Supercharger V4 Opens Up
Tesla’s first V4 Supercharging station in Europe is now open to all EV drivers, according to an April 8th announcement on Twitter.
The station in Harderwijk, Netherlands added the new charging docks in mid-March. The V4s were highly anticipated by Tesla users even before we knew how fast they’d be - and judging from the rating stickers on their cases, these chargers can do about 600 kilowatts of charging speed at max.
Although the Tesla app says that the max is actually 250 kilowatts - which is the max for the V3 stations - so either the app hasn’t updated yet or the V4s are capped since there aren’t many vehicles outside of the Tesla Semi that could make use of that high a charging rate.
The other reason the EV community as a whole was looking forwards to them though, was that Tesla had been hinting that they were CCS compatible - allowing EV drivers who used other brands to plug their standardised cars in at any properly equipped Tesla charging station.
But it’s clear that this announcement is a part of a larger move by Tesla to conform to industry standards in the wake of sweeping green-energy initiatives like the American Inflation Reduction Act - which has mandated that no company will receive government grants and tax breaks if they don’t make their technology open to the entire electric vehicle market.
And that’s a little rough for Tesla, who likes to hold their tech to their own standards - but it’s really the best move if we’re going to move drivers away from ICE vehicles in a timely manner. Not everyone is going to buy a Tesla unfortunately.
But more to the point, this move in the Netherlands is just one station - but Tesla now has over 45 thousand supercharging stations the world over - making them the most prolific EV maker in the world by a wide margin.
Equipping their stations with CCS adapter-capable chargers would make sense even without these incentives, as it would take some time to get the industry to start using Tesla’s North American Charging Standard devices.
There is apparently some controversy over allowing non-Tesla drivers to use the new V4 docks - but it’s likely a minority of the community. Tesla themselves are going pretty hard on the “Get Humanity Off Fossil Fuels” train this year, and especially after their Investor Day presentation in March, I doubt there are many Tesla fans who are actually upset at this move to include CCS users.