Opening up its Supercharger network isn’t the only trick Tesla has up its sleeve. The carmaker is about to roll out its next-generation charging station as well.
As reported by Electrek, Tesla has been working on the fourth generation of its Supercharger station for a while now, but the details of how the station will look have never been seen in the wild. That’s all changed, as the company has pulled the cover off of the charging stations at a location in the Netherlands.
The Twitter account @fritsvanens posted a picture of the new stalls, which are reportedly still being tested. However, they said that a Tesla official confirmed that all 16 stalls would be opening for public use by the end of the month:
The fourth generation Supercharger is taller than the current model which means that it will feature a longer charging cable, a good move since Superchargers are starting to open up to non-Tesla electric vehicles. The third generation of the Supercharger’s cable is built to the perfect length of a Tesla, so some non-Tesla EV owners might struggle to charge their vehicles or block over spaces with the current model.
It’s currently unknown exactly how fast the fourth generation charger will be, but current speculation puts it around 300 kW, about 50 kW faster than the current model. It’s also unclear how quickly Tesla will roll out the new charger to existing Supercharger stations.
If you want to know what it’s like to charge a non-Tesla at a Supercharger so far, check out MKBHD’s test with a Rivian R1T. He found similar issues with the length of the current charging cable and the location’s impact on non-Tesla vehicles. In addition to rolling out a new generation of Superchargers, the company is planning to build its next-gen vehicle at a new Gigafactory in Mexico.
