Can Tesla ‘supercharge’ creaking India’s infrastructure?

The entry-level Tesla Model 3, with a rear-axle mounted electric motor, has a claimed range of 418km. This is undoubtedly impressive, but not enough to alleviate the buyer of range anxiety on an inter-city journey. Which begs the question, just how does Tesla intend to bridge the gaping infrastructural chasm in the country.

What is a Supercharger?

In the EV context, a “Supercharger” is a very different form of technology than the one found in internal combustion engines. A major ace up Tesla’s sleeve, which allowed it to become the foremost electric car maker in the world, their patented Supercharger is a 480-volt fast charging system that uses direct channel or DC charging to provide a charge ten times more than what AC charging can provide.

Tesla has already established a fairly extensive network of Superchargers in the US, Europe and Asia and this considerable investment has allowed the brand to gain an edge over its competition. Why? For starters, the use of a Supercharger comes at a subsidized rate, with customers paying half of what they would at any other DC charging station. Secondly, Tesla is the only car brand in the world to have its own dedicated network of fast-charging stations. Each Tesla car is equipped with software that alerts you of a nearby Supercharger while displaying its entire Supercharger network on its touchscreen display unit.

Teslas and Superchargers go hand-in-hand. While the brand has made no mention of just how extensive a network it is likely to establish in India, it goes without saying that they cannot exist in a market without setting-up a Supercharger network.

How it works

At present, each Tesla buyer is given the option of buying a home-based AC charging system which would cost approximately Rs 1 lakh, in India and takes roughly 4-5 hours to fully charge a car. While AC charging is perfectly sufficient for inner-city travel – something most Teslas in the country would be exclusively used for – it’s only a network of reliable DC charging stations that can make highway travel possible.

While Elon Musk did announce that he intends to make their patented Supercharger systems compatible with other non-Tesla EVs, at present, the Superchargers serve as a great source of revenue. In Europe for example, it costs roughly 30 Euro cents per kilowatt of a battery (a battery of 77KW to 100KW) to use a Supercharger. However, other DC charging stations across European highways, some of which are subscription based, can cost somewhere between 60 cents to 1 Euro.

Electricity in India is however, not as expensive, so it’s premature to speculate what the per kilowatt cost of charging would be. That hasn’t, however, changed the fact that India has a severe DC charging deficiency.

Last year, the ABB Group, which has installed more than 14,000 DC chargers across 80 countries, set up the country’s first public DC charging station in New Delhi. For Tesla to flourish among single-car owners, this will need to be addressed. Superchargers are in no way cheap to install.

Indeed, Tesla’s own rapidly-growing network of Superchargers has been strained considerably due to the recent boom in Tesla sales. As of today, Tesla operated 20,000 Superchargers across the world, with 2,106 Supercharging stations (10 superchargers per station on average).

What does the immediate future hold?

Given that building a whole station of Tesla Superchargers, costs the company an average of a quarter million dollars, it’s safe to say that building a vast network in a country as big as India, will take time. And given that Teslas will serve as niche products upon entering the Indian market, they are unlikely to serve as the cars that will supplant internal combustion engines.

With a four-hour charging time, AC chargers (of which we have a grand total of 250 in the whole country) simply won’t cut it. We require a minimum of 2600 AC chargers. If anything, they can only serve as a stop-gap measure to get you to the closest Supercharger, for any long-distance journeys you might undertake in your new Tesla. A Supercharger, on the other hand, can provide a range of 273km in under 30 minutes.

For Tesla to become a single-car-owner staple, the brand will need to produce the cars locally and have a functional, if not extensive network of Superchargers across India’s busiest highways. Until then, they are unlikely to be anything more than a status symbol.