One of the big bets that Elon Musk made with Tesla was to not just make a killer electric car, but also build the charging infrastructure for it - custom-tuned for its cars, which is a critical competitive advantage that pays dividends as traditional manufacturers ramp up their electrification efforts. Now Tesla has 25,000 fast chargers globally.
Tesla for the last couple of years has been aggressively ramping up the Supercharger network with V3 of the supercharger. At the end of 2020, it has achieved 20,000 stalls at over 2,100 supercharging stations. Now, it has achieved the 25,000 stall mark in over 2,700 stations.
This is the world's largest supercharger with 56 stalls
Tesla has also launched a new Twitter handle to commemorate the 25,000 marks. It has many more stations coming up with having a roadmap to boot. While Tesla has achieved this mark, the largest charging network is still with Volkswagen owned Electrify America which has over 7,000 stations alone in the US.
It was born out of the settlement between the EPA and Volkswagen post diesel-gate
Volkswagen alongside subsidiary brands Porsche and Audi has only recently started selling electric cars. In 2020 it released the ID.3, the Taycan and even the E-Tron - but the charging network, particularly for the Americas because of the settlement the VW group had with authorities in the US post the diesel gate scandal.
But to date, Tesla's technology is faster and remains a competitive advantage since its cars also have a longer range.
