Tesla Reveals Charging Stats: Almost 2 Million Sessions Per Day

Tesla says there are over 1.5 million Supercharger sessions per week.

By: Mark Kane

Mar 13, 2023 at 8:01am ET

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During its 2023 Investor Day, Tesla revealed very interesting data about how often owners are plugging in their electric vehicles.

The numbers are worth a closer look, as they throw new light on how Tesla users charge their vehicles and how the Tesla Supercharging network is utilized.

First of all, let's note that there are some 4 million Tesla electric cars in the world (excluding a small number of vehicles that were scrapped for a variety of reasons).

According to Tesla's investor presentation, the cumulative total vehicle mileage of all of its cars is close to 80 billion miles (129 billion km), which translates to about 20,000 miles per car (regardless of its age).

The chart below says that the fleet drives some 123 million miles per day and records 1.9 million charging sessions per day on average. This gives us an interesting number: Tesla cars are driven, on average, 65 miles (105 km) between charging sessions (AC or DC). That's just a fraction of their typical range.

123 million miles per day
1.9 million charging sessions per day
65 miles (105 km) between charging sessions (average)

It appears that many owners do not charge their cars every day, because the average daily mileage appears to be two times lower than the distance between charging sessions.

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Now let's move on to Tesla Supercharging. As of the end of 2022, Tesla had:

4,678 stations
42,419 individual connectors (stalls)
9.1 connectors (stalls) per station on average

Tesla said during Investor Day that there were 1.5 million Supercharging sessions per week, or about 214,000 per day. It says the network provided some 9 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2022.

From that, we can infer that the average Supercharging station is used some 320 times per week, while a single charging stall is used 35 times. (These are very rough estimates.)

Stations: 320 sessions per week (46/day)
Stalls: 35 sessions per week (5/day)

Nonetheless, the numbers indicate that the network is far from being overwhelmed in an average week, although there might be issues during peak demand periods.

In terms of Supercharging time, the company says that the average session time is gradually decreasing and currently is somewhere around 27.5 minutes.

The graph provided below shows that Tesla managed to reduce the time through various measures including higher charging power (V3 Superchargers and 250 kW peak output), battery pre-heating and other nudges that encourage users to charge only to a level that is necessary to reach the next charging stop.

We can also note a seasonal increase in charging time (probably in the winter, when the battery is cold and can't accept maximum power), although the seasonality factor decreased, which might be a result of pre-heating.

If the trend continues, in the future, an average Supercharging session might be less than 25 minutes.