Tesla has formally unveiled its V4 supercharging cabinets, which are expected to deliver twice the charging speeds of up to 500 kW per stall for compatible cars. For trucks, this would be as high as 1.2 MW per stall.
In an article on X, the social media platform owned by CEO Elon Musk, the Tesla team touch on the faster charging capabilities for vehicles supporting 400-1000V architectures.
Out of the Tesla lineup, the Cybertruck will be able to charge 30% faster at a V4 supercharger site with the new V4 cabinets. Current Tesla vehicles such as the Model 3 and Model Y in Australia will be able to charge at speeds of up to 250 kW but future vehicles from the brand may be able to utilise the upgraded sites with V4 cabinets better.
On top of the faster charging capabilities of the V4 cabinets, the next generation system is capable of having up to 8 stalls, which is double the current 4 stalls per cabinet seen at sites today.
“Posts can peak up to 500kW for cars, but we need less than 1MW across 8 posts to deliver maximum power to cars 99% of the time,” Max de Zegher, director of Tesla charging in North America said in the post.
“No more DC busbar between cabinets. Power comes from a single V4 cabinet to 8 stalls. Easier to install, cheaper, more reliable. Even some of the small incremental improvements matter. V4 Cabinet has a 2% efficiency improvement. Superchargers already deliver over 5 TWh/year, 100 GWh/year in waste heat that can be saved.”
According to the company, this will reduce complexity and more importantly lower space needed at each site for the cabinets which will make rolling out of sites much faster. It says the V4 cabinet hardware is designed with reliability in mind, delivering 3x power density with lower costs.
The first V4 cabinets are currently in the permit process for upcoming sites, with the first sites opening in 2025.
Here in Australia, Tesla operates a supercharger network with over 100 sites with more than 600 stalls. The majority of these have been the V3 supercharger sites that have the V3 cabinets.
The first of the V4 supercharger stalls, which still had V3 cabinets, started opening less than 12 months ago with the opening of Australia’s largest charging site just before Christmas in 2023.
This site in Albury has 16 stalls with the longer cables seen in the V4 stall design, optimised for charging non-Tesla vehicles as well that may have varying charge port locations.
Since then, Tesla has rolled out or upgraded 15 more sites across the country with V4 supercharger stalls but maintained the V3 cabinets which allow for 250 kW charging.
It’s unclear if any of the over 30 upcoming new supercharger sites in Australia will feature the new V4 cabinets.Faster charging and more efficient rollout of the hardware will make it easier to not only deploy sites quicker but also help lower the cost of supercharging for all EV drivers.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.