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Tesla to reveal Supercharger V3 at live event in Fremont tonight

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Tesla’s first operational Supercharger V3 will be unveiled in Fremont, California on Wednesday night. Tesla has sent invitations to select Model 3 owners to be among the first users of its newest ultra-fast V3 Supercharger.

“As an Early Access Program member, you’re invited to experience the next generation of long-distance travel by V3 Supercharging your Model 3. Join us this Wednesday at 8PM, space is limited.” reads the email invitation.

The invite-only event will take place this evening at 8 pm Pacific in Fremont. No guests will be allowed.

Tesla invitation to attend V3 Supercharging event in Fremont (Credit: @privater via Twitter)
Tesla invitation to attend V3 Supercharging event in Fremont on March 6, 2019 (Credit: @privater via Twitter)

Details of Supercharger V3.0 have remained sparse, but judging by the teaser image in Tesla’s email invitation, a much thinner charging cable can be seen which seemingly validates Supercharger V3 rumors of a liquid-cooled charging cable being used.

Update: Tesla Supercharger V3 details surface in latest Firmware Release Notes

CEO Elon Musk first announced during Tesla’s 2015 Annual Shareholders from Mountain View, CA that liquid-cooled charging cables would be integrated into various Supercharger locations.

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“We’ve just introduced an upgrade which is a liquid cooled cable which means that the cable can be really thin. In fact, we have the first working version of that here at the Mountain View Supercharger location, so you can try it up for yourself.” said Musk at the time.

By using a thinner cord, Tesla is able to give owners more maneuverability when plugging into their vehicles, while keeping the operating temperature in the cable lower and allowing for higher current.

“It has caused some customers to be quite puzzled that they are plugging a Supercharger with this tiny cord and they thought something was wrong but that’s actually just our next generation cord, because if the cord is liquid cool, you can actually make it very thin and subtle. So instead of trying to wrestles, it’s sort of a good sized snake into the car, it’s the thin subtle cord; it’s really great,” added Musk about the benefits of using a thinner, liquid-cooled cable.

Musk also noted in the 2015 Annual Shareholder Meeting that by using liquid cooling, Superchargers can handle more power thereby lead to even faster charging. “It also has the potential for increased power of the Supercharger long-term.”

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V3 Supercharging is Tesla’s next-generation of ultra-fast charging expected to have a power output of 200 kW and max capacity of 250 kW. The charger also has a near-identical form factor as the current generation Supercharger, albeit with a slightly wider base to support an internal cooling pump.

Stay with us as we bring you official details of Tesla Supercharger V3 to come.

I'm friendly. You can email me. gene@teslarati.com

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Tesla partners with Lemonade for new insurance program

Tesla recently was offered “almost free” coverage for Full Self-Driving by Lemonade’s Shai Wininger, President and Co-founder, who said it would be “happy to explore insuring Tesla FSD miles for (almost) free.”

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla owners in California, Oregon, and Arizona can now use Lemonade Insurance, the firm that recently said it could cover Full Self-Driving miles for “almost free.”

Lemonade, which offered the new service through its app, has three distinct advantages, it says:

  • Direct Connection for no telematics device needed
  • Better customer service
  • Smarter pricing

The company is known for offering unique, fee-based insurance rates through AI, and instead of keeping unclaimed premiums, it offers coverage through a flat free upfront. The leftover funds are donated to charities by its policyholders.

On Thursday, it announced that cars in three states would be able to be connected directly to the car through its smartphone app, enabling easier access to insurance factors through telematics:

Tesla recently was offered “almost free” coverage for Full Self-Driving by Lemonade’s Shai Wininger, President and Co-founder, who said it would be “happy to explore insuring Tesla FSD miles for (almost) free.”

The strategy would be one of the most unique, as it would provide Tesla drivers with stable, accurate, and consistent insurance rates, while also incentivizing owners to utilize Full Self-Driving for their travel miles.

Tesla Full Self-Driving gets an offer to be insured for ‘almost free’

This would make FSD more cost-effective for owners and contribute to the company’s data collection efforts.

Data also backs Tesla Full Self-Driving’s advantages as a safety net for drivers. Recent figures indicate it was nine times less likely to be in an accident compared to the national average, registering an accident every 6.36 million miles. The NHTSA says a crash occurs approximately every 702,000 miles.

Tesla also offers its own in-house insurance program, which is currently offered in twelve states so far. The company is attempting to enter more areas of the U.S., with recent filings indicating the company wants to enter Florida and offer insurance to drivers in that state.

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Tesla Model Y gets hefty discounts and more in final sales push

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla Model Y configurations are getting hefty discounts and more benefits as the company is in the phase of its final sales push for the year.

Tesla is offering up to $1,500 off new Model Y Standard trims that are available in inventory in the United States. Additionally, Tesla is giving up to $2,000 off the Premium trims of the Model Y. There is also one free upgrade included, such as a paint color or interior color, at no additional charge.

Tesla is hoping to bolster a relatively strong performance through the first three quarters of the year, with over 1.2 million cars delivered through the first three quarters.

This is about four percent under what the company reported through the same time period last year, as it was about 75,000 vehicles ahead in 2024.

However, Q3 was the company’s best quarterly performance of all time, and it surged because of the loss of the $7,500 EV tax credit, which was eliminated in September. The imminent removal of the credit led to many buyers flocking to Tesla showrooms to take advantage of the discount, which led to a strong quarter for the company.

2024 was the first year in the 2020s when Tesla did not experience a year-over-year delivery growth, as it saw a 1 percent slide from 2023. The previous years saw huge growth, with the biggest coming from 2020 to 2021, when Tesla had an 87 percent delivery growth.

This year, it is expected to be a second consecutive slide, with a drop of potentially 8 percent, if it manages to deliver 1.65 million cars, which is where Grok projects the automaker to end up.

Tesla will likely return to its annual growth rate in the coming years, but the focus is becoming less about delivery figures and more about autonomy, a major contributor to the company’s valuation. As AI continues to become more refined, Tesla will apply these principles to its Full Self-Driving efforts, as well as the Optimus humanoid robot project.

Will Tesla thrive without the EV tax credit? Five reasons why they might

These discounts should help incentivize some buyers to pull the trigger on a vehicle before the year ends. It will also be interesting to see if the adjusted EV tax credit rules, which allowed deliveries to occur after the September 30 cutoff date, along with these discounts, will have a positive impact.

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Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’

“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026.”

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla Full Self-Driving’s newest model is coming very soon, and from what it sounds like, it could be “the last big piece of the puzzle,” as CEO Elon Musk said in late November.

During the xAI Hackathon on Tuesday, Musk was available for a Q&A session, where he revealed some details about Robotaxi and Tesla’s plans for removing Robotaxi Safety Monitors, and some information on a future FSD model.

While he said Full Self-Driving’s unsupervised capability is “pretty much solved,” and confirmed it will remove Safety Monitors in the next three weeks, questions about the company’s ability to give this FSD version to current owners came to mind.

Musk said a new FSD model is coming in about a month or two that will be an order-of-magnitude larger and will include more reasoning and reinforcement learning.

He said:

“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026. We’re gonna add a lot of reasoning and RL (reinforcement learning). To get to serious scale, Tesla will probably need to build a giant chip fab. To have a few hundred gigawatts of AI chips per year, I don’t see that capability coming online fast enough, so we will probably have to build a fab.”

It rings back to late November when Musk said that v14.3 “is where the last big piece of the puzzle finally lands.”

With the advancements made through Full Self-Driving v14 and v14.2, there seems to be a greater confidence in solving self-driving completely. Musk has also personally said that driver monitoring has been more relaxed, and looking at your phone won’t prompt as many alerts in the latest v14.2.1.

This is another indication that Tesla is getting closer to allowing people to take their eyes off the road completely.

Along with the Robotaxi program’s success, there is evidence that Tesla could be close to solving FSD. However, it is not perfect. We’ve had our own complaints with FSD, and although we feel it is the best ADAS on the market, it is not, in its current form, able to perform everything needed on roads.

But it is close.

That’s why there is some legitimate belief that Tesla could be releasing a version capable of no supervision in the coming months.

All we can say is, we’ll see.

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