Surely electric cars are the way of the future, but you’ll often hear people comparing the time between topping up a fuel tank and recharging the batteries of a car. While Tesla took care of the range anxiety to a great extent, the recharge time has also come down, but remains a major concern. Discounting the limited availability of fast charge and fast chargers, a typical electric car takes nearly 7 or 8 hours for a full charge.
As has been the case for electric vehicle technology so far, Tesla is leading the wave and is preparing a solution to the painstaking longer hours of charging your car. The new move by the US startup aims to cut down charging times by half. The company aims to achieve this through a combined process of making the power outflow at Tesla charging stations twice their capacity and heating the batteries before they reach a charging station. This combined solution aims to bring down the charging time for Tesla cars to a mere 15 minutes. That is a number that is seriously close to a fuel-station stop time.
Tesla has termed this new achievement as the V3 supercharging network. Aiming to bring this technology for the masses by the end of 2019, Tesla also aims at cutting down longer wait times at charging stations as the cars can now charge up at double the speed. The new power cabinet that Tsla will install on such plants will provide dedicated 250 kW to four Superchargers on the plant. This will ensure that there is no power sharing when too many cars are plugged-in, and all the cars charge at full capacity at any given moment. With the increasing sales of its Model 3, the need for such a charging station was pressing and Tesla is indeed ready to deliver.
The company will start rolling out this new service in North America from April 2019. The recent advances by other established car makers in market and the move by Ionity GmbH (a consortium of Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG, Ford and BMW) to develop 400 charging stations with 350 kW capacity could have spurred on the company to roll out V3 Supercharging.
The talks of developed nations, aside India too is focusing on electric car rollout in the large suto market of the country. A number of markers, both domestic and foreign are already busy preparing their electric cars for Indian market. The government’s response too has been enthusing as it is planning to make significant investments, offer subsidies and develop charging infra in the country.
Talking of subsidies, the government is offering FAME-2 subsidies that offsets certain taxes and fees for makers and customers so that the process of adopting electric cars gathers steam. With a Rs. 10,000 crore budget for the subsidy, future of electric cars in India sure looks bright.