Tesla commissions first V4 Superchargers in Germany

Some of the V4 Superchargers in Germany have already been in place for months, but they were not allowed to go live. Since Friday evening, the first Superchargers equipped with a small display and card reader can now be used.

However, there is currently no confirmation as to whether Tesla received the outstanding authorisation. The approval for ad hoc charging with a payment terminal is a prerequisite for charging in compliance with calibration law (Eichrecht) in Germany. The payment terminal must either be part of the type-examination certificate of the charging station or have received a type-examination certificate itself. Only then can a charging process with the exact data be reliably assigned to a customer from a legal perspective. That was not yet the case with the Tesla Superchargers of generations V2 and V3. Here, the charging process could be started automatically for Teslas and via the app for third-party brands.

The commissioning of the V4 Superchargers in Germany on Friday evening coincided with Elon Musk’s recent visit to the Giga Berlin. There is thus speculation about a connection. “Observers believe it is possible that he brought the solution with him – or that he decided to ignore the German bureaucracy on site,” Teslamag writes.

Specifically, the V4 site in Peine, Lower Saxony, went live. Although there was a small opening ceremony in October, it was still impossible to charge at the new columns – without explanation. A photo published by Benjamin Scholtysik on X (formerly Twitter) now also shows the small display, showing the ad-hoc price of €0.55/kWh and a reference to the blocking fee of one euro per minute. The (discounted) prices for Tesla vehicles are still displayed in the car or the app.

The V4 generation is characterised, among other things, by the higher charging stations and a longer charging cable, which (for the first time) is attached to the outside of the charging station. As Tesla can no longer only charge its own vehicles (with a standardised charging port at the rear left), the longer cable should make it easier to charge third-party vehicles – and the payment terminal for ad-hoc charging is also aimed at non-Tesla vehicles.

Tesla commissioned the world’s first location with V4 columns in Harderwijk, the Netherlands, in March and opened the location to third-party brands a month later. However, this version did not yet have a display or the option to pay by card.

With the display and card terminal, Tesla is also creating the basis for continuing to build new fast chargers in Germany. According to Germany’s Charging Station Ordinance, all EV public EV chargers that go into operation after 1 July 2024 must allow card payment.

teslamag.de (in German), linkedin.com