Oct. 20 at 8:10 PM
$NI
The Physical and Economic Limits of Supercharging
Supercharging scales well for private cars, but poorly for mass deployment:
• Grid strain: A Supercharger hub with 20 stalls can draw several megawatts — roughly a small town’s demand.
• Diminishing speed returns: The “fast” charge still takes ~20 minutes because lithium-ion chemistry can’t safely absorb current faster without heat or degradation.
• Battery wear: Frequent fast charging reduces battery lifespan, which hits fleet economics.
• Throughput problem: Even if each charge takes 15 minutes, that’s ~4 vehicles/hour/stall. Multiply that by millions of vehicles, and it just doesn’t scale elegantly.
So while it solves consumer perception in the short term, it’s not structurally efficient for the long term.
