This week, Tesla opened a massive new charging station just off the Las Vegas Strip complete with the company's latest V3 Superchargers. They are capable of recharging a car battery up to 50 percent faster.
The key to this new charging station is the use of V3 Superchargers, which were first announced back in March. They require a new 1MW power cabinet, but in return offer a peak rate of 250kW, translating to 1,000 miles per hour or 75 miles of charge in five minutes.
As TechCrunch reports, the new Las Vegas charging location consists of 39 V3 Superchargers capable of recharging 1,500 electric vehicles every day. If that's not impressive enough, the station uses Tesla's solar panels and Powerpack batteries, meaning it's a self-sufficient energy generator, store, and recharge solution. Tesla refers to this as the "full Tesla ecosystem."
How fast you can recharge using a V3 Supercharger depends on the Tesla model and age. The Model 3 Long Range can take advantage of the full 250kW peak rate, where as other Model 3 versions and newer Model S and Model X vehicles recharge at 200kW. Older models will still recharge more quickly because there's no power sharing with V3. Every vehicle grabs as much energy as it can regardless of how many others are plugged in.
There's two core problems electric vehicles need to overcome in order to replace gas guzzlers. The first is price, and the second is infrastructure. Right now it's much cheaper to purchase a car that runs on gas, and refilling the tank is easy because there's gas stations everywhere. The price of electric vehicles is falling, and as this new charging station demonstrates, recharging is getting easier and faster. There's still a long way to go, though.