Tesla Deploys First Megachargers to Charge Its Semi Electric Trucks
Tesla may be close to unveiling the megachargers for its long-awaited Semi trucks.
It has been four years since Elon Musk unveiled Tesla’s Semi, the company’s semi-trucks, and the promise to juice up their batteries in just 30 minutes. Finally, we are closer to seeing how this will be done after reports emerged of the Megacharger being deployed at the Gigafactory in Nevada.
With a higher battery pack and the need to travel long distances than family cars, Tesla’s semi-trucks can hardly rely on the extensive Supercharger network. They need a much bigger charger and if we go by Musk’s word during the unveiling of the Semi, they would be powered, not by fossil fuels but by solar energy. So, the world has waited with bated breath to see how Musk is going to pull this off.
Musk had a name for these chargers, Megachargers, reportedly after the 1MW output, these chargers would deliver and provide a range of 400 miles (643 km) in just 30 minutes. In February of 2018, Reuters had reported that Tesla was working with multiple major corporations who had all pre-ordered these trucks and wanted to rapidly deploy these mega chargers, at least at their facilities, if not in public places.
However, Tesla’s Semi has been repeatedly delayed with some estimates suggesting a launch next year. So, a roll-out of the mega charger would at least suggest that things are going better with the Semi and it’ll be on the road, even if it’s for testing purposes.
Unfortunately, the sneak peek of the mega charger being installed at the Giga factory in Nevada, reveals very little. We can see that the stalls for the charger stations are much larger than in the Supercharger network and that they will be serving electric vehicles (EV) with a much larger footprint, for obvious reasons. But we do not know of their charging capacities for now or if they will be solar-powered, as Musk had previously promised.
With ABB unveiling an EV charger that is not only universal but also faster, the pressure is now on Tesla to deliver a charger for bigger vehicles. We will keep you posted on progress in this area.
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