Blog Tesla’s New Supercharger to Cut Charging Time By 50%

Tesla says its new “V3” Supercharger will cut the amount of time customers spend charging by an average of 50%.

The next generation of the electric car maker’s charging stations was unveiled at an event Wednesday at the company’s Fremont, California headquarters. The new hardware will charge at a rate of 250kW and use a liquid cooled cable design.

Using the V3, a Model 3 Long Range operating at peak efficiency can recover up to 75 miles of charge in 5 minutes and charge at rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour.

The first V3 Supercharger station is now open in Fremont to members of an “early access program.” Model 3s will be able to take full advantage of the new Supercharger capacity because of the car’s newer battery chemistry, while Model S and Model X will be capped at 120kW for now. Tesla says Model S and Model X charging speeds will eventually be increased via software updates.

Tesla is also rolling out a new feature called On-Route Battery Warmup. Now, whenever you navigate to a Supercharger station, your vehicle will intelligently heat the battery to ensure you arrive at the optimal temperature to charge, reducing average charge times for owners by 25%.

Tesla said it plans to break ground on more V3 Superchargers in April.

 

[scottf200]

What about older 2016/5 Model S/X will the OTA upgrades help? or is it primarily hardware..

Elon Twitter: 3:13 PM · Mar 7, 2019 Latest software improves Tesla Supercharger times by up to 25% for all Tesla S/X/3 worldwide, incl original 2012 Model S. Not splitting power across 2 Supercharger stalls helps all cars up to 50%. Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[David99]

Elon Twitter: 3:13 PM · Mar 7, 2019 Latest software improves Tesla Supercharger times by up to 25% for all Tesla S/X/3 worldwide, incl original 2012 Model S. Not splitting power across 2 Supercharger stalls helps all cars up to 50%. Elon Musk on Twitter

That's kind of funny because compared to when my car was new, Supercharging has become slower over time. It is 25% slower than it used to be.

 

[ljbad4life]

You didn't do any other reading on v3 apparently as they are not upgrading v2 ones ... way too much money. They will bump to 145 kW on some of them however. Read this offical Tesla Blog entry: Introducing V3 Supercharging

It appears to me that they'll upgrade v1 superchargers, but leave v2 superchargers. They also have the option to only upgrade V2 ones selectively where they see large number of Model 3 charging or the ones along highly traveled routes.

The first question that pops into my mind is "are there v2 stations that were built since the recently that are v3 capable (besides the charging cable)?" Tesla put a good amount of foresight into building some future proofing into the charging capability into the Model 3 perhaps they did the same to the stations they built in 2018?

 

[dpeilow]

Tesla put a good amount of foresight into building some future proofing into the charging capability into the Model 3 perhaps they did the same to the stations they built in 2018?

I was wondering the same, especially as they are currently going around Europe adding CCS cables to all the superchargers. It would be silly if they had to come back again.

 

[dburkland]

Has anybody mentioned how they are going to boost v2 to 145kW to each stall vs each pair of stalls? Wouldn’t this require the stalls to be re-wired across a bus attached to multiple cabinets or is this all software defined?

 

[mociaf9]

Has anybody mentioned how they are going to boost v2 to 145kW to each stall vs each pair of stalls?

They aren't. What they are going to do is increase the max. single stall output from 120 kW to 145 kW. So, you'll only see outputs approaching this level when you're starting your charging session at a low SOC with a warm battery AND at an unpaired stall.

 

[Rocky_H]

Has anybody mentioned how they are going to boost v2 to 145kW to each stall vs each pair of stalls?

They aren't.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they did say they are going to.

Wouldn’t this require the stalls to be re-wired across a bus attached to multiple cabinets or is this all software defined?

No, the wiring to the stalls wouldn't have to be changed. They have fat cable going from the fenced in hardware area out to all of the charging stalls. All of the power and switching stuff goes on in that fenced area of the cabinets, so that should be where the upgrades would happen. So they should be able to add more charging hardware in there to send higher power to both stalls in each pair, so it doesn't appear to have that "sharing" effect any more, as they can both get over 100kW.

 

[mociaf9]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they did say they are going to.

That'll be quite the magic trick to basically double the supercharger cabinet's nameplate output power rating.

 

[dburkland]

Does that mean they are using 12 x 48A chargers instead of the 12 x 40A chargers in all V2 units?

 

[dburkland]

They aren't. What they are going to do is increase the max. single stall output from 120 kW to 145 kW. So, you'll only see outputs approaching this level when you're starting your charging session at a low SOC with a warm battery AND at an unpaired stall.

This makes sense, thanks!

 

[arg]

Does that mean they are using 12 x 48A chargers instead of the 12 x 40A chargers in all V2 units?

• V1 supercharger was launched at the time when Model S only existed in the N.America version, with a 40A/10kW charger.
• 12 V1 modules = 120kW output shared between two stalls, but initial V1 superchargers were limited to 90kW max on one stall even if the other stall was idle. Later, this limit was removed (apparently a software change in the superchargers themselves as well as the cars, as it didn't roll out instantly) and a single car could draw the full 120kW.
• V2 supercharger was launched around the time of the introduction of the EU-version Model S, which had a 16A 3-phase charger module (approx 12kW per module).
• 12 V2 modules = 145kW total power, but limited to 120kW with a single car even if the other stall is idle.
• It now appears that they will drop the 120kW limit, just like they dropped the 90kW limit on the V1 supercharges.
  
• Note when comparing powers that AC charging is normally quoted as the input power (without deducting charger efficiency), while DC charging is normally quoted as the output power (after charger efficiency). However, Superchargers run the modules on 277V (vs. 240V normally, 15% more), hence a given module gives about the same output power used in a supercharger as it has input power when used in the car.

 

[electracity]

No, the wiring to the stalls wouldn't have to be changed. They have fat cable going from the fenced in hardware area out to all of the charging stalls. All of the power and switching stuff goes on in that fenced area of the cabinets, so that should be where the upgrades would happen. So they should be able to add more charging hardware in there to send higher power to both stalls in each pair, so it doesn't appear to have that "sharing" effect any more, as they can both get over 100kW.

It's not that complicated. Most likely Tesla has the ampacity in the existing infrastructure (or at least on newer superchargers) to make a software change to use 145kW.

Tesla always designs to leave some capability in reserve for initial safety and a future marketing boost. Each supercharging may have already providing the full 145kW when two cars are charging. The change may only be allowing 145kW to an single car.

 

[scottf200]

It's not that complicated. Most likely Tesla has the ampacity in the existing infrastructure (or at least on newer superchargers) to make a software change to use 145kW.

Tesla always designs to leave some capability in reserve for initial safety and a future marketing boost. Each supercharging may have already providing the full 145kW when two cars are charging. The change may only be allowing 145kW to an single car.

I did a test between my X 100D and his LR 3 (75D) on an A/B pair. I collected date via TeslaFI.COM and merged (interwove) it. We were at 50 and 40 SOC at low 50F as you can see below.
We were getting a combined 135 kW with those SOC and temps at Hickory NC (120 kW) site. Hickory, NC Supercharger | Tesla

I actually thought the chart I created was interesting and odd. I would have thought the LR Model 3 would have ramped up and the lines would have crisscrossed more dramatically.

 

[arg]

We were getting a combined 135 kW with those SOC and temps at Hickory NC (120 kW) site

Tesla currently labels all superchargers "up to 120kW", except where there's a lower per-car limit (urban superchargers etc.). At one point, @wk057 was reporting the actual figures from the availability data the car has, which had higher figures.

The V2 supercharger has long had an official max output of 145kW when supplied at 277V - among other sources for this info, Tesla made public a supercharger spec sheet when applying for planning permission (==permit) for a site in the UK. That spec sheet ("Gen II Supercharger specification") says continuous DC output power 145kW (on 480/277V), 120kW (on 400/230V) or 115kW (on 380/220V).

In your example, if the cars were not limiting, the M3 should have had 3/12 of the total and the MX 9/12 of the total, so 36.25kW/108.75kW at nominal full power. It looks like the voltage was slightly low (or some other factor giving slightly less than max output). Plainly the M3 should have been able to take as much power as was available to it, but probably the X was slightly limited by taper or temperature, as it should have been getting 3x the M3 (so 105kW, or at least 103.5kW even if the M3 was getting 34.5 and the display rounded up). So probably that unit had an actual available power of about 140kW on that day.

 

[electracity]

An easy assumption is that the model 3 charge curve is far from optimal. There's no upside today to making the car charge faster as there is no meaningful competition. But if they damage some cars the downside is significant.

200kW may always be the max. But I'll bet that under good conditions the taper can be substantially improved.

Musk's 1GW per cabinet comment was interesting. The semi would seem to need 1GW. The comment could just mean that v4 is 800V. Most/all the parts may be rated at 800V anyways.

 

[arg]

I actually thought the chart I created was interesting and odd. I would have thought the LR Model 3 would have ramped up and the lines would have crisscrossed more dramatically.

The capacity can't be shared on a fine grain. Given that the supercharger is built of 12 modules, the best theoretical sharing would be in units of 1/12 of capacity, but in fact it appears to be in groups of 3 modules - hence blocks of 1/4 of the capacity.

This is born out by your graph: initially the split is 9:3 (approx 105kw : 35kW), and the M3 can't have any more until the MX has stopped using a complete block - ie. when it gets below about 70kW.

We do indeed see on your graph that the M3 gets a boost as the MX drops below 70kW - but instead of going up to 70kW, for some reason the M3 only wants a little under 40kW. However, it's then fairly soon into the taper. At the point where the crossover should occur, the M3 has been charging at 35kW for about 16 minutes (or 10 minutes since it was at 51% SOC), so it's somewhere around 60% SOC.

 

[scottf200]

Tesla currently labels all superchargers "up to 120kW", except where there's a lower per-car limit (urban superchargers etc.). At one point, @wk057 was reporting the actual figures from the availability data the car has, which had higher figures.

The V2 supercharger has long had an official max output of 145kW when supplied at 277V - among other sources for this info, Tesla made public a supercharger spec sheet when applying for planning permission (==permit) for a site in the UK. That spec sheet ("Gen II Supercharger specification") says continuous DC output power 145kW (on 480/277V), 120kW (on 400/230V) or 115kW (on 380/220V).
...

I get that 120kW was the max per car as I've been supercharging for 3 years (40K supercharged miles).

Keep in mind that in the USA 135kW is the largest I've seen on Supercharger labels like below. (??) See values next to QR code.

Note that 135kW also matches the max I saw in my graph! Coincidence.

 

[arg]

Keep in mind that in the USA 135kW is the largest I've seen on Supercharger labels like below. (??) See values next to QR code.

I think it's pretty clear that the supercharger cabinets are universal (your label, if photographed in the USA, has the European approvals on it). Maybe 135kW is what they reckon they get at 'typical' voltage. Some sites have been seen fitting autotransformers to get the voltage just right (though in the USA I think that's mostly to knock it down at locations running into problems with overvoltage trips; in Europe, there's definitely some sites stepping up to get 480/277 instead of 400/230).