Practically from its beginnings as a company, one of Tesla’s differentiating factors with respect to its competition has been to have its own exclusive network of chargers. And although in its beginnings the number of them was tiny, and it was limited to very specific regions, the truth is that the company has worked tirelessly to make it grow substantially and extend its reach to many other geographies.
So much so that, for not a few users, the Tesla supercharger network, named for its high-speed charging function (up to 150 kilowatts/hour), together with the security of having a charging station available whenever they need it, is one of the main reasons for choosing the Tesla option versus other possibilities. And it is not only that, some users of other brands also observe the exclusive Tesla network with some envy.
However, for a few months said exclusivity began to cease to be such, as Tesla began a test program to support electric vehicles from other brands in its network of chargers. The tests began at the end of last year in some Tesla superchargers in the Netherlands, and a few months later it was extended to Norway and France, as the second phase of a plan that the company itself described as aggressive, which gave us to understand that the extension would not stop there.
And today we have the confirmation of it in a tweet published in the official account of the company, in which they tell us that Part of Tesla’s network of superchargers in Austria, Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom and Sweden will be opened to electricity from other manufacturers. To check which network chargers have already been opened to vehicles of other brands, Tesla asks those interested to download its app and create a user account. With it they will be able to search for chargers that allow the use of third-party cars.
The maintenance of the current superchargers and the installation of new charging points is, without a doubt, a fairly costly task in economic terms, so we can imagine that these are still quite far from being profitable for Tesla. Opening them up to third parties seems like a fairly sensible way to increase their turnover and, consequently, make them, if not profitable, at least less profitable.
The big question is, of course, How will this affect Tesla car owners who, until now, enjoyed that exclusivity?. In this regard, the company states that it will constantly monitor the level of use of its network to prevent congestion, and that this may affect the users of its vehicles, and that the potential new income will allow the company to grow the speed of expansion of its network, which will also help to avoid the problems of possible congestion of superchargers.
Seems like a smart and sensible move on the part of the companywhich by opening its network to other brands adopts a model more similar to that of Ionity, the network of high-speed chargers created by the BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ford Motor Company and Volkswagen Group, and which is also open to electricity from other manufacturers , but with a higher recharge cost, which is something that also happens in the Tesla supercharger network.
