How Tesla Superchargers Outsmart the Electric Car Industry

For years, charging infrastructure providers have given every imaginable excuse to electric car owners to explain why charging station rollout—especially of high-powered DC rapid chargers—isn’t moving at the promised pace. The excuses include inadequate EV sales to support high numbers of chargers—to insurmountable red tape regarding planning and regulation. But while companies like ECOtality hem and haw, Tesla Motors continues to expand a network of proprietary Superchargers that will soon be available nationwide.

Nearly all mainstream electric car infrastructure firms today are built on the same basic business model: install charging points in as many locations as possible, then charge electric car owners a per-use or by-the-hour fee every time they plug in. Tesla, on the other hand, does not view charging as its primary business model. Instead, its charging stations are a value-added service for its owners. Instead of directly funding its charging stations by charging at point-of-use, Tesla builds and maintains its charging stations to help the company sell more cars.

Designed specifically to work with its Model S Sedan and upcoming Model X crossover SUV, Tesla can argue that it offers customers a level of mobility not yet matched by any other electric automaker.

Customers Come First

With each installed Supercharger costing somewhere between $150,000 and $300,000, Tesla’s rapid charging network isn’t exactly cheap. And with no direct revenue model attached to each Supercharger, Tesla has to work extra hard to install charging infrastructure where it knows customers want to drive.

But Tesla has two major advantages over charging companies in this regard: it knows where Model S customers live, making it easy to accurately plan for Supercharger use. Moreover, the Superchargers are designed specifically to enable road trips, rather than in-town driving that is already manageable in Tesla models that have big batteries and relatively long range. “We select locations that enable major corridors between city centers,” Tesla spokeswoman Alexis Georgeson told PluginCars.com. “We place Superchargers based on where our customers are located and what is most suitable for them.”

In other words, Tesla needs few chargers and can strategically locate them. By predicting demand, Tesla is also able to equip high-demand locations with the right number of Superchargers—reducing the potential waiting time for users.

Tesla Does All The Work

Unlike many competing charging providers, who source the charger from a third-party manufacturer, and then negotiate with various vendors for ground leases and even charging tiers for customers, Tesla does everything in-house. From making the Superchargers using Tesla-designed modular 10-kW chargers—exactly the same units found in Tesla automobiles—to directly approaching perspective sites in the right area, Tesla retains control of the entire process, including maintenance and upgrades.

Tesla strategically chooses sites with spare capacity for future Supercharger upgrading, making it relatively easy to install extra charging units as demand increases. As Tesla announced last week, current 90-kW Superchargers will soon be increased to 120-kW capacity as Tesla makes full use of all twelve modules that fit within the Superchargers. That step will reduce charging times.

The modular design has another advantage: if one of the twelve 10-kW modules inside the Supercharger fails, the other modules continue to work. Although this results in a slightly slower charging rate for Tesla customers, until the problem is fixed, the system ensures that customers can get a decent level of charging. This modular and redundant engineering is also employed in Tesla batteries (that allow the entire battery pack to operate as normal even if individual cells have a problem).

However, there is one key area where Tesla Superchargers fall short: interoperability. Tesla's network is only available—and only works—on Tesla vehicles.