Tesla Opens 100th Super-Charging Station in Beijing

Tesla officially surpassed 100 EV super-charging stations in Beijing on August 30, reaching a total of 890 super-charging piles in the city. Tesla owners in Beijing can now find charging stations within an average of 15 minutes.

The company has deployed super-charging stations in China since 2014. At present, it has more than 1,200 super-charging stations and nearly 9,000 charging piles in China. Specifically, about 60% of V3 charging piles have the maximum charging power of 250kW, while the rest are V2 charging piles with maximum charging power of 120kW. In the first half of this year, Chinese Tesla owners used the firm’s charging network with more than 2.8 billion km of driving, up 61% year-on-year.

Regarding its charging network layout, Zhang Lina, the head of Tesla’s super-charging network development and operation, said that the achievements of the past eight years were mainly completing the construction of a charging network framework, and from this year on, the development planning of its charging network would focus on optimizing the layout.

Specifically, on the one hand, station density will be optimized within the existing framework, while on the other hand, piles at some specific stations will be upgraded to improve their charging efficiency.

Tesla’s super-charging stations are mainly distributed in cities, while there are relatively few in highway service areas. Regarding this layout problem, Zhang said that Tesla will make moves following the development strategy of the Chinese government.

At present, NIO and other car enterprises building their own charging stations have opened them to allow third-party vehicles to charge. On the issue of opening up, Zhang said Tesla has opened its charging network in 13 European countries. There are also relevant plans in China, and compatibility adaptation between its charging network and third-party vehicles is being carried out now, and it will be opened in due course.

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Zhang pointed out that making public charging piles profitable is a challenging problem. While expanding rapidly, it is the goal to achieve a sustainable break-even point. In the future, third-party brands will be charged a fee if they use Tesla’s charging piles, but the specific charging method is still being researched.