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Tesla raises the bar with 60-stall Supercharger station in Gigafactory Shanghai

(Credit: Wu Wa)

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One of Tesla’s largest Supercharger stations is currently under construction in Gigafactory Shanghai. Tesla enthusiast and drone operator Wu Wa, who has been documenting the progress of the electric car factory, recorded footage of the massive Supercharger in China.

Giga Shanghai’s Supercharger station is located on the east side of the factory and has already started operations. Several newly-minted made-in-China Model 3s were spotted charging from the available stalls when Wu Wa conducted his recent flyover.

Gigafactory Shanghai’s freshly-built Supercharger station is divided into four long strips, with each strip seemingly containing 16 Supercharger stalls. If each strip contains the same number of stalls, there will be a total of 64 Superchargers available to use in Giga Shanghai. Interestingly enough, supercharge.info reports that the site will host 60 Supercharger stalls instead.

https://twitter.com/bentv_sh/status/1316778799107694593?s=20

With 60 (or more) Supercharger stalls, the Shanghai factory’s station will likely be Tesla’s largest one to date once it is complete. The size of the station makes sense for Tesla’s Giga Shanghai operations, however, considering that the facility is producing vast numbers of vehicles every day.

Whether all the stalls installed in Giga Shanghai’s Supercharger station are V3 is unclear. However, it seems reasonable to speculate that most if not all would be V3 Superchargers, considering that it will power vehicles fresh out of Gigafactory Shanghai’s production line.

Funnily enough, one of the top Q3 2020 earnings call questions with the most votes, as of this writing, on Say.com asks about Supercharger V2 upgrades. The retail investor asked when Tesla will focus on upgrading existing V2 chargers to V3. The investor noted that while expanding the Tesla Supercharger network is a priority, it would be great to know when improvements would come for existing stations.

There are currently two 50-stall Supercharger stations in China. One is located in the Lilac International Business Center in Shanghai and the other is the Baolong Mansion Supercharger station in Beijing. The 50-stall Supercharger stations mentioned above used to hold the “World’s Largest” title.

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In September 2020, Tesla was gearing up to make an even more impressive Supercharger Station with 56 stalls in Firebaugh, California. According to fillings retrieved by a Tesla enthusiast, the 56-stall Supercharger station would be built in the vicinity of a restaurant and convenience store. Elon Musk has talked about building a 50s-themed restaurant near a Supercharger station in the past and many speculate that it will be located in Firebaugh.

Watch Wu Wa’s recent flyover of the Gigafactory Shanghai site in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAwBUoqxy4Y

Maria--aka "M"-- is an experienced writer and book editor. She's written about several topics including health, tech, and politics. As a book editor, she's worked with authors who write Sci-Fi, Romance, and Dark Fantasy. M loves hearing from TESLARATI readers. If you have any tips or article ideas, contact her at maria@teslarati.com or via X, @Writer_01001101.

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Tesla just built it 10 millionth car

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla just officially confirmed it has built its 10 millionth car, a major milestone for the company that started producing sustainable electric powertrains less than two decades ago.

In that time, Tesla has truly revolutionized the automotive industry, disrupting the idea of what a car should be, how it should be fueled, and how it truly impacts day-to-day life.

Tesla achieved this feat across four production facilities: the Fremont Factory in Fremont, California, Gigafactory Shanghai in China, Gigafactory Berlin in Germany, and Gigafactory Texas in Austin, Texas.

The 10 millionth vehicle was a Diamond Black Model Y.

Over the course of the past roughly 18 years, Tesla has evolved its lineup from a sporty sedan built on a Lotus body to a lineup of various body styles, performance metrics, and other characteristics that make each one unique.

This is an incredible achievement for a company that is young compared to what it goes up against. When Tesla entered the automotive market, Ford, GM, and Stellantis widely dominated the playing field. Since then, Tesla has caused such a disruption that these three massive brands had to scramble to create EV projects of their own.

Despite their best efforts, they have not been able to match the prowess or the effectiveness of Tesla. They are all reliant on Tesla’s charging infrastructure, their software is inferior, and their self-driving projects are elementary in comparison.

Tesla felt its fair share of growing pains over the years as well. As recent at 2019, there were complaints about build quality, paint quality, and overall luxuriousness. These things have all been improved upon through the company’s maturity, and these strides in quality have led to this 10 million vehicle production achievement, something that other small-and-scrappy EV makers will hope to accomplish one day.

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Elon Musk

SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites

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SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.

The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.

SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters

Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.

SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.

With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.

Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.

Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk sheds two new bits of detail on Starship after 13th test launch

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Credit: SpaceX

Elon Musk shed two new bits of detail on Starship following its 13th test launch, which was an overwhelming success.

SpaceX launched Starship for the 13th time last Friday after two delays: one on Monday when several Raptor engines did not ignite, and another on Thursday due to unfavorable weather conditions in Starbase, Texas.

The launch was overwhelmingly successful. SpaceX was able to complete a necessary test of the heat shield tiles by increasing the acceleration of Starship from launch throughout the flight; 20 Starlink v3 satellites were released with no issue; the Super Heavy Booster landed safely in the Gulf of America, Ship successfully reignited engines while in space; and it also splashed down without incident in the Indian Ocean.

SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before

Nevertheless, more details are coming out about Starship, and Musk is doing the talking.

Starship Will Be Retrieved in the Ocean

Musk revealed on Tuesday night that Starship would be recovered by a ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX routinely tries to recover Starship after splashdown in an effort to find out more about the flight by examining the spacecraft afterward.

This helps engineers find out more about why things might have happened, allows them to examine any potential damage or anomalies that might have occurred, and increases the chances of an even more successful flight next time thanks to the additional information recovered.

Ship Could Have Been Caught by Tower Arms, Musk claims

Musk has already indicated that SpaceX will plan to attempt a catch of Starship with the 14th test flight. While this would be a major accomplishment, it would be an expected next step, considering the fact that the Super Heavy Booster has already been caught by the chopsticks on numerous occasions.

A ship catch would be a great indication of where SpaceX stands in terms of reusability and launch cadence. A successful catch with relatively no incidents would be a good sign that SpaceX is nearing a more frequent launch of Starship, but also that the reusability of the massive rocket would be something many would expect in the near future.

It is a necessity to make life multiplanetary.

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