Tesla Rolls out Supercharger Pilot Program for non-Tesla Owners

Tesla has graciously decided to open up its fast-charging stations to non-Tesla vehicles. In the Netherlands. For now.

The electric automaker opened its first Superchargers in 2012, and at present, they have 25,000 stations worldwide.

According to Tesla, it’d always been their plan to open their Supercharger network to the wider public, but for now, they’ll be setting up 10 test sites across the Netherlands, and the experiment will enable the company to “review the experience, monitor congestion and assess feedback before expanding.”

Prospective chargees can use the Tesla app to find available charging stations, and as you’d expect, a recharge is cheaper for Tesla owners vs. the broader EV spectrum, for “additional costs incurred to support charging a broad range of vehicles and adjustments to our sites to accommodate these vehicles.”

This additional overhead is especially true in the U.S. – Europe uses standardized charging cable connectors, while the U.S. has over 6,400 different plugs. So when Superchargers eventually arrive here for non-Tesla owners, the company will have its work cut out for it (or they’ll have to rely on drivers to tote their own adapters).

Either way, it’s a very efficient system, and almost certainly contributes heavily towards normalizing EVs and destroying any remnant of “range anxiety.”

With the original 85 kWh Model S, the stations take about 20 minutes to charge to 50%, 40 minutes to 80%, and 75 minutes to 100%, and the tech is improving all the time.

And just in case Tesla’s global ambitions weren’t abundantly clear, they reiterated that “Our goal is to learn and iterate quickly, while continuing to aggressively expand the network, so we can eventually welcome both Tesla and Non-Tesla drivers at every Supercharger worldwide.”

In you live in the Netherlands, you can find Superchargers stations in Sassenheim, Apeldoorn Oost, Meerkerk, Hengelo, Tilburg, Duiven, Breukelen, Naarden, Eemnes, and Zwolle.