Tesla Releases Version 3.0 of Supercharging

[G. David Felt]

Tesla announced the evening of March 6th 2019 that Version 3.0 of their supercharging network would roll out across the globe and be in place by the end of calendar year 2019. With the growth of the global market and to support a ever growing base of Tesla 3 owners and the upcoming new products, charging needed to get faster to reduce wait times by their customers. As such. V3 Supercharging was born out of Tesla's experience with the world's largest grid connected batteries enabling Tesla to surpass all OEM auto competitors in recharging their electric auto's.

V3 Supercharging is a utility scale new architecture product that can delivery a peak rate of 250kW per car using a new 1MW power cabinet delivered via liquid cooled charging lines. This allows the Tesla 3 to recover 75 miles of range in 5 min with a charge rate of 1000 miles per hour. This new charging technology cuts the average time spent recharging by 50%. In addition to the new 250kW Superchargers, Tesla is able to push out an update to the existing V2 Superchargers that will allow a 145kW charge rate on the 12,000 plus V2 Superchargers around the world. This will be coming in the next couple of weeks as Tesla works to reduce charge times at existing charge stations. Tesla is expecting to double by the end of the calendar year 2019 the number of Tesla auto's on the road globally and having a faster recharge time on existing Superchargers is critical, but in high volume areas, this will need to be addressed and Tesla says they can do this by adding the 250kW chargers to existing stations.

 

Tesla V2 charging cable to the left, V3 liquid cable to the right.

This new supercharger no longer splits power with the vehicle next to you  but delivers the full amount of charge to your battery. Tesla expects the average time spent by a customer at a Supercharging station to drop to 15 min on average. 

Tesla is also pushing out to Tesla 3's a new On-Route battery Warmup software feature that will intelligently heat the battery to the optimal temperature so that at the time of arrival at the supercharging station it can take a full high capacity charge quickly to get you on your way. This becomes very important as Tesla says with the Model Y on the way V3 SuperCharging is the only way Tesla can sustain quickly keeping people moving and not waiting around.

San Francisco bay area will get the first of the all new V3 Supercharger stations. These new V3 chargers will be made available to the Tesla Early Access Program participants. V3 Supercharging stations will get installed in North America during Q2 & Q3 time frames with Asia and Europe installations starting in Q4 of 2019.

Now you might ask what about the Tesla S and X auto's? While they currently will not be able to take advantage of the 250 kW chargers, Tesla does say in their release that in the coming months, Tesla S and X will get software updates to allow them to use the 145kW V2 Superchargers.

One might ask how does this compare to what the VW-backed Electrify America network? Electrify America is currently rolling out 350 kW capable chargers. These chargers will allow a Tesla 3 to get 185 miles of range in 9 minutes once the Tesla 3 has their new Software update.

The Future of ultra fast recharging is coming and should allow a revolutionary change in the way people drive.

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[Paolino]

So I admit to not knowing much about rechargeable batteries, but does charging them so quickly have any effect on the lifespan of a battery? 

[Drew Dowdell]

16 minutes ago, Paolino said:

So I admit to not knowing much about rechargeable batteries, but does charging them so quickly have any effect on the lifespan of a battery? 

It can.   Tesla and GM alter their charging rate as the battery gets full.  Over 90% capacity and the charging rate slows down in order to prevent damage.  As noted above, the Tesla will also now pre-warm their battery when it detects via the navigation system that it is on its way to a supercharger. This will allow the battery to accept a charge more rapidly. 

[G. David Felt]

17 minutes ago, Paolino said:

So I admit to not knowing much about rechargeable batteries, but does charging them so quickly have any effect on the lifespan of a battery? 

In the early days of Lithium Ion batteries, yes too fast of a charge would kill off cells shorting the battery life. Today much of what is built can handle fast charging with no loss of cell life which has been proven by the hybid auto's used in taxi service that have hundreds of thousands of miles driven on them and no to minimal cell death.

As we move towards solid state batteries, we will be able to recharge even faster.

The biggest issue is heat that builds up as to why the V3 chargers have liquid cooling charge cables compared to the air cooled V2 cables.

Heat over time does degrade products as to why liquid cooling becomes important for battery conditioning and recharging. 

Nissan Leaf was delayed getting their long range Leaf Plus cars out due to changing from an air cooled battery to a liquid temperature controlled battery. This helps insure the 10yr warranty works with minimal obligation to full fill replacing the battery pack due to degraded battery capacity.

Plus as it states in the writeup, conditioning the battery to a certain temp allows for maximizing a fast recharge of said battery.

[Drew Dowdell]

11 minutes ago, dfelt said:

In the early days of Lithium Ion batteries, yes too fast of a charge would kill off cells shorting the battery life. Today much of what is built can handle fast charging with no loss of cell life which has been proven by the hybid auto's used in taxi service that have hundreds of thousands of miles driven on them and no to minimal cell death.

That's a bit of a mirage. The lithium ion batteries are still susceptible to damage when charging fast if they keep charging fast over 90% capacity. It's not that charging fast kills them, it's that charging fast when they're close to full capacity kills them.  That has always been the case.  The difference now is that the chargers can communicate with the battery and automagically slow the flow of electricity as the battery nears full capacity. 

This is why cars like the Bolt can add 90 mile of range in 30 minutes, but a full charge take longer than just multiplying that out.

From this blog, you can see that the Bolt starts to automatically regulate the down the flow of energy at 50% capacity and again at 70% capacity.

• Quote

   

  • The Bolt EV battery is quite sensitive to internal temperature, and needs to be at 65 to 70 degrees F to charge at the highest rate;
  • Fast-charging starts to taper off at 50 percent capacity, and tapers again at 70 percent; and
  • Chevy's advertised "90 miles in 30 minutes" will only likely occur if the battery starts between 0 and 50 percent capacity.

   

  It is highly likely that Tesla will be doing the same thing here and the 1,000 miles of range in 60 minutes is an "Up to" and "under ideal conditions" type of rating.  Not everyone will see that unless their battery pack is at 1% and it is a 68 degree day.

[G. David Felt]

43 minutes ago, Drew Dowdell said:

That's a bit of a mirage. The lithium ion batteries are still susceptible to damage when charging fast if they keep charging fast over 90% capacity. It's not that charging fast kills them, it's that charging fast when they're close to full capacity kills them.  That has always been the case.  The difference now is that the chargers can communicate with the battery and automagically slow the flow of electricity as the battery nears full capacity. 

This is why cars like the Bolt can add 90 mile of range in 30 minutes, but a full charge take longer than just multiplying that out.

From this blog, you can see that the Bolt starts to automatically regulate the down the flow of energy at 50% capacity and again at 70% capacity.

• It is highly likely that Tesla will be doing the same thing here and the 1,000 miles of range in 60 minutes is an "Up to" and "under ideal conditions" type of rating.  Not everyone will see that unless their battery pack is at 1% and it is a 68 degree day.

Thank you for expanding on the automagically adjust the charge as the battery gets full. That is very true and due to that intelligence is why we see very little failure on Li battery packs even on technology like laptops or cell phones. Many now talk with the charger on the progress of charging so they do adjust.

I do think Tesla will overcome this regulation of charging by using their newly bought Supercapacitor company from LA that builds Auto Supercapacitors. I can see them being used not just from a performance standpoint but also in a recharge standpoint of letting the supercapacitor take the hit from rapid charging and stream the electrical flow back to the batteries.

 

[smk4565]

Nice!  Charging times keep getting better and better.

[Drew Dowdell]

 these "only" charge at 250kw max, but Electrify America's charge at 350kw max.  So EA's still will charge faster?

Porsche claims 60 miles in 4 minutes... that's the same charge rate as Telsa's 75 miles in 5 minutes, but Tesla is 100kw lower. 

[Potluck]

they need ot start offering faster charging in homes. that is where mmost owner charge the car anyway.

[G. David Felt]

35 minutes ago, Potluck said:

they need to start offering faster charging in homes. that is where most owner charge the car anyway.

Why, most people would plug it in and leave it overnight. No need to spend money on expensive hardware when an overnight charger will more than do the job to give you a full battery pack.

[Potluck]

19 hours ago, dfelt said:

Why, most people would plug it in and leave it overnight. No need to spend money on expensive hardware when an overnight charger will more than do the job to give you a full battery pack.

mid-day charging. 

[G. David Felt]

26 minutes ago, Potluck said:

mid-day charging. 

If your at home, then again 220V charging while your doing stuff at home is still more than enough and some states more than others lead in quick charge DC charge station easily found around the highways, work and retail locations.

Do not get me wrong, it would be nice to have a 440V 3 phase fast charger at home, but more often than not most people would not need it or need to spend the money on it once they got used to charging their auto every night.

[Paolino]

I believe my friend is charging on a 220 at home, and only once has he needed to stop at a station to charge (he drove upstate and back).  For most peoples' needs, having the 440 at home would be a waste of money to install and only there for "bragging rights".

[Drew Dowdell]

12 minutes ago, Paolino said:

I believe my friend is charging on a 220 at home, and only once has he needed to stop at a station to charge (he drove upstate and back).  For most peoples' needs, having the 440 at home would be a waste of money to install and only there for "bragging rights".

Isn't bragging rights what sells most Teslas anyway?

Back to the original premise, 440 volts just isn't available in most residential installations anyway, so its a moot point.  Better off getting Tesla roof and house battery to charge the car from. 

[Paolino]

40 minutes ago, Drew Dowdell said:

Isn't bragging rights what sells most Teslas anyway?

Back to the original premise, 440 volts just isn't available in most residential installations anyway, so its a moot point.  Better off getting Tesla roof and house battery to charge the car from. 

True.. that was the majority of the fuel behind this purchase.  See what I did there? 

I'd like to see more options for charging stations in public spaces.  I know some colleges have a few charging spots.  It'd be interesting if like a college student (not owning a Tesla, but perhaps a Leaf or Bolt) could charge while in class.

[Drew Dowdell]

7 minutes ago, Paolino said:

True.. that was the majority of the fuel behind this purchase.  See what I did there? 

I'd like to see more options for charging stations in public spaces.  I know some colleges have a few charging spots.  It'd be interesting if like a college student (not owning a Tesla, but perhaps a Leaf or Bolt) could charge while in class.

I know both U of Pitt and Carnegie Mellon here have a few charging spots... but not nearly enough to support a student body.

[ocnblu]

6 hours ago, Drew Dowdell said:

I know both U of Pitt and Carnegie Mellon here have a few charging spots... but not nearly enough to support a student body.

Well, most of the students are alive, so... no need to support a student body.