Tesla announced that it is starting to open its Supercharger network to non-Tesla electric cars in China.
It’s another step toward making the Supercharger network a fully-opened global charging network.
The automaker first started to open Supercharger stations to non-Tesla electric vehicles in Europe in 2021.
In Europe, it is fairly easy for Tesla to do since its vehicles and Superchargers use the CCS2 connector, which is standard on all electric vehicles on the continent.
Throughout 2022, the automaker gradually increased the number of charging stations open to electric vehicles from other manufacturers.
Earlier this year, Tesla started to also open some stations in the US, where it is more difficult since Tesla uses its own proprietary connector in North America while the rest of the market uses CCS.
The last large market in which Tesla hadn’t started to open its Supercharger stations to EVs from other manufacturers was in China.
Today, Tesla announced that it is doing just that – starting with a pilot program.
The automaker is opening 10 Supercharger stations in Beijing and Shanghai for 37 different electric vehicle models.
It includes vehicles from big brands in China like Nio, Xpeng, BYD, and Polestar.
In China, Tesla uses the Chinese standard connector, which should make the experience easy like in Europe.
Tesla has over 1,600 Supercharger stations and over 10,000 Superchargers in China. If the pilot program proves successful, Tesla is gradually going to open them to non-Tesla EVs as it adds more new stations and increases overall charging capacity.
Since Tesla commented on making a business out of its Supercharger network, which was originally launched only to support its own vehicles as there were no charging networks supporting long-distance travel at the time, we are starting to see these moves under a different lens.
This is just going to be good business for Tesla.
China is the largest EV market, and selling charges to the millions of electric vehicles on their roads would undoubtedly be a huge business one day.
I have no problem with it as long as it doesn’t negatively affect the charging experience for Tesla owners who made this while thing possible. It shouldn’t as long as Tesla deploys more charging capacity as it opens up the network.
