Tesla Supercharger Community Nonetheless Rising

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Combing by means of Tesla’s newest quarterly report, one thing jumped out to me that Tesla didn’t spotlight however I feel is value highlighting. The corporate’s Supercharger community continues to develop considerably.

That is significantly attention-grabbing to me for a few causes. Initially, there was that complete dramatic occasion a bit of over a yr in the past the place Elon Musk acquired upset on the head of Tesla’s Supercharger division and abruptly fired nearly the entire crew of a whole lot (solely to then go rent a bunch of them again — a steady work atmosphere if I ever heard of 1). Tesla was additionally purported to halt exploration and set up of recent Supercharger stations (however nonetheless including Supercharger stalls to sure current stations), and there was a query about the place issues had been heading after years of strong development growing a charging community that was crucial to Tesla’s success promoting electrical automobiles.

Nicely, no matter adopted internally at Tesla appeared to get issues again on observe pretty rapidly. Tesla’s Supercharger community continues to develop, considerably. There are two line objects within the “Operational Abstract” part of Tesla’s monetary report that present progress on this. They present a 14% enhance yr over yr within the variety of Tesla Supercharger stations and a 17% enhance yr over yr within the variety of Tesla Supercharger connectors (or stalls, or cost factors). And take into account that this was in a yr of declining gross sales. Tesla went from 6,249 Supercharger stations to 7,131 stations, and from 57,579 Supercharger connectors to 67,316.

Who is aware of why there was the sudden meltdown round Supercharger enlargement final yr? I assume that declining gross sales hit Elon Musk fairly laborious emotionally and mentally, resulting in an excessive response. However who is aware of?

The second cause this development is especially attention-grabbing to me is due to all of the partnerships Tesla arrange with different automakers to present EV drivers from different manufacturers entry to Superchargers. After years of Tesla basically having a severe “moat” within the US market of probably the most widespread and dependable quick charging community, different automakers had been lastly partnering with Tesla so as to present their EV consumers with a greater charging expertise. After which there was the sudden reduce within the Supercharger division. Odd…. Nicely, it seems issues look like working kind of like regular. Superchargers are getting put in continuously.

That’s nice information for the numerous Tesla and non-Tesla EV consumers who anticipate to depend on the Supercharger community both for normal use of their residence metropolis (presumably as a result of they don’t have residence charging or as a result of they work in a enterprise that includes tons of driving across the metropolis — just like the taxi enterprise) in addition to those that anticipate to depend on Superchargers for long-distance journey. Nicely, even when a purchaser has no expectations on this matter, they’ll in all probability discover it useful that the Supercharger community retains rising — fairly rapidly, in reality.

So, yeah, it’s nice to see Supercharger enlargement rolling sturdy. That stated … Tesla’s declining gross sales, one has to surprise if Supercharger enlargement will get considerably reduce in some unspecified time in the future if Tesla can’t return to the expansion charges it had gotten used to.