This is how “the longest” charging station was inaugurated last week. But no, it is not in the United States or in Asia that it is located, but in France, near Beaune in Burgundy. The terminals are located near a Leclerc supermarket.
Tesla has entered into a partnership with the French retail company, a strategy it is striving to implement with other players as soon as possible. For customers, being able to charge while shopping is an even greater advantage than charging in a hotel car park near a highway.
Terminals over a hundred meters
In Beaune, the new station has become “the longest” in the Tesla network thanks to its 28 steles positioned side by side. Unlike other stations which distribute the terminals over several rows, sometimes face to face, those of Beaune are all installed next to each other to extend over a hundred meters.
© Electrek
Tesla prides itself on this inauguration, but the station does not make it the largest in the network. Several in France also have 28 terminals, like the one in Vierzon that we tried in Audi, earlier in the year when Tesla opened up part of its network to other manufacturers.
The opening of Superchargers to other brands also explains the urgency for Tesla to offer stations with sufficient capacity to avoid queues and customer frustrations.
The argument of the recharging network remains very important in the eyes of consumers who today see in Tesla the guarantee of being able to circulate everywhere without having any problem recharging. Among the competition, the network may still seem a little light and the prices per minute on the Ionity network (rather than kWh) are enough to disadvantage models with charging speeds of less than 100 kW.
Recall that in March, Porsche mentioned its intention to go independent to build its own charging network, like Tesla. In recent news, too, the Norauto network intends to deploy its own fast charging stations.