using crowdsourced data, so it may be off by a few days.

---

For the USA alone, there are 11809 open stalls with 1173 sites in the USA.
This also does not include the 822 stalls on 75 sites that are under construction in the USA or 1712 stalls on 143 sites that are planned (with "permit" status) nor the 2 temporarily closed sites.
The new Superchargers in USA in the same 18 month range as of today is 3925 stalls on 369 sites.

With the above numbers, we can compare the EA and Tesla buildout.

Electrify America has the following milestones

https://media.electrifyamerica.com/en-us/releases/149

3500 dispensers on 800 sites by the end of December 2021
9500 dispensers on 1700 sites by the end of December 2025

This is a total of
6000 new dispensers on 900 new sites over the next 4 years.
This is over 4 years, so divide by 4 to get the number added per year which is
1500 new dispensers on 225 new sites each year
---
Tesla has the following milestones, extrapolated to USA numbers (which is an approximation, since their announcement is tripling worldwide)
11809 current stalls on 1173 sites in the USA right now
Triple the current count in 2 years - which at current counts is 35427 stalls in 2 years (but site count is not provided)

That would be 23618 new stalls in 2 years.
Divide by 2 to get the number added per year is
11809 new stalls per year

If this is actually the case then EA is going to fall behind even further than Tesla by 10309 stalls per year, just in the US.
---
So let's say that the Tesla figures are triple of what it was 18 months ago (which they have doubled since then)
I wouldn't have interpreted it that way, but let's do the worst case scenario anyways.

Tesla has 11809 stalls on 1173 sites in the USA now
They added 3925 stalls on 369 sites in USA in the last 18 months
That means that 18 months ago they had
7884 stalls on 804 sites in the USA

Triple the 18 months ago figures is
23652 stalls total (7884*3) in the USA
Subtract the current count of 11809 to get
11843 new stalls added over the next 2 years
Divide by 2 to get
5921.5 new stalls every year

This is still 4421.5 stalls per year over what EA is planning on.
---
At least with the current projections, I can't see any way that Electrify America can even get the same rate as Tesla, never mind catch up to them.

 

[whitex]

For a current count of Superchargers, you can use supercharge.info. The site itself has some basic statistics and graphs, and you can download the data to do a deep dive like the below.

supercharge.info

Note that the counts below might be slightly different than the site page, the below counts are using the JSON raw data from today rather than the charts.

There are currently 27759 open (installed and operational) Supercharger stalls among 3092 sites worldwide.
This does NOT include the 1410 stalls under construction on 128 sites, nor the 2168 known planned (permit) stalls on 193 sites. There's also 3 temporarily closed sites not counted.

Doing a quick date check, there were 10728 Supercharger stalls on 1249 sites added in the last 18 months (548 days) worldwide as of today

Note that the figures they quoted would have been a different time frame with possibly more stalls added at an earlier date that would have dropped off the window I am using. I don't know the time frame they used so this is what I have. Also note the completion date is the date it was added to Supercharge.info using crowdsourced data, so it may be off by a few days.

---

For the USA alone, there are 11809 open stalls with 1173 sites in the USA.
This also does not include the 822 stalls on 75 sites that are under construction in the USA or 1712 stalls on 143 sites that are planned (with "permit" status) nor the 2 temporarily closed sites.
The new Superchargers in USA in the same 18 month range as of today is 3925 stalls on 369 sites.

Hey, I was close estimating open stalls in the USA, seems I overestimated by less than a thousand.

What would be great is to be able to compare:

1. number of Tesla operations plugs vs. total number of CCS plugs from all other networks combined (since CCS is interoperable)
2. total charging capacity power (KW) of all Tesla chargers vs. all CCS chargers combined

Both interesting to see on the USA only and world scale.

 

[whitex]

At least with the current projections, I can't see any way that Electrify America can even get the same rate as Tesla, never mind catch up to them.

My experience is that Tesla projections always beat the competition. Using a recent example, remember Plaid+ projection to have more range and power than top of the line Lucid Air? I also remember waiting for years for supercharger locations which showed up on Tesla map as "next year" back in 2013 when I bought my first one.

As a side note, since Tesla is proprietary and CCS is a common standard, the comparison should not be Tesla vs. EA, it should be Tesla plugs vs. CCS plugs, with the latter being provided by other companies too, not just EA.

 

[Xelloss99]

My experience is that Tesla projections always beat the competition. Using a recent example, remember Plaid+ projection to have more range and power than top of the line Lucid Air? I also remember waiting for years for supercharger locations which showed up on Tesla map as "next year" back in 2013 when I bought my first one.

As a side note, since Tesla is proprietary and CCS is a common standard, the comparison should not be Tesla vs. EA, it should be Tesla plugs vs. CCS plugs, with the latter being provided by other companies too, not just EA.

I don't have any numbers for other charging networks in the US. EA is arguably the largest charging network, and it is one that has a stated ambitious expansion plan.

The Tesla plan stalls per year rate is about 8 (EA+7 more if Tesla triples from now) to 4 times (EA+3 more, if you count tripling from 18 months ago) the EA new dispenser per year rate, so the total number of CCS stalls added needs to match this to just not fall behind.

The only other company with large stated plans is Rivian's Adventure Network, which intends to add 3500 charging stalls on 600 sites by the end of 2023 (2 years), which is another 1750 stalls per year. These will initially be exclusive to Rivian, but they plan to open them up at some later time.

Rivian Charging - Rivian Stories

We are building the Rivian Adventure Network — a nationwide network of DC fast chargers capable of adding up to 140 miles of range in 20 minutes to the R1T and R1S. The Rivian Adventure Network is designed for quick recharges so you can keep moving. Planned to connect cities on popular routes...

stories.rivian.com

So after accommodating Rivian and EA, now there needs to be 6.7 (EA+Rivian+5.7 EA) to 2.8 (EA+Rivian+1.8 EAs) networks with the same size expansion plans as EA (or enough small players to total about that) to just not fall behind.

Even if you consider Tesla's numbers to be grossly exaggerated, if they get half their original estimate (total stalls in 2 years is 1.5* today's stalls) that's still 2952 stalls per year, or 2 times the EA expansion rate (EA+1 more the same size). However, if it was as low as that rate, EA+Rivian alone would exceed the Tesla rate and would at least reduce the gap, at least until the initial Rivian expansion rush dies down after 2 years.

In the absolute worse case, the same rate from the last 18 months is 2616 stalls per year. You can't realistically expect them to go slower than what they've already proven they are doing, and this isn't that much worse than the already low-ball 1.5 rate above.

 

[Xelloss99]

Hey, I was close estimating open stalls in the USA, seems I overestimated by less than a thousand.

What would be great is to be able to compare:

1. number of Tesla operations plugs vs. total number of CCS plugs from all other networks combined (since CCS is interoperable)
2. total charging capacity power (KW) of all Tesla chargers vs. all CCS chargers combined

Both interesting to see on the USA only and world scale.

Regarding the USA:

The Department of Energy site has an Electric Vehicle Charging Station Locations tool

Alternative Fuels Data Center: Electric Vehicle Charging Station Locations

Currently there are 20237 DC fast charging stalls in 5499 sites (including Tesla, CCS only, CHAdeMO only, CCS+CHAdeMO).
7353 ports in 3805 stations have a CCS port
11645 ports in 1171 stations are Superchargers (fairly close to the Supercharge.info figures)
It doesn't show power levels.

EA says it has 2212 CCS dispensers and 684 CCS+CHAdeMO dispensers (2896 dispensers)

Locate a public EV charger | Electrify America

Learn about our U.S. electric vehicle (EV) charging network, located along routes from coast to coast. Find the Electrify America station closest to you.

www.electrifyamerica.com

So EA has 39% of the CCS ports in the USA.

Regarding power levels, it is likely that a vast portion of the currently-installed non-EA chargers are less than 150 kW. But I'm not to dig into that, but we can get an idea of what the new ones will be.

Tesla statistics can be gathered from supercharge.info although a lot of chargers have no specified power level and there are likely some that are entered incorrectly as this is crowd sourced.

Supercharger stalls:
0 kW (Unspecified): 555
1-119 kW (72 kW Urban): 1915
120 kW: 551
150 kW: 4394
250 kW: 4394
Hence at least 74.4% of the Supercharger stalls are 150 or 250 kW.

The EA chargers, even new ones, seem to be 1 350 kW dispenser per 3 150 kW dispensers.
Almost all new Superchargers (at least in the US) are 250 kW.
You can take the average of new EA charging dispensers with 3*150 dispensers + 1*350 kW dispenser, or an average per-dispenser of 200 kW.
The V3 Tesla Supercharger average per dispenser is 250 kW. So each Tesla stall added will only further increase the "average" charging power over the EA competition.

 

[Packfan]

Rivian won't be open to Teslas, but CCS will be with adapter just like CHAdeMO is now, right?

So that expansion of third-party network isn't exactly cutting into a lead. At least not until Tesla opens it up.

 

[Ogre]

Is this on Tesla's Buck's or are they factoring in Biden Bucks?

I suspect a bit of both. They are likely ramping up in anticipation of being in position to cash in.

 

[Mockingbird]

My question is this: Is just looking at the number of charging stations really that useful?

Suppose there are four Supercharger and two Electrify America in Whatever City.

Since there are more Tesla EVs than CCS EVs, two Electrify America might be perfectly sufficient and it doesn't make sense to install two more Electrify America to "catch up" when the demand isn't there.

 

[Mockingbird]

I think a more informative way to measure coverage is to make a circle with 150 miles diameter centered around each charging station.

We can then measure how many miles of highway are covered by circles.

 

[Ogre]

I think a more informative way to measure coverage is to make a circle with 150 miles diameter centered around each charging station.

We can then measure how many miles of highway are covered by circles.

Can’t speak for everyone here, but for me, adding more *stations* is far more important than more chargers. It is 130 miles to Bend, OR from here along windy mountain roads. I drive there and back quite a few times, and there are no stations between here and there. If I go to say… Sisters, it is about 115 miles, stay there for a day or two then come home, I have to drive into Bend, 15 miles out of my way before I can return home. Likewise Chemalt, Lake Waldo, Diamond Peak, Crescent Lake, or any number of destinations around here.

The problem is that while I can get to a lot of places… I just can’t get home without going quite a ways out of my way to find a charging station. Since I go to a lot of these places to ride my bike, it is immensely frustrating.

If you live in a big population center where you drive through 10 medium sized cities this isn’t likely an issue, but if you are more rural charging station density is pretty low. It doesn’t matter that there are 15 charging stations along the 5 corridor, Highway 58, Highway 126, and half a dozen other major routes don’t have good coverage.

Most people care about two things. How far out of my way do I need to go to charge up?, and Will there be a wait when I get there?

 

[bruce4000]

Can’t speak for everyone here, but for me, adding more *stations* is far more important than more chargers. It is 130 miles to Bend, OR from here along windy mountain roads. I drive there and back quite a few times, and there are no stations between here and there. If I go to say… Sisters, it is about 115 miles, stay there for a day or two then come home, I have to drive into Bend, 15 miles out of my way before I can return home. Likewise Chemalt, Lake Waldo, Diamond Peak, Crescent Lake, or any number of destinations around here.

The problem is that while I can get to a lot of places… I just can’t get home without going quite a ways out of my way to find a charging station. Since I go to a lot of these places to ride my bike, it is immensely frustrating.

If you live in a big population center where you drive through 10 medium sized cities this isn’t likely an issue, but if you are more rural charging station density is pretty low. It doesn’t matter that there are 15 charging stations along the 5 corridor, Highway 58, Highway 126, and half a dozen other major routes don’t have good coverage.

Most people care about two things. How far out of my way do I need to go to charge up?, and Will there be a wait when I get there?

Agree. If there is a line at a charging station, you have to wait longer which sucks, however if the distance between stations is too great, you simply can’t go there no matter what. The western us still has a lot of remote areas that are a challenge.

 

[whitex]

Can’t speak for everyone here, but for me, adding more *stations* is far more important than more chargers.
[...]
I have to drive into Bend, 15 miles out of my way before I can return home.
[...]
Most people care about two things. How far out of my way do I need to go to charge up?, and Will there be a wait when I get there?

So what you're saying is not having to drive out of your way far more important than how long the wait is then. While I respect that, I suspect having a bunch of single DC chargers every few miles might not be ideal for you either. You arrive at one, there are 3 cars waiting, so 2hr wait, you go to the next one 5 miles away and see 3 cars waiting, you consider driving another 5 miles but decide to just return to the first one, so you do but now there are 5 cars waiting there and you've burned 10 miles of range, at some point you might decide there is a benefit of bunching up the chargers rather than spreading them out to get more "stations".

 

[Ogre]

So what you're saying is not having to drive out of your way far more important than how long the wait is then. While I respect that, I suspect having a bunch of single DC chargers every few miles might not be ideal for you either. You arrive at one, there are 3 cars waiting, so 2hr wait, you go to the next one 5 miles away and see 3 cars waiting, you consider driving another 5 miles but decide to just return to the first one, so you do but now there are 5 cars waiting there and you've burned 10 miles of range, at some point you might decide there is a benefit of bunching up the chargers rather than spreading them out to get more "stations".

If there was a huge demand along these corridors, there would already be Superchargers there.

Your example makes no sense. If Tesla put in one of their typical 8 stall stations in the middle of these corridors, they would almost never fill up, likely only on holiday weekends.

 

[whitex]

If there was a huge demand along these corridors, there would already be Superchargers there.

Your example makes no sense. If Tesla put in one of their typical 8 stall stations in the middle of these corridors, they would almost never fill up, likely only on holiday weekends.

Ah, but this is where the issue is, most people charge at home every day, they only charge out of the house when they travel, and that does happen to be holiday weekends. All the rest of the time, most people don't need ANY DC chargers.

 

[Ogre]

Ah, but this is where the issue is, most people charge at home every day, they only charge out of the house when they travel, and that does happen to be holiday weekends. All the rest of the time, most people don't need ANY DC chargers.

None of which has anything to do with having to go 30+ miles out of your way because there is no charger at all.

 

[whitex]

None of which has anything to do with having to go 30+ miles out of your way because there is no charger at all.

But it does. It makes sense to put superchargers along major travel corridors to enable long distance travel - servicing more customers results in more sales. It makes little sense to put a charge where very few people will use it, as it won't generate as many sales for Tesla, and third party chargers which would have to have a cash ROI from charging fees would probably starve as people will prefer to drive out of their way rather than pay high premium for electricity. Another way to think about it, it makes most sense to put superchargers where they will get most use, both for Tesla and 3rd party charging companies - that means major travel corridors and places where people have EV's but don't have home charging.

 

[kayak1]

Agree. If there is a line at a charging station, you have to wait longer which sucks, however if the distance between stations is too great, you simply can’t go there no matter what. The western us still has a lot of remote areas that are a challenge.

I have parts of Maine that I can't visit... We need more options in kayaking and canoe locations.

 

[Ogre]

But it does. It makes sense to put superchargers along major travel corridors to enable long distance travel - servicing more customers results in more sales. It makes little sense to put a charge where very few people will use it, as it won't generate as many sales for Tesla, and third party chargers which would have to have a cash ROI from charging fees would probably starve as people will prefer to drive out of their way rather than pay high premium for electricity. Another way to think about it, it makes most sense to put superchargers where they will get most use, both for Tesla and 3rd party charging companies - that means major travel corridors and places where people have EV's but don't have home charging.

The smaller the delta is between a person’s experience driving an ICE vehicle and driving an EV, the more likely people will adopt them. If they have to go 40 miles out of the way to find a Supercharger in order to get home from the coast, that is a big giant deterrent to owning an EV.

This is a much bigger deterrent than potentially having to wait 10-20 minutes for a charger on a busy holiday weekend.