Electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Tesla has announced plans to make charging “convenient, abundant and reliable” for all its customers by doubling the number of chargers in its global network by the end of 2017.
The move, which was announced yesterday, comes ahead of the planned rollout of the firm’s first mass-market EV, the Model 3, which is due to start hitting roads later this year.
Tesla currently has 5,400 rapid charge points in its global ‘Superchargers’ roadside network and a further 9,000 ‘
‘ in hotels, resorts and restaurants, all of which are free for Tesla customers.
Under the new plan it intends to boost the number of Superchargers to more than 10,000 and Destination Chargers to 15,000 by the end of the year.
Tesla hopes the move will deliver enough extra capacity to cope with the thousands of Model 3 vehicles it has already sold.
“As Tesla prepares for our first mass-market vehicle and continues to increase our Model S and Model X fleet, we’re making charging an even greater priority,” the firm wrote in a blog post yesterday. “It is extremely important to us and our mission that charging is convenient, abundant, and reliable for all owners, current and future.”
Much of this expansion will be focused in the US, where the number of Superchargers is set to increase 150 per cent, with 1,000 new Supercharger installed in California alone. Extra capacity will be added on its most popular travel routes to allow multiple Teslas to recharge at a time, alongside a concerted push to install more charge-points in city centres, Tesla added.
The move came on the same day as the Source London EV charging network announced it was on track to deliver 1,000 chargers across the capital by the end of the year. The network’s operator, BluepointLondon, also announced it has teamed up with SSE Energy to guarantee 100 per cent of the power provided to its EV customers comes from wind or hydropower sources.
Source: businessgreen.com
