Author: Chang Yan

These days, I have been enjoying the joy brought by the BMW M Elite Driving Academy in Tianjin.

The last time I came to the V1 racetrack for an event was in 2019. At that time, the domestically produced 3 series had just been released, and my Model 3, which had just been delivered, was attracting a lot of attention. Everyone exclaimed: “Is the pure electric version of the BMW 3 series faster?”

And this “fast” took three years. A significant proportion of this year’s experience event was dedicated to the newly launched i3, and we even saw parts focused on encouraging participants to drift using pure electric cars.

The penetration rate of pure electric vehicles is no longer just a boring number, but it feels like a spring breeze coming towards us with our eyes closed.

And while the whole world is rapidly manufacturing electric cars, Tesla is electrifying the whole world.

Supercharging Stations brought by the Semi Trailer

Let’s continue with the racetrack.

The biggest problem with using electric cars on the racetrack is still the ability to charge. When an electric car consumes far more electricity than usual in an excited state, the car owner will suddenly realize that in order to continue having fun, they must first go to a charging station several dozen kilometers away and wait there for several hours.

And when more electric cars appear in the same session, this nightmare will turn into a series of nightmares.

As far as I know, before holding racetrack events, almost all domestic electric vehicle brands have set up their charging stations on site by their own means. However, almost all of them have encountered problems: slow speed, insufficient quantity, and difficult construction.

Let’s take a look at what Tesla is doing on the other side of the ocean.

The Laguna Seca racetrack has almost become Tesla’s dedicated calibration racetrack in terms of performance in recent years. Not only have the Model 3 Performance and Model S Plaid successively set the fastest pure electric car lap times on this track when they were launched, but there are also a large number of Tesla engineering teams working here every day to optimize the performance of existing vehicles.

As more and more Tesla fans flock to join, the call for the addition of a supercharging station increases.

So, Tesla came up with the simplest and most efficient solution.

Starting from around 2020, Tesla was spotted manufacturing supercharger modules in a prefabricated way. Initially, this module, which consists of a cabinet and three supercharging piles, was mainly used in a mobile way to help users who couldn’t find a charging spot during holiday congestion.

Then, Tesla had the idea to place this thing on the ground, and it becomes an existing station, and it just so happens that “this thing fits perfectly on our latest Semi truck.”

In this way, this supercharged express took only three days to complete the construction of the station. It became a perfect PR for Tesla’s overall capacity system, not only showing the muscles of the engineering and charging team, but also letting the Semi truck kill everyone’s massive phone photo storage space.

Battle between 100 Charging Stations

Since the construction was so fast, why not expand it quickly?

Especially when the demand from users is still pressing.

At least on social media in the United States, Musk is rarely questioned by users, but the topic below has been repeatedly tagged to call out Musk’s face: supercharger queueing.

Every one or two months, there will be some Tesla users who appear out of nowhere and send Musk blessings on some unspecified US holiday through a video: look, your supercharging station’s queue is wide and long.

Musk always replies, “more and larger supercharging stations are coming soon” while aiming his gun at the head of the supercharging station design team.

Previously, the largest supercharging station in Tesla’s scope was the Santa Monica supercharging station in the US, which has 62 V3 charging piles, and the Jing’an International Center supercharging station in China, which has 72 V2 charging piles.

Now Tesla has set its sights on approaching triple-digit numbers.

Among them, the Kettleman City charging station in the heart of California has 40 charging stalls. Tesla has decided to build 56 more stalls, turning it into a total of 96 stalls. Similarly, the Baker charging station with 40 stalls will also be upgraded to the same scale.

Outside of these two 96-stall mega stations, Tesla has finally confirmed its ambition to achieve a hundred-stall scale at Harris Ranch in California.

Harris Ranch can be said to be the ancient holy land of Tesla charging. It has one of the world’s earliest supercharge stalls, as well as charging stalls for Roadster 1, and even the only unique Tesla battery swap station site in the world with no branches.

And the reason why this is mentioned in this article is because the pictures show that this global giant is about to complete construction.

Bigger things, summed up in one sentence

Other brands are not just envious of the rapidly growing supercharge network.

After Tesla attempted to open up its supercharge network to the Flying Tesla brand’s electric vehicles in multiple countries in Europe, more and more rumors are pointing to an ultimate result: Tesla is about to try to open up its supercharge network in North America.

It should be noted that Musk once said that if Tesla’s supercharge network were to go public separately, it would definitely have the ability to become a new Fortune Global 500 company.

Quantity is not the key, speed is

Making it convenient for people to find charging stalls is only the first step, and allowing people to complete energy replenishment at the highest efficiency is the key to the next step.

Now that the fast-charging characteristics of the 800V architecture of various brands are becoming increasingly prominent, Tesla has no choice but to continue to “further increase the pressure” on V3 supercharging.Elon Musk has long said that he wants to take the power of V3 Superchargers to a new level, with a peak output of over 300kW. This clearly indicates that the power bottleneck in the V3 system lies with the cars rather than the charging stations.

As V3 charging power gradually increases, all current Tesla owners will receive a free and significant OTA update. A new charging network, which will include the upcoming Cybertruck, is also in development.

Compared to passenger cars, Tesla’s new commercial vehicle system-Semi trucks-is expected to have a head start in charging station construction. The corresponding charging stations are called MegaChargers, and many people have spotted them being rapidly deployed in PepsiCo’s park, the first major customer of the Semi.

Judging from the name, MegaCharger is undoubtedly a higher-tier Supercharger with greater power and design principles that will provide more reference value for Tesla’s charging system.

Just this week, Tesla released its latest Supercharger construction plan, which includes a new station named V4 Supercharger. This is a station that will deploy both V4 and V3 technology, and some speculate that V4 may feature dual guns, judging from its name.

Although there is no detailed information about the appearance of V4, the latest engineering plans show that it is taller, thicker, but also narrower compared to V3.

Two days later, multiple foreign media outlets claimed to have seen photos of the V4 Supercharger, but could not disclose them because of their sources. They believe that the V4 Supercharger looks very similar to the previously unveiled Semi Megacharger, only slightly smaller in size.

Even the height of the charging gun off the ground is quite similar. Additionally, some reports suggest that the first batch of V4 Superchargers will be deployed as early as Q4 of this year.## The end of the universe is the range extender

While these stories were happening, two experts in China were arguing about which is better, range extender or hybrid. To us, it’s not necessary to argue so much about these technical matters as long as the product is excellent and users like it.

Tesla is a great example of such value, so they recently revealed a range extender.

This is an intern project shown by Tesla at the Hanover Industrial Exhibition in Germany this year.

It is a multidimensional stitching monster and an ultimate weapon.

To put it simply, it is an infinite energy source that will never let you disappear from this world.

On its upper surface are three groups of deployable solar panels that can be stacked to achieve a maximum charging power of 2.7 kW.

Many friends may question its usefulness. On the one hand, it is not always sunny every day, and the efficiency of solar energy is not good on cloudy days. On the other hand, Tesla models currently do not support switching to drive (D) mode while being charged from an external charging gun.

This device has a solution to this problem. A Tesla Powerpack battery is installed in the middle, which can store energy when the sunlight is strong and provide it when needed.

This solves the problem of charging in remote places.

But how can we use it without a network? Yes, the recently revealed Starlink for RV also appeared on this device. As long as you’re still on Earth, the internet won’t be missing.

Let’s go, bring this range extender, and never be afraid of traveling anywhere in the world.

This world is being electrified rapidly.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.