Tesla's New Folding Supercharger Units Cut Installation Time In Half

The company’s prefabricated stations now sit on a hinged base that can fit more stalls than before.

Tesla Folding Unit Superchargers

Photo by: Tesla

Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Mar 26, at 8:15am ET

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Tesla’s new prefabricated Supercharger units slash costs and installation times.
The company’s latest approach is to fit eight stalls and a corresponding power cabinet on a steel base with a hinge.
More stalls can now fit on a truck, making it easier to expand the charging infrastructure.

Love it or hate it, Tesla’s Supercharger network of DC fast chargers is still the gold standard in the United States. It’s the biggest and most reliable fast charging network in the country, and now that almost all non-Tesla EVs can top up at tens of thousands of stalls, it has practically eliminated charging anxiety for American EV drivers.

But there’s still work to be done. Most of the Superchargers in America are of the V3 variety, which top out at 250 kilowatts, which is fine for most EVs, but newer cars like the Lucid Gravity, Porsche Cayenne, and BMW iX3 can take in a lot more, and Tesla knows it.

The latest Tesla Supercharger V4 with the newest power cabinet can deliver up to 500 kW per stall, and the company is kicking installations into high gear with a new way of packaging prefabricated stations.

Cheekily dubbed the Folding Unit (FU) Superchargers, the pre-made assemblies fit eight posts and a V4 power cabinet on a metal base that has a hinge in the middle. This way, two folding Supercharger units can be fitted onto a truck, lowering overall costs and speeding up installations. And because there’s a hinged base, the stations can easily be reconfigured on the spot to fit in whatever space is available.

All the cables are routed from the factory, and the bases are simply laid onto the ground with a crane. Tesla claims this approach fits 33% more stalls per truck, lowers costs by 20%, and halves installation time.

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The company’s previous Prefabricated Supercharger Units (PSUs) had up to four stalls and a power cabinet installed on a concrete base. Up to three units could fit on a truck trailer, meaning a maximum of 12 stalls could be shipped out at once.

The new hardware’s power cabinet can deliver a maximum of 1.2 megawatts of power, while the dispensers themselves top out at 500 kW. According to Max de Zegher, Tesla’s Senior Director of Charging, this is the first iteration of the company’s foldable pre-assembled Superchargers, and by the next quarter, the technology will already reach the third iteration.