Tesla is planning to build a new world’s largest Supercharger station, and it might give us a glimpse at the future of electric car charging.
There’s no doubt that Tesla has the best charging network, the Supercharger network, but it still has room to improve.
It’s not even just about improving but evolving with the different needs of the growing fleet of electric vehicles in North America.
We need more stations, with more stalls per station, and we need different configurations to make them accessible to new types of vehicles going electric, like trucks.
Now, we learn about a new Supercharger station that Tesla plans to build in California that could gives an idea of how Tesla plans to evolve the Supercharger network.
The new station is planned for Kern County, California, near the 5 freeway where it meets the 46 highway.
According to the construction permit application (via MarcoRP), there will be over 160 Supercharger stalls at the new station – making it the largest Supercharger in the world:
But that’s not even the most interesting thing about this new project. We can see that Tesla planned 16 pull-through stalls (on the right):
Those are very useful for vehicles pulling a trailer. With those stall configurations, people who are towing with their Cybertrucks or other electric vehicles are going to be able to use the Superchargers without having to unhook their trailers.
The plan also confirms that Tesla is going to build a microgrid consisting of batteries and solar canopies at the Supercharger station.
This is going to enable Tesla to shave peak demand at the station, which will greatly reduce the cost of charging.
It’s unclear when the station will be ready, but it will serve the heavy traffic between Northern and Southern California. Tesla has already heavily invested in this route. In fact, the new station will not be too far from Tesla’s existing Kettleman City Supercharger, which once was Tesla’s largest Supercharger in the world.