In a Twitter conversation with Electrek’s Fred Lambert, Elon Musk has suggested that we could be in for some big improvement to charging rates.
Tesla’s upcoming Battery Day is coming up fast (September 22nd), and the thinking until now was that the day would reveal Tesla’s R&D efforts in battery technology.
A new battery development should deliver some big progress in battery cost reductions, as well as efficiency which should see increased range and battery cycles (the rumoured million-mile battery).
Elon’s conversation with Lambert discusses the V3 Supercharger rollout. He suggests charging speeds of 350kW would be a joke.. ‘what are you referring to a children’s toy’.. suggesting Tesla are working on something a lot higher.
As we know Australia’s Ultra-fast chargers are capable of 350kW, but there’s currently no car on the market that can take advantage of it.
When Musk launched the Tesla Semi, he revealed they would be charging the truck’s massive 1 MWh battery, using a new higher-powered Megacharger.
So far, we don’t have any detail on the charge rate of Megachargers, but it’s is well understood that faster charging can deteriorate the lifespan of the battery.
High charge cycles are important when considering Tesla’s goal of delivering an autonomous fleet. If Tesla has new technology to keep the battery cycle high, while also accepting super, ultra-rapid charging rates, then we could see charge times drop to times comparable to refuelling.
