Cybertruck and the V4 Supercharger
The Tesla Semi had its big delivery event on December 1st, and as usual CEO Elon Musk put on a show that was packed with information on the Semi, the V4 Supercharger - and a quick announcement about the company’s upcoming pickup: the Cybertruck.
The roughly half-hour presentation was co-hosted by Dan Priestley, the Senior Manager of Semi Truck Engineering - and was a bit of a celebration of their first delivery of the Tesla Semi to Pepsi-Co’s Frito-Lay plant in Modesto, California.
The show covered Tesla Semi specs and testing, industry metrics, and a breakdown of the new V4 Supercharger - with the announcement that the Cybertruck would be using this system (About 27 minutes in).
The new V4 Supercharger has been anticipated by Tesla fans since a Megacharger was spotted at the Frito-Lay plant in Modesto around July this year. Back then, it still wasn’t clear if the V4 was a separate piece of equipment from the Semi’s Megacharger - but while there was some guesses about how fast this new station would be able to charge a vehicle, we had no idea how fast these things would actually be.
During the Delivery Event presentation, Priestley described the system in more detail - how the cable is liquid-cooled to allow for a slimmer size, how the coolant is cycled back through the conductor tubes - which immerses the high voltage wire in coolant so it can reach extreme capacity in the same space that the V3 charging cable has.
To give you all a bit of context, the current V3 charging cables have a charging output of up to 250 kW. Priestley says the new V4 charging cable can do 1 MW DC.
Having a cable that’s able to output over 4x more than the V3 makes sense for the Semi. We don’t know its exact battery capacity yet, but we know from previous conversations - and the Delivery Day presentation - that the Semi can go 500 miles fully loaded on a single charge. And that means if a driver needs to charge their electric Tesla tractor, they’ll need a quick charging system to avoid hours of downtime.
The surprise is really in the Cybertruck being fitted for this system. We haven’t really had any confirmation of what size of battery is going to be in the Cybertruck when it goes into production in 2023. We have had some hints from executives - and some paperwork about a new battery equipment line at the Fremont factory labelled “CTA Battery B-Build” back in August 2022. So we can be relatively sure that Tesla is at least aiming to equip the truck with their 4680 battery.
We also know that the Cybertruck’s range varies from 250 miles in its Single Motor, rear wheel drive model - to 500 miles in its tri-motor all-wheel drive model. Add to that the advertised 3500lbs payload capacity, and the ability to tow 14,000lbs - and we could start to see the need for the higher charge capacity.
Of course, improving charging speeds is something that Tesla is likely looking to do for every one of their vehicles - so it could just be that they saw the opportunity to build the Cybertruck to use the new V4 Superchargers, and they took it.
Whatever the reason, the new charger is a really cool piece of tech, and it’s encouraging to hear that it’s going to be used for more than just the Semi. The V4 system is due to begin rolling out to Tesla’s supercharger network in 2023, which is great timing considering Tesla open-sourced their charge adapter specs in a push to become the North American standard in charging tech. The new V4 would be a huge point in their favour with that effort.
And with the rumoured refresh of the Model 3 happening next year, maybe we’ll see another vehicle added to that list.