Tesla opening up its Supercharger network for other brands is always great news for the EVs in that area, and it looks like UK EV drivers could take advantage of this very soon. For the UK, Tesla has so far not announced plans of opening the network, but Electrifying has information from UK Transport Minister Trudy Harrison that it could happen “within weeks and months rather than years.”
The news was broken during a drive/interview around London in a Vauxhall Mokka, when the Transport Minister was asked about the state of the UK charging infrastructure and what the strategies are to make it better (video embedded at the start of the article). She does not want to say where the information is from, but she seems certain that it will happen sooner than anyone is expecting.
At first, the Tesla only opened certain stations in the Netherlands for all EVs, then did the same in France and Norway, before finally opening the entire Dutch Supercharger network last month. After opening its Superchargers in the Netherlands, Tesla has not made any announcements about future expansions, either to the UK or any other country.
The UK Supercharger network is almost 800-strong (there are currently 6,000 Superchargers in Europe) so it would really help improve the lives of all EV owners in the country. Electric vehicle sales have soared in popularity in the UK last year - 11.6 percent of all new cars sold in 2021 in the UK were electric, as were 12.5 percent of all cars sold in January of this year.
Many of these new EVs will be looking for public charging, so maybe the minister let slip that the British government is currently in talks with Tesla, trying to get the manufacturer to open its Superchargers maybe sooner than it was initially ready to without any kind of government pressure.
