Tesla’s new tech enables cars to be charged in around 15 minutes

Tesla has stretched the boundaries yet again.

The tech giant has introduced the third generation of its 'Supercharging' technology, born from its experience in building the world's largest grid-connected batteries to enable its vehicles to charge faster than any other electric vehicle on the market today.

Tesla currently has more than 12,000 Superchargers across North America, Europe, and Asia with its network continuing to grow every day. Currently more than 99 percent of the US population is covered by the network, and the company hopes to have similar coverage in Europe by the year's end.

In Asia things are going slightly slower, but the company has managed 90 percent population coverage in massive China.

Now, V3. It's a completely new architecture for Supercharging. A new 1MW power cabinet with a similar design to Tesla's utility-scale products supports peak rates of up to 250kW per car. At this rate, a Model 3 Long Range operating at peak efficiency can recover up to 75 miles of charge in 5 minutes and charge at rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour.

Combined with other improvements Tesla also announced (detailed below), V3 Supercharging will ultimately cut the amount of time customers spend charging by an average of 50%.

Supercharger stations with V3's new power electronics are designed to enable any owner to charge at the full power their battery can take – no more splitting power with a vehicle in the stall next to you. With these significant technical improvements, Tesla anticipates the typical charging time at a V3 Supercharger will drop to around 15 minutes.

As aforementioned, there are other improvements Tesla has announced to speed up battery charge times, one of these being 'On-Route Battery Warmup'.

Now, whenever you navigate to a Supercharger station, your vehicle will intelligently heat the battery to ensure you arrive at the optimal temperature to charge, reducing average charge times for owners 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.

Tesla says that paired with other savings, these efficiencies will translate to an increased pace of investment for Superchargers moving forward, with a continued focus on getting to 100% ownership coverage across all regions the company operates.

With thousands of new Superchargers coming online in 2019, the launch of V3, and other changes they're making to improve throughput, the Supercharger network will be able to serve more than 2x more vehicles per day at the end of 2019 compared with today.

Tesla's first non-beta V3 Supercharger site will break ground next month, with North American sites ramping in Q2 and Q3 before coming to Europe and Asia-Pacific in Q4.