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Combing through Tesla’s latest quarterly report, something jumped out to me that Tesla didn’t highlight but I think is worth highlighting. The company’s Supercharger network continues to grow substantially.
This is particularly interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, there was that whole dramatic event a little over a year ago where Elon Musk got upset at the head of Tesla’s Supercharger division and abruptly fired almost the whole crew of hundreds (only to then go hire a bunch of them back — a stable work environment if I ever heard of one). Tesla was also supposed to halt exploration and installation of new Supercharger stations (but still adding Supercharger stalls to certain existing stations), and there was a question about where things were heading after years of solid growth developing a charging network that was critical to Tesla’s success selling electric cars.
Well, whatever followed internally at Tesla seemed to get things back on track fairly quickly. Tesla’s Supercharger network continues to grow, significantly. There are two line items in the “Operational Summary” section of Tesla’s financial report that show progress on this. They show a 14% increase year over year in the number of Tesla Supercharger stations and a 17% increase year over year in the number of Tesla Supercharger connectors (or stalls, or charge points). And keep in mind that this was in a year of declining sales. Tesla went from 6,249 Supercharger stations to 7,131 stations, and from 57,579 Supercharger connectors to 67,316.
Who knows why there was the sudden meltdown around Supercharger expansion last year? I assume that declining sales hit Elon Musk quite hard emotionally and mentally, leading to an extreme reaction. But who knows?
The second reason this growth is particularly interesting to me is because of all the partnerships Tesla set up with other automakers to give EV drivers from other brands access to Superchargers. After years of Tesla essentially having a serious “moat” in the US market of the most widespread and reliable fast charging network, other automakers were finally partnering with Tesla in order to provide their EV buyers with a better charging experience. And then there was the sudden cut in the Supercharger division. Odd…. Well, it turns out things appear to be running more or less like normal. Superchargers are getting installed constantly.
That’s great news for the many Tesla and non-Tesla EV buyers who expect to rely on the Supercharger network either for regular use in their home city (presumably because they don’t have home charging or because they work in a business that involves tons of driving around the city — like the taxi business) as well as those who expect to rely on Superchargers for long-distance travel. Well, even if a buyer has no expectations on this matter, they’ll probably find it helpful that the Supercharger network keeps growing — quite quickly, in fact.
So, yeah, it’s great to see Supercharger expansion rolling strong. That said … looking at Tesla’s declining sales, one has to wonder if Supercharger expansion will get significantly cut at some point if Tesla can’t return to the growth rates it had gotten used to.
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