What's Inside A Tesla Supercharger? Let's Take A Look

"Made on Earth by humans"

The Tesla Supercharger features a nicely-designed exterior, but have you ever wondered what lies beneath the smooth, glossy finish of an individual pedestal? We have. And so has Erik and David of the Tesla-centric YouTube channel DÆrik. Luckily for us, them, and our curious readers, Erik managed to get his hands on one last week and has now taken off its covers to reveal what's inside. It's actually pretty neat.

Despite the fact that the unit Erik had discovered on eBay was apparently used in a Tesla store as a display item, it seems to have the same interior components found in a functional Supercharger. Only the stand at the bottom and the lack of a heavy feed cable distinguishes it from the ones charging cars out in the wild.

After removing the snap caps to reveal the torx-headed bolts, the guys seem to quickly advance to the cover removal stage. With the exterior panel taken off, we get our first glimpse of how, exactly, the red letters are illuminated. It's not just a matter of a single light source shining through a translucent red material. Instead, each letter is individually lit by a number of LED bulbs in the basic shape of the corresponding letter. That's an unexpected level of detail.

After going over a number of other parts they can see at this stage of disassembly, the guys decide to go a bit further and remove the lighting unit. This reveals the metal bars that the feeding cables are attached to which then, in turn, pass by a controlling circuit board.  The guys do a pretty good job of showing the whole flow of things.

While it's all pretty geeky and not really knowledge anyone outside of a Tesla technician really needs, it's still great to see it all laid out. Perhaps our most favorite part, though, was simply the script printed on the circuit board of the lighting component that reads "Made on Earth by humans." This, you may recall, was also printed on a circuit board of the Tesla CEO Elon Musk's personal Roadster which was shot off into outer space in the general direction of Mars. Neat-0!

Source: YouTube