Supercharger V4 Power Confirmed
New filings in the UK have confirmed that Tesla’s V4 Supercharger has 350 kilowatts of power.
In a planning submission to the city council of Swindon, UK, we can see that the EV charging provider Enzygo wants to build a charging station that includes 16 Tesla ultra-rapid V4 Superchargers - which they label as having a power of 350 kilowatts.
The V4 Supercharger cabinets have been out in the open since the first batch were installed at a charging station in the Netherlands back in March - but without definitive specs, nobody could really tell how much better they were than the older V3s.
Sure, we had the labelling on the side of the cabinets themselves - which told us that the V4s in the Netherlands were capable of outputting 615 amps and 1,000 volts. But while this let us know that the V4 was technically capable of charging a vehicle at 615 kilowatts - it still doesn’t answer our question, because there’s only two electric vehicles in Tesla’s fleet that can handle that charge rate.
The Tesla Semi, which has its own dedicated 1 megawatt charger - and the Cybertruck.
All we knew - until this recent planning submission in the UK - was that the V4’s hardware could run at 615 kilowatts - but since most Tesla vehicles charge at 250 kilowatts, they wouldn’t be able to take advantage of that ability.
In order to accept that rate of charge, a vehicle’s battery would need to stay cool for a period of time. What period of time is dependant on both the capabilities of the car’s electrical architecture as well as the charging cabinet’s - which is why Tesla’s vehicles are actually the bottleneck here.
And so since we now have confirmation from Tesla that the V4 cabinets can handle up to 350 kilowatts - but none of their current fleet has the ability to use it - we can pretty safely assume that this expanded charge capability is for the Cybertruck - but there could be more here.
The Cybertruck’s electrical architecture can definitely take a 350 kilowatt charge - there was talk early in its development that Tesla was going to attempt to get the Cybertruck to be able to make use of the 1 megawatt charge stations that the Tesla Semi would be using.
And during Investor Day on March 1st this year, we were told that the biggest reason Tesla formed an internal peripheral design team for the Cybertruck was because it’s 48 volt electrical systems were too strong for standard and 3rd party plugins.
However, a company doesn’t typically design something like a charging system with capabilities that only one of their vehicle types can take advantage of - and Tesla especially isn’t known to do anything by halves.
So, while we don’t have any confirmation beyond this new detail about the V4 charging cabinets; it wouldn’t be outlandish to think that with all the upgrades being made to Tesla’s manufacturing techniques - and the vehicles themselves - that we might be seeing redesigned versions of other Tesla models that could make use of a 350 kilowatt charger.
The Model 3’s Project Highland is still being worked on, as is the Model Y’s Project Juniper, and redesigns for the Model S and X - and of course the new Model which has yet to be unveiled. It seems like the perfect time for a fleet-wide upgrade.