Tesla Announces Huge Supercharger Expansion By the end of 2017, the number of Superchargers worldwide will have doubled, North America will have 150 percent more.
This story originally appeared on PCMag
Tesla announced the Model 3 at the beginning of April last year. As an electric vehicle carrying the Tesla name and having a price tag starting at $35,000, it was sure to be extremely popular. One week after pre-orders opened, more than 325,000 reservations were placed, translating to roughly $14 billion of future sales revenue.
That's a lot of new electric cars, and Tesla realizes they'll all need charging regularly. So ahead of the launch of the Model 3, it's been announced that the Superchargers network is set to expand. Currently there are 5,431 Superchargers across Tesla's global network of 842 Supercharger Stations. By the end of 2017 the goal is to get that total past 10,000.
In a blog post titled, "Charging Is Our Priority," Tesla explains that charging needs to be "convenient, abundant and reliable for all owners." And so an aggressive expansion of the Supercharger network is necessary.
As well as the Supercharger expansion, Destination Charging is also set to grow. These are the charging connections offered at public locations including hotels, restaurants and resorts. Currently there are around 9,000 Destination Charging connectors, but Tesla wants to reach 15,000 this year.
In order to achieve this expansion, Tesla's busiest Supercharging Stations are set to expand to allow "several dozen Teslas" to charge simultaneously. New Supercharging Stations will also be built, and purposefully located further away from highways so as to expand the network and support more owners in less busy areas. In North America alone, the expansion will increase the available Superchargers by 150 percent.
Full details of existing Supercharger locations as well as planned expansion locations can be viewed on Tesla's Supercharger global map.
