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Porsche’s answer to Tesla Supercharger network revealed in IONITY concept video

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9 years ago

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The first concept video of the IONITY charging station – the Volkswagen Group, BMW Group, Daimler AG, and Ford Motor Company’s response to Tesla’s Supercharger network – has been released, giving an idea of the design and features that the rumored 350 kW charging stations would adopt.

The reveal of the IONITY chargers came in time for the 2018 Geneva International Motor Show, an event that has seen the reveal of numerous electric car concepts from legacy automakers such as Volkswagen and BMW. According to a press release on the unveiling of the IONITY concept, the design of the chargers in the teaser video would be adopted for the upcoming Pan-European High-Power Charging Network. A rather creative description of the charger was included in IONITY’s press release.

“As if it were floating, the light box sits like a roof over the slender vertical pylon, giving the charging station the appearance of a beacon, an effect, which is particularly striking at night. In keeping with the character of EMobility, the station’s architecture conveys an open, light and warm sense of space.”

“Crisp, simple structures and surfaces, smart interfaces and a mixture of robust, lightweight materials merge together into a seamless ‘charging experience.’ In keeping with the IONITY logo, the colors represent the flow of energy during the charging process as depicted by the charge status.”

One thing that definitely sticks out from the design of IONITY’s stations is the charger’s clean and sleek appearance. Just like Tesla’s Superchargers, the German automaker’s stations look futuristic, with the chargers being activated by what appears to be a sensor on its frame. This was noticed by members of the online forum community, many of whom are speculating that the sensors on the IONITY charger would respond to mobile devices with NFC and RFID cards.

While IONITY’s design is quite impressive, it remains to be seen if the charging system could indeed provide vehicles such as the Porsche Mission E with 350 kWh of output when plugged in. So far, only concept videos of IONITY have ben released; thus, no real-world demonstrations featuring an electric vehicle using the upcoming charging infrastructure are available. With its expected 350 kW of output, however, Porsche’s claim of charging the Mission E with 248 miles worth of range in just 15 minutes is feasible.

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Overall, it is encouraging to see that legacy automakers from both Europe and the United States are coming together to come up with a system that can rival Tesla’s dominating Supercharger network. As we noted in a previous report, the vast, worldwide system of fast chargers, which enable Tesla’s vehicles to gain hundreds of miles of range in as little as 30 minutes, has become one of Tesla’s biggest aces against its rivals in the electric car industry. Thus, the upcoming release of Supercharger rivals such as IONITY bodes well for CEO Elon Musk, whose primary goal for Tesla is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transportation.

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Lifestyle

Tesla wins over Netflix’s Selling Sunset star, who’s now ditching his Bentley

Selling Sunset’s Jason Oppenheim swapped his Bentley for a Tesla and promised ten for employees.

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6 hours ago

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October 4, 2026

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Jason Oppenheim, the luxury real estate broker best known as the star of Netflix’s Selling Sunset, has parked his Bentley for good and moved into a Tesla Model Y, and he says Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is the reason.

Oppenheim, who founded The Oppenheim Group, the Los Angeles brokerage at the center of the show, posted a video to X on Saturday evening that he called “the most important video I’ve ever posted.” In it, he rides from Newport Beach to his firm’s Los Angeles office, a trip he put at roughly an hour and 15 minutes, while FSD handles the drive and parks the car without him touching the wheel or the accelerator. He said he handed the Bentley to his father because he no longer has any use for it.

Tesla shared the clip from its main account on X about two hours later, pulling out the quote that has since spread well beyond the Tesla community:

“[FSD Supervised] is life-changing. I was on the phone with my brother last night, and I made him buy one. He literally bought one while we were talking. I’m buying 10 of my employees a Tesla with FSD. It’s 8x safer than the average driver. There’s nothing more important than the safety of you and your loved ones.”

Oppenheim was candid about why the safety pitch landed with him. He admitted in the video that he is a distracted driver who answers emails and texts behind the wheel, and framed the employee purchases as a way to keep his team off their phones while driving. Elon Musk posted “Tesla FSD feels like magic” less than half an hour after the video went live.

The endorsement lands at a convenient moment for Tesla. The company delivered 486,532 vehicles in Q3, beating Wall Street’s estimates and marking its best quarter ever without the $7,500 federal EV tax credit.

Tesla FSD has been subscription only in the U.S. since February at $99 per month, and Tesla said in its Q2 update that active subscriptions hit 1.48 million, up 56 percent year over year, with more than 55 percent of new North American deliveries leaving with FSD attached. That attach rate is the figure Ron Baron cited last month when he told CNBC “the time to buy the stock is now.” At current pricing, Oppenheim’s 10 employee cars alone would add $990 a month, or about $11,880 a year, in FSD revenue.

Tesla AI head Ashok Elluswamy said in July that FSD had logged more than 12 billion miles while going roughly twice as far between collisions as manual driving. FSD also remains a supervised system, so Oppenheim and his employees are still required to watch the road, even as Tesla rolls out v14.3.10 with Automatic Collision Evasion, which can steer or brake on its own to avoid a frontal crash.

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Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard

Tesla’s Halloween teaser hides a covered vehicle and an Optimus hand rising from the ground.

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2 days ago

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October 2, 2026

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Tesla has started teasing a Halloween software update for its vehicles, with  a short clip on X that reads, “Halloween is coming.” The clip opens on a glowing pumpkin before pulling back to the car’s center touchscreen, where the usual parked visualization has been replaced by a graveyard scene, and the vehicle draped with a white sheet so it reads as a cartoon ghost.

The second detail is a robotic hand clawing its way out of the dirt like a zombie, which looks to be the hand of Tesla’s latest Optimus V3 humanoid robot. While Tesla still has not formally shown Optimus Gen 3 walking around in service, renders pulled from Tesla’s Android app last month gave the clearest look yet, including far more refined hands that Tesla has said carry 22 degrees of freedom. The hand has been the hardest part of the program. Musk has called it the majority of the robot’s engineering difficulty, and Tesla’s patents describe a design driven by tendons with the actuators moved into the forearm.

Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents

Optimus also has a Halloween track record. Last October the robot handed out candy in Times Square, and a costumed “zombie” Optimus shuffled around the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles on Halloween night.

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On the software side, Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Update expanded Santa Mode with a Santa sleigh, snowmen, snow effects, and a festive lock chime, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched if we saw something similar but themed for a  Halloween Mode.

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Tesla’s newest feature lets you floor it out of a Supercharger while plugged in

Tesla’s new Emergency Drive Away feature lets owners flee a Supercharger while still plugged in.

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3 days ago

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October 1, 2026

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Tesla has given drivers a way to escape while a vehicle is plugged-in at a Supercharger, in the event of an emergency. The company’s charging team announced a new feature on X called Emergency Drive Away, which lets a driver shift into Drive and pull away while the charging cable is still connected to the car.

Until now, a Tesla would not leave Park with a charge cable plugged in. Drivers had to release the latch from the touchscreen, the Tesla app, or the button on the charge handle, then wait for the port to let go. Emergency Drive Away removes that lockout, but Tesla is clear that it comes at a cost. “Use of this feature will damage your vehicle and the Supercharger,” the company wrote, adding that the function is meant for emergencies only and that deliberate misuse will lead to “additional penalties.” Tesla did not say what those penalties are.


The in-car prompt is just as direct, with the warning reading: “Driving with the cable connected will cause damage to your vehicle and the Supercharger. Short camera recordings will be shared with Tesla.” That footage gives Tesla a way to separate a real emergency from someone who simply did not want to wait for the latch.

The feature requires software update 2026.38.3, and Tesla said in replies to owners that it works at every Supercharger in the United States without new stall hardware. Model S and Model X vehicles built before 2021 are not supported, and the company says the feature applies to U.S. Superchargers “for now,” leaving Canada and other markets out at launch.

Tesla Supercharger argument leads to tragic shooting incident

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Tesla did not tie the announcement to any specific event, but it arrives two months after a gunman opened fire at an In-N-Out in Twin Falls, Idaho, on August 1, targeting three people in two Teslas at the neighboring Supercharger. One of them, a 66 year old man from Salt Lake City, was killed. Superchargers have been the scene of violence before, including a fatal shooting at a station near Denver in 2023.

In the weeks after Twin Falls, owners pushed Tesla for a native way to escape a stall, and many pointed back to EVject, the aftermarket breakaway connector Tesla sued in 2024 over claims it lacked overtemperature protection. The two companies later reached an agreement that led EVject to recall its earlier connectors in favor of a version with thermal sensors.

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