Tesla’s new Superchargers might be so insanely fast that topping off a tank of gas will look slow in comparison.
In a Twitter exchange, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased that the new Supercharger V3 will be coming soon, and that it will make the old V2 Superchargers look like child’s play.
@FredericLambert A mere 350 kW … what are you referring to, a children's toy?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 24, 2016
One of the things holding back electric car adoption has been “range anxiety.” It’s the very real feeling a driver gets when they know their car is going to run out of power soon without a charging point nearby. Not only that, knowing that an electric car will take 40 minutes to get an 80 percent charge has also made making the jump from gasoline a challenge. It’s the main reason why the Toyota Prius and the Chevrolet Volt (among others) have been slow to make the shift to all-electric.
It seems that the charging problem has definitely been on the minds of Tesla engineers. If Musk’s tweet is to be believed, that means consumers are about to see a major jump in charging technology.
The current Superchargers max out at 150kW, but when Musk was asked about 350kW, he scoffed.
What Musk is alluding to isn’t some unheard-of shift in charging technology. In Geneva, the government is currently working on a “flash-charging” network that will potentially charge busses in seconds. It will give busses a blast of energy at 600kW, completely usurping Tesla’s current supercharging rate. If Tesla is able to deploy similar technology for its supercharging network, it could mean that charging a car will take seconds, compared to the minutes it takes to top off a tank of gas.
With the Tesla Model 3 set to hit consumers sometime in 2017, ensuring that Supercharging stations aren’t completely packed with drivers will be an absolute imperative.