Tesla Superchargers Growing Phenomenal 33% Year Over Year – CleanTechnica

We’ve covered almost every part of Tesla’s Q2 shareholder report, and the company’s Supercharger growth got a brief note in a broader article I wrote last night. However, this metric jumped out to me and some readers and seemed to warrant its own story.

I’ve heard it many times over the years — with Tesla’s fast sales growth and so many more EVs on the road, won’t Tesla Superchargers get clogged up and cause people countless headaches?

Naturally, Tesla also thought about what Tesla drivers would need and planned accordingly. Quarter after quarter, we see phenomenal growth in Tesla Supercharger deployment worldwide.

Tesla indicated that its Supercharger stations grew from 3,971 in Q2 2022 to 4,283 in Q3 2022 to 4,678 in Q4 2022 to 4,947 in Q1 2023 to 5,265 in Q2 2023. That Q2 2023 figure was 33% more than Q2 2022 — the number of quarterly installations wasn’t 33%, but rather the total network of Superchargers was 33% bigger.

The number of Supercharger connectors or stalls was also up 33%, but the numbers of course look much bigger — and connectors/stalls is indeed what it’s all about! Tesla had 36,165 Supercharger connectors active in Q2 2022, then 38,883 a quarter later, then 42,419 in Q4 2022, then 45,169 in Q1 2023, and then all the way up to 48,082 in Q2 2023. In one year, the network increased by nearly 12,000 connectors!

There’s a reason why Ford CEO Jim Farley realized Ford drivers should have access to the Supercharger network, and there’s a reason why so many other automakers followed so quickly in adopting the standard, too. There are technical benefits to the Supercharger connector (aka North American Charging Standard), but biggest benefit is that there are so many Supercharger stalls, so many connectors at each stall, and they work — Tesla maintains them duteously and you seldom find one out of order. Also, it’s clear that Tesla will just keep growing and growing the network. In fact, now that I think about it, when will it stop?

As Tesla summarizes the news of others joining what Tesla has worked on for so many years, “The 2nd quarter of 2023 has been the quarter of Supercharging. A significant number of companies, including Ford, GM, Mercedes, Nissan, Polestar, Rivian, Volvo and Electrify America, have announced adoption of NACS — a charging standard developed by Tesla over a decade ago — for their North American products. Further opening our charging network in 2024 will enable both faster market conversion from combustion vehicles to EVs as well as faster growth of our charging network through a larger addressable fleet.”

Clearly, Tesla has a system in place to consistently add to the network in order to make more routes easy to drive and in order to accommodate the ever growing number of Tesla drivers. The funding for this is established and steady. At some point in the future, Tesla will surely decide that it’s got enough stations and connectors installed and will focus simply on maintaining and improving the immense infrastructure network. For now, though, it’s growth, growth, growth — and don’t expect that to stop anytime soon.

Related stories:

Tesla Revenue Up 47%, Gross Profit Up 7% Year Over Year

The World According To Tesla — Q2 2023 Update

Tesla Now At 4% Of US Auto Market, Nearly 3% Of European Auto Market

 

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