Tesla charging stations: What to know on the go
It’s no secret that Tesla is the most popular electric vehicle manufacturer in the world. Tesla offers four electric vehicle models: the Model 3, Model S, Model X, and Model Y. With so many vehicle options, it’s easy to find an option that works for you.
But there is a lot of hesitation around buying electric vehicles, and one of the reasons for that is range anxiety. Many people fear that their electric vehicle won’t be able to get them to their destination without the battery running out of charge.
As a response, Tesla has been able to settle some troubled minds by including long range batteries in their vehicles, as well as their extensive network of Tesla charging stations.
You’ll be able to stay charged anywhere you go with access to Tesla’s charging stations since they are located in convenient locations along well-traveled routes throughout the country.
In this blog, we’ll review everything you need to know about Tesla charging stations: the different types of charging stations available, how fast they charge your electric vehicle, and how much Tesla charging stations cost. For a detailed explanation of what goes into the cost of charging a Tesla, check out the below video:
Types of Tesla charging stations
Tesla has an extensive network of electric vehicle chargers. There are two types of public Tesla charging stations: Superchargers and Destination Chargers. Between the two types, there are over 19,000 in North America.
Superchargers
The primary network of Tesla charging stations are made up of Tesla Superchargers. Superchargers aren’t called super for nothing; these ultra-powerful 480-volt charging stations allow Tesla owners to charge their car in under an hour.
Tesla is continuously adding to their charging station network to make charging your vehicle fit into your daily life seamlessly. Image courtesy of Tesla, Inc.
This lightning-fast charging is designed to be used when traveling long distances. In just 15 minutes, a Supercharger will charge your Tesla to 50%. Once the battery reaches 80%, the rate of charging slows in order to protect the battery’s health.
It’s important to note that it would take around 75 minutes to reach a full 100% charge with a Supercharger. While Superchargers are fast compared to other electric vehicle chargers, it still takes more time than filling a tank of gas. So, factoring extra time for charging into your trips is important to consider.
The charging rate of Tesla Superchargers is different for each Tesla model:
Because Teslas have long battery ranges, most people won’t have to charge their vehicle over 80% anyway. On an 80% charge, a Tesla Model S can drive about 324 miles. That means you could drive from New York City to Philadelphia, and then back to New York City again without having to stop to charge.
Superchargers are able to fill up Teslas so quickly because of how they charge the vehicle’s lithium-ion battery. A typical charger provides AC power to the car’s onboard charger. The onboard charger then converts the AC current to DC current, which then charges the battery.
Superchargers provide DC power directly to the battery, bypassing the onboard charger which speeds up the charging process.
Destination Chargers
Besides Tesla Superchargers, Tesla owners can also take advantage of the company’s network of Destination Chargers. Destination Chargers are installed by Tesla’s ‘Charging Partners.’
Charging Partners are usually business or land owners who choose to install a Tesla Wall Connector on their property for public use.
Destination Chargers are installed in places where you might spend a few hours, like hotels and restaurants. Image source: Tesla
Destination Chargers have a slower charging speed than Superchargers. Depending on how much charge is left on your Tesla’s battery, a Destination Charge can take anywhere from one to 12 hours to fully charge your vehicle.
Learn more: Check out this blog for more information on how long it takes to charge your Tesla.
The best time to use a Destination Charger is when you are going to be in one spot for an extended period of time, like during dinner at a restaurant or overnight at a hotel. Destination charges will not be of much use if you’re just making a quick stop. a 30 minute lunch pit stop will only give you an extra 15 miles of charge.
Charge rates for Destination Chargers vary depending on what Tesla model you own:
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Tesla charging station locations
Tesla charging station locations are all over the U.S. Tesla installed Superchargers specifically on popular travel routes to ensure that those driving long distances will have easy access to chargers.
When you look at a Tesla charging station map, you will see that there are many located along the entire distance of major interstate highways in the parking lots of hotels, rest stops, and shopping centers.
Tesla is also installing Superchargers within urban areas. These urban Superchargers are installed in places like grocery stores and downtown areas. With these convenient locations, you can shop or grab a cup of coffee while you wait for your Tesla to finish charging.
You can find Tesla superchargers in every U.S. state. Image source: Tesla
Destination Chargers aren’t always in the same convenient locations. This is because Tesla’s Charging Partners aren’t located just in large cities or along highly trafficked highways. Destination Chargers are useful when you are traveling along local routes, where there might not be Superchargers installed.
Find Tesla charging station locations using their trip planner
Tesla has focused on trying to make the charging of your vehicle as easy as possible. Besides putting extremely fast Tesla charging stations in convenient locations, they also have their Go Anywhere tool, which plans your road trip based around Supercharger locations and essentially functions as a Tesla charging station map.
The tool generates a route from your starting point to your destination with Supercharging stations along the way. It also tells you how long you should charge at each station, as well as including the location of Destination Chargers near your destination.
Tesla’s Go Anywhere tool is a great way to plan a long road trip. Image source: Tesla
For example, we entered a sample trip from New York City to Atlanta in a Model S Long Range into the Go Anywhere tool. The Tesla charging station map route includes five stops at Superchargers, with recommended charging times of 40 minutes or less. Stopping to charge adds an additional two hours to the trip.
This feature is also available on your Tesla’s touchscreen. The Navigation function will locate the fastest route with Tesla charging stations along the way. The car’s Navigation application gives the most up-to-date and accurate information regarding the best route to take. Tesla allows you to adjust the route they suggest if you need. So, if the route they suggest isn’t ideal for you, you are able to customize it to meet your exact needs.
Although the built-in Tesla charging station map was designed with your convenience in mind, it does not come without hangups. Some Tesla owners have reported issues with the navigation system when there are system updates. Others have noted that the system needs to be rebooted from time to time to perform correctly.
The in-car touchscreen allows you to always know how far away you are from a Tesla charging station. Image source: TechCrunch
You can also use the touchscreen to find the closest Supercharger to you, no matter where you are, telling you the number of open stalls and maximum charging rates available. Tesla’s Navigation feature allows you to rest assured that you’ll be able to make it to your destination without running out of charge.
GM’s electric vehicles will gain access to Tesla’s charging network
General Motors CEO Mary Barra speaks during the opening of contract talks with the United Auto Workers on July 16, 2019, in Detroit.
DETROIT — Electric vehicles made by General Motors will be able to use much of Tesla‘s extensive charging network beginning early next year under an agreement the two companies announced Thursday.
In addition, GM will adopt Tesla’s connector, the plug that links an electric vehicle to a charging station.
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GM joins Ford in shifting its electric vehicles to work with about 12,000 of Tesla’s roughly 17,000 chargers, and both Detroit automakers are pushing to make Tesla’s connector the industry standard. GM CEO Mary Barra and her Tesla counterpart, Elon Musk, made the announcement during a Spaces conversation.
Their discussion comes two weeks after Ford CEO Jim Farley joined Musk to announce that Ford’s electric vehicles would gain access to much of Tesla’s EV-charging network, the largest in the nation. Farley also said Ford would switch to Tesla’s charging network connector rather than to a different one that is used by the rest of the industry.
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At first, GM and Ford EV owners will need an adapter to hook into the Tesla stations, which have their own connector. But both GM and Ford will switch to Tesla’s North American Charging Standard connector starting in 2025.
Tesla has about 17,000 Supercharger stations in the U.S. There are about 54,000 public charging stations in the U.S., according to the Department of Energy, but many charge much more slowly than the Tesla stations.
Like Ford, we see this as an opportunity to expand access to charging, Barra said, adding that GM hopes the rest of the industry will move to the Tesla charging connector, which is different from the standard one used by most other EVs.
What’s a standard? Why does it matter?
It’s also important to remember that Tesla’s technology is not, in the strictest terms, a standard. That’s despite Tesla renaming it the North American Charging Standard ( NACS ) late last year as part of a pledge to open its previously Tesla-only charging stations to EVs from other companies.
Standards can be wickedly complex, but the important thing to note here is that Tesla’s tech isn’t entirely open to all parties who wish to build with it — usually a foundational tenet of standards.
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Since it renamed its tech, Tesla has begun allowing a handful of its charging stations to serve CCS-equipped EVs via adapters, and it has made the underlying technical specifications of its charging technology available for download. But any companies seeking to make their EVs compatible with Tesla’s NACS will need permission from Tesla to access its charging network itself, as well as to write the software to integrate with its proprietary charging interface and billing systems.
But for NACS to take on the role of the dominant U.S. charging technology, “ it behooves everyone involved to do a more formal standard-making process, at least in order to provide really clear ground rules for what is NACS and what isn’t NACS ,” Nigro said.
It’s not clear yet how Tesla might go about making that happen.
The company stated in November that it is “ actively working with relevant standards bodies to codify Tesla’s charging connector as a public standard.” (Tesla doesn’t have a media department, so it couldn’t be reached for a new comment.) It is also a member of CharIN, the group formed to promote the development of the CCS standard and another high-powered charging standard dubbed Megawatt Charging System.
But CharIN has made clear in recent weeks that, while Tesla does use some of the same standard-based communications technologies that are used in CCS. the company’s NACS technology is still “ not yet a standard and does not provide an open charging ecosystem for industry to build upon.”
“ There will be a lot of things to be added and updated to enable an open standard which can be used by all market participants to have an open market and not a monopoly by one supplier,” Michael Keller, CharIN executive board member, said in an email.
For that to happen, Tesla’s technology would need to go through a collaborative process overseen by a standards-development organization. CharIN wants to be Tesla’s partner in that standardization effort, and it has collected a number of companies to back its call, including automakers GM. Hyundai and Volvo and charging providers ABB. Electrify America, EVgo, Fermata, Flo, InCharge and Proterra.
Bringing Tesla’s technology into a standards-development process is certainly of interest to the EV charging network providers and equipment manufacturers now pledging to make NACS chargers available.
“ Be careful when you talk about interoperability — that can mean a number of things,” said Mike Battaglia, chief revenue officer at Blink Charging. In the past few years, Blink and other major charging network providers have signed “roaming” agreements with one another to allow customers of one network to use and pay for charges at the stations of their competitors. But fully integrating a new charging technology takes quite a bit more work, he said.
“ We can easily put a NACS cable on the charger, but what is really going to be the proof in the pudding is the accessibility of software development against that,” he said. “ I think the absolute earliest we’d see this happen is 18 months from now. And this would be a minor miracle if all the stars align, which usually doesn’t happen.”
One of the major EV charging companies that has yet to make a commitment to support Tesla’s NACS charging technology is Electrify America. The company’s network of more than 3. 500 predominantly CCS-based charging points in the U.S. is funded by parent company Volkswagen’s 2 billion Dieselgate settlement agreement with the U.S. government in 2016. and Volkswagen is a core member of the CharIN consortium.
“ We’re continuing to support the adoption of EVs, and we’ll continue to monitor the marketplace and what customers want,” said Electrify America spokesperson Octavio Navarro. But he also highlighted that Tesla’s charging network is “ a closed system.”
What does this mean for competing EV charging?
It’s not yet clear how Tesla intends to modify its current charging station expansion plans to accommodate the coming deluge of non-Tesla EVs. Nor is it clear how the charging experience of Tesla owners might change as more and more non-Tesla EV drivers line up at the same charging spots that used to be theirs alone.
Competing EV charging operators maintain that the Rapid growth of EV adoption will increase demand for chargers from a wide variety of providers, even with a switch to NACS.
“ One of the things that is abundantly clear is that Tesla will not be able to build out or modify their existing network to satisfy their own customers as well as GM. Ford and any other OEM that adopts the technology,” Blink’s Battaglia said. “ The EV ecosystem is going to need companies like Blink to build out that fast-charging infrastructure with NACS cables.”
But as Chris Nelder, a former EV charging analyst and current host of the Energy Transition Show podcast, noted in an email, the wide discrepancy that now exists between Tesla and other EV charging operators in terms of customer satisfaction and reliability may spell trouble for competing charging networks over time. In other words, he thinks it’s possible drivers will opt for Tesla-owned and.operated chargers over third-parties when given the option.
“ This is going to be hugely disruptive for all of the third-party networks, notwithstanding their confidence that their already-underutilized chargers can continue to get by just serving non-GM and Ford customers,” Nelder wrote.
But Molchanov of Raymond James has a different take. “ The conventional wisdom right now is that Tesla’s NACS is like VHS. and everyone else using CCS is like Betamax,” he said, invoking the oft-repeated trope in media coverage comparing the current EV charging battle to that fought between home videotape formats in the 1980 s. VHS eventually won the war among consumers, leaving owners of Betamax equipment with a severely limited set of options.
But in Molchanov’s view, “ Mac vs. Windows is probably a more accurate analogy vis-à-vis EV charging.” While most personal computers today use Microsoft’s Windows operating system, “ there is also a large and successful ecosystem” for Apple’s macOS operating system.
“ In other words, NACS and CCS can coexist just fine,” he said. “ There is no reason to expect that it will be a zero-sum game.”
Tesla also has one big reason to make its network available to other EVs, he said — to gain access to billions of dollars of federal funding. The Biden administration is in the midst of disbursing up to 7. 5 billion in grants to states and communities to build out EV charging infrastructure, with requirements that the chargers in question meet key criteria, including interoperability.
Under the current policy in place, these rules require any federally funded chargers to include CCS. including Tesla chargers. “ In other words,” Molchanov said, “ if Tesla hypothetically tries to play hardball by blocking CCS from its sites, it must wave goodbye to Uncle Sam’s cash — which is unlikely to happen.”
But Nigro proposed another analogy—the eventual coalescence of the IT industry around the Universal Serial Bus ( USB ) technology to replace the plethora of connector ports that used to festoon personal computers and other devices.
“ Thirty years ago, you had one plug for each service,” he said. “ Now there’s a USB to rule them all. That’s where I think we’re heading for fast charging in North America, at least for NACS.”
Jeff St. John is director of news and special projects at Canary Media.
DC Superchargers
These Level 3 chargers abandon the alternating current (AC) methods above to mainline power directly. While they require a lot more power from the grid (480 volts and 100 amps), their output is truly “super.”
Most Tesla Superchargers can now recharge up to 200 miles of range in 15 minutes, depending on the charge rate. Superchargers also range from charging speeds of 90 kW to 250 kW, depending on the station.
It’s important to note that due to their massive direct current (DC), Superchargers are not recommended for daily charging on your Tesla. Instead, superchargers are in place to provide a quick charge for drivers on the the go, or for those on longer road trips.
According to Tesla, the peak-charging rate of the battery may decrease slightly after a large number of Supercharger sessions. To ensure maximum driving range and battery safety, the battery charge rate automatically decreases when the battery is too cold and when it is nearly full. It’s best to use a Supercharger with a low battery that has been preconditioned (if necessary).
How much to charge a Tesla?
Due to the fluidity of available electricity in various areas, that is not a simple answer. Factors such as available electricity on the grid, peak hours, and how much electricity you are transferring all play a part in the price of charging your EV on a Tesla Supercharger. All already include taxes and fees.
Specific pricing for each Supercharger location can be seen by tapping its pin on the navigation touchscreen. As you Supercharge, your session total is then displayed on the touchscreen.
Tesla owners are usually billed for the amount of energy delivered to their vehicle (kWh). However, some regions cannot track such utilities and prohibit this practice. As a result, Tesla offers a charge-by-the-minute model known as Time of Use (ToU).
Per Tesla’s website, here are some other pricing details to be aware of with the Supercharger program:
- When billing per minute, there are two tiers to account for changes in charging speeds, called “tier 1” and “tier 2”.Tier 1 applies while cars are charging at or below 60 kW and tier 2 applies while cars are charging above 60 kW. Tier 1 is half the cost of tier 2.
- Tier 1 also applies anytime your vehicle is sharing Supercharger power with another car.
- Pricing to use a Supercharger may vary by location, and may change from time to time.
- Certain Supercharger stations offer on-peak and off-peak rates. The rates and peak times are both displayed in the navigation application on the vehicle touchscreen.
- Standard Supercharger fees apply after free Supercharging credits are used.
Idle fees
The idle fee is a protocol used to ensure as many Tesla drivers can utilize Supercharger stalls quickly and efficiently. It works by charging a fee to any EV occupying a Supercharger with a complete charging session, if the station is at least 50% full. That being said, if the Tesla is moved within five minutes of the charge session completion, the fee is waived.
This is where the Tesla app comes in handy. By monitoring your Supercharging session and alerting you to its completion (necessary range to get your your next destination), you can move your vehicle quicker to avoid idle fees.
Tesla’s proprietary connector
From day one, Tesla has chosen to pave its own way in the EV industry, and that’s no different with its Supercharger connector. This proprietary connector exists on all Tesla models in North America, although it does offer CHAdeMO and CCS adapter for certain markets.
For example, its Model 3 was built with a CCS connector for Europe. Furthermore, older European Teslas were retrofitted with adapters to support the existing connector, plus the standard CCS type 2. This helped Tesla owners utilize the growing charger network overseas.
Even after testing the connector adapter in the Korean market last December, Tesla has yet to bring it to North American drivers. In February, third-party charge network EVgo announced it would be bringing Tesla-compatible connectors to over 600 of its US charging stations.
Mercedes-Benz
The German automaker just announced it will adopt Tesla’s NACS.
Mercedes-Benz EV drivers will have access to the Tesla network via an adapter beginning next year.
Mercedes will implement the NACS port into its vehicles built starting in 2025.
Some automakers have not yet announced that they will make their EVs compatible with Tesla chargers. For example, Lucid is not planning on making the switch right away.
Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson recently said he’s not yet convinced about the industry-wide switch to the Tesla NACS tech, but it’s likely the startup will eventually follow suit. That means Lucid drivers have to charge at a location where CCS is readily available.
Stellantis
The Jeep-maker told Reuters in a recent statement it would evaluate a potential switch to NACS.
Hyundai
Hyundai said it is also considering it.
Currently, non-Tesla EV drivers can plug in at an Electrify America or EVgo charger given both the vehicles and the stations are equipped to handle CCS-enabled charging.
Several charging companies are now planning to convert their equipment to NACS. (You can keep an eye on which companies that is with this helpful tracker from consultancy EVAdoption.)
That means that for drivers of non-Tesla EVs, built with the NACS port in the future (for many of them, starting in 2025), these non-Tesla stations will also be able to accommodate them.
There’s a lot to keep track of in the world of EV charging. But given how important charging is to an EV owner’s experience, the space is bound to get more exciting in the coming years.
Are you a non-Tesla EV owner? Are you planning to use the adapter to be able to charge at Tesla stations starting next year? Do you wish you waited to buy your EV until after it was built with the NACS port? Do you have a tip or opinion to share? Contact this reporter at astjohn@insider.com.
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