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Tesla’s decision to open its Supercharger network to the competition is a masterstroke

Enrique Dans
The Mobilist
Published in
3 min readJul 25, 2021
IMAGE: PxFuel (CC0)

On July 20, Elon Musk announced to a Tesla owner who had tweeted about the car-maker’s pioneering Supercharger that his company planned to open its network of charging stations to vehicles of other brands at some point in 2021, and to do so progressively around the world.

Goldman Sachs says this decision could earn Tesla around $25 billion a year in the future, a sum that reflects the enormous investment made by the company in developing its networks of Superchargers, as well as to make rapid charging the industry standard, along with the effort to strategically position them around the world. Tesla’s Supercharger network is what the company was busy developing while other brands were still figuring out whether or not they wanted to make electric vehicles, giving it a unique edge and one that plays a huge role in why people buy a Tesla.

Tesla’s Supercharger network is one of the clearest advantages the brand offers to buyers of its vehicles. It’s built in to the application that owners use to plan their trips, and which allows them not only to calculate the stops and the time required to charge, but also to know how many places are free at any station, or to launch the battery conditioning system to improve the efficiency of fast charging. In short, the location of the…

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The Mobilist
The Mobilist

Published in The Mobilist

The Mobilist is a blog from Medium about the future of electric vehicles.

Enrique Dans
Enrique Dans

Written by Enrique Dans

Professor of Innovation at IE Business School and blogger (in English here and in Spanish at enriquedans.com)

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