Tesla's Supercharger gets a faster upgrade

The third generation upgrade of Tesla’s Supercharger stations is here. Announced at the company’s headquarters, Tesla launched the new V3 Supercharger that can charge the Model 3 at a rate of 250kW. Tesla says this can add nearly 75 miles of range in just 5 minutes. You can expect more V3 Supercharger stations popping up next month.

The first station is now open in Fremont, accessible to a small group who generally test out every new upgrade Tesla brings out. In a blog post, the electric vehicle company said that it’s planning to “roll out to the wider fleet in an over the air firmware update to all owners in Q2 as more V3 Superchargers come online.” The last financial quarter will release the fast-charging IT service to European and Asia-Pacific markets.

Fast and furious

Additionally, a new feature called “On-Route Battery Warmup” will also be released. The smart solution heats up the battery each time the owner switches the navigation to find a Supercharger. The benefit is that the car arrives at the charging station with an optimal temperature to charge and significantly reduce the charging time by 25 percent.

The V3 Supercharger is a big push to charging stations. The previous V2 stations came with a maximum output of 150 kW, but were capped at 120 kW. Having a spike of extra 100 kW is surely a big boost to all EV owners. Tesla has also assured that it will increase the V2 limit to 145 kW over the coming weeks.