- Tesla's latest Supercharger update comes with big speed improvements for some vehicles.
- The V4 Cabinet can power up to eight stalls at once.
- It supports vehicles with battery packs rated between 400V and 1,000V.
The Tesla Supercharger network has long been the benchmark in the DC fast charging world. With tens of thousands of stalls in North America alone, Superchargers gave Tesla the edge because they’re (almost) everywhere and they’re simple to use, making long road trips hassle-free.
That said, they’re not perfect, at least when it comes to charging speeds. Don’t get me wrong, they’re more than capable, with a maximum power output of 250 kilowatts for cars like the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y, but other network operators out there, such as Electrify America, can go even higher.
Not anymore, though. That’s because Tesla just upped the ante in the EV charging game–again–with the introduction of what it calls the V4 Cabinet. The charging cabinets do all the heavy lifting and until now, even the latest-gen V4 stalls–those that you park next to and plug in to recharge–were relying on the older V3 Cabinet. That limited the stalls’ ability to deliver even higher charging speeds, especially on EVs using 800-volt architectures and higher.
Cars like the Tesla Cybertruck, which has an 800V battery pack, and the Lucid Air, which has a 900V pack, are currently limited by the V3 cabinets which can only deliver a maximum of 500V per stall. With the latest V4 Cabinet, though, that’s no longer the case.
According to Tesla, the updated power delivery box supports vehicles with battery packs rated between 400V and 1,000V, which leads to 30% faster charging speeds for the Cybertruck–up to 500 kW as seen in the promo video posted by the company on X.
For the Tesla Semi, the power output is even higher–up to 1.2 Megawatts–but all the other Tesla models are still limited to 250 kW, just like before. That’s a big difference from the first Supercharger which went online in 2012 with a maximum output of 90 kW per vehicle.
The V4 Cabinet has a smaller footprint and less complexity than its predecessor. Despite this, it can power up to eight stalls at once, double compared to the previous version. Tesla claims the electronics used in the V4 Cabinet are “designed to be the most reliable on the planet,” with three times the power density of the outgoing model, enabling higher throughput with lower costs.
Max de Zegher, the Director of Charging in North America at Tesla, said the updated Supercharger Cabinet removed the necessity to use DC busbars between cabinets. With the previous version, two cabinets had to be linked to power eight stalls.
Furthermore, the latest cabinet version has a 2% efficiency improvement over the previous iteration. That may not sound like much, but when we consider that Superchargers deliver over 5 terawatt-hours of energy per year, a 2% improvement in efficiency leads to 100 gigawatt-hours/year in waste heat saved.
The first Tesla Supercharger sites with V4 Cabinets are currently in the permitting process and the first stations will open next year.
