Tesla launches speedy Supercharger 3.0 and pledges to halve charging times

Tesla Supercharger
Image credit: Tesla (Image credit: Tesla)

Tesla has unveiled its third generation Supercharger at its headquarters in Palo Alto, California, promising to cut the average charging time for drivers by 50%.

According to a blog post, the Supercharger V3 can juice up a Tesla Model 3 Long Range with enough power to travel 75 miles in just five minutes at peak efficiency. 

The company is also rolling out a new feature called On Route Battery Warmup, which will heat your car's battery to the optimum temperature for efficient charging when you navigate to a Supercharger station – an update the company says will cut average charging times by 25%.

"This combination of higher peak power with V3, dedicated vehicle power allocation across Supercharger sites, and On-Route Battery Warmup enables customers to charge in half the time and Tesla to serve more than twice the number of customers per hour," the company said.

Plug in, baby

It's a busy month for Tesla, which is due to unveil its latest vehicle, the Model Y, at its LA Design Studio on March 14. The Model Y will be a compact SUV (effectively a smaller, more affordable version of the Model X), but little else is known about it so far.

The Model Y was originally expected to go into production this year, but the date has now been pushed back to 2020. 

Cat Ellis

Cat is the editor of TechRadar's sister site Advnture. She’s a UK Athletics qualified run leader, and in her spare time enjoys nothing more than lacing up her shoes and hitting the roads and trails (the muddier, the better)