Tesla has thousands of Supercharger “locations” under construction or awaiting construction permits, Elon Musk said in a tweet responding to Kevin Mitnick’s question about Supercharger stations in California.
Electrek reported earlier this month that the addition of new Supercharger stations this year has been moving at a record pace—unlike production of Tesla’s flagship Model 3—but now it seems the company is aiming to break this record. At the beginning of the year, Electrek calculated, Tesla had 1,124 Supercharger stations. By the end of April, it had added another 121, spurred on by emerging competition.
Tesla has also been adding lots of charging points to already existing stations. To date, many Supercharger stations feature 10 to 12 charge points, with some having as many as 50.
Electrek’s Fred Lambert noted in his report of the tweet exchange that Musk referred to the new additions as locations rather than as Superchargers, meaning that there thousands of stations, rather than charge points, that are being added to Tesla’s network.
This means that this year Tesla could fulfill its goal of having 10,000 Supercharger points built, after failing to hit it when initially planned in December 2017. To date, there are 9,712 Superchargers across 1,252 locations, and with “thousands” more locations due to come online in the observable future, this goal could be exceeded by quite a lot.
Other companies have also been building electric car charging stations, which would naturally motivate Tesla to rush to keep its advantage by securing more locations for its own charging facilities. Also, as Musk said early this month, other carmakers are free to make their electric cars compatible with the Supercharger standard so they can use the stations—as long as they pay for it, of course.
Tesla’s CEO said an updated map of all the Supercharger stations in operation and under construction will be released in the coming days.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
