Charging

Tesla charging chief Max de Zegher confirmed on 3 September 2026 that Tesla is building Supercharger sites reserved for its robotaxi fleet, chosen for back-to-back sessions, cheap land near demand and low capex. Until they exist, the driverless fleet is plugged in by hand at public Superchargers, mostly overnight.

Lidl GB cut rapid charging to 59p/kWh from 62p for Lidl Plus app users and committed £10m to about 100 more rapid chargers this financial year. Its £529 annual saving is measured against an 80p/kWh market average, not its own old tariff — and sits above Tesla's UK Supercharger rates.

Freedom of Information responses from 414 UK councils, gathered May–July 2026, found 50% provide no on-street charging while 39% now do, against 31% in 2023. More than 70% of Britain's on-street chargers are in London, which is the real finding for anyone without a driveway.

The Bundesnetzagentur's charging registry counted 212,064 publicly accessible charging points in Germany on 1 August 2026 — up 15.6% year on year — across 12,914 operators and 9.22 GW of installed capacity. Tesla is the third-largest operator with 3,951 points, and the fastest-growing power class is one no Tesla can fully use.

Shell has opened its first three state-co-funded 400 kW charging sites in Poland, at Marki, Poznań and Białystok, with 25 stations due by the end of 2026 and at least 60 by the end of 2028. Shell admits its Polish sites are among the most expensive on the market and has published no tariff.

The fifth BDEW user survey, run by UScale among 1,009 German EV drivers in July and August 2026, found inner-city charging hub use rose from 21% to 39% while motorway charging fell from 50% to 34%. Three-quarters pay at most 59 ct/kWh AC and 69 ct/kWh DC.

Ionity's 200th German location opened in Karlsruhe on 7 September with twelve high-power points - eight Alpitronic HYC1000 units rated to 600 kW per car and four HYC400s at 400 kW - taking the network past 1,500 high-power points in Germany. No Tesla draws more than 250 kW, but a deep power reserve is what stops a busy site from throttling one.

Tesla's production Cybercab has no onboard AC charger, so it cannot be plugged into a Wall Connector or a household socket. DC fast charging through a hidden NACS port is the only wired route. Kyle Conner of Out of Spec Reviews reported the omission after examining the car in Austin, calling it a cost and durability choice for a fleet-only vehicle. It lands days after Tesla opened a form inviting companies to buy Cybercab fleets, and it sets out what those buyers would have to build.

Tesla added the Cybercab to its 3D Supercharger site maps on 4 September 2026. The feature has grown from 18 pilot sites to almost every US Supercharger, but Europe still has only Brugge and Heusden-Zolder in Belgium, and it needs an AMD Ryzen computer.

Avere-France counted 18,289 collective residential buildings with charging at the end of Q2 2026, up 45% year on year, carrying 44,331 charge points. That is 7.2% of France's roughly 252,000 collective buildings with parking, with another 43,648 buildings approved but not yet built.

Shell Recharge modernised 150 fast-charging points at more than 40 German sites by the end of August 2026, with at least 50 more due by year-end, out of a German network of roughly 2,400 points. Shell says the aim is everyday reliability rather than headline count, but disclosed no power ratings, no hardware detail and no before-and-after uptime figures.

Schneider Electric's new $695 home charger ships with the current-transformer clamps needed for dynamic load balancing. A Tesla Wall Connector needs a separately purchased $210 Remote Meter for the same function, which InsideEVs puts at about $745 all in. It is a North American launch, but Tesla sells the metering hardware separately in Europe too.

Chargecloud and Hubject have announced at icnc26 in Berlin that they are integrating Hubject's public key infrastructure into chargecloud's charge-point software, extending certificate-based Plug&Charge from DC fast chargers to AC charging points. Operators on the platform inherit it without extra integration work. Three things still have to line up: an ISO 15118-2 charge point, an equipped car and a provisioned contract certificate.

Austrian charging firm Volterio has demonstrated an automated conductive dock that charges a reversing Tesla at up to 250 kW with nobody plugging anything in. Tesla has committed to inductive wireless charging instead, which won an FCC waiver in February but has not shipped - so the first Cybercabs are expected to be plugged in by hand.

Bk World has opened a charging lounge in Munster with 20 charge points: 12 EnBW chargers up to 400 kW and 8 Tesla V4 Superchargers up to 250 kW. It is the first Bk World site to combine both networks, and it sits minutes from the A1 with an air-conditioned lounge, toilets and stocked fridges.

Orlen Charge's summer promotion expired at 9am on 1 September 2026, restoring a flat 2.69 zł/kWh on DC and 1.95 zł/kWh on AC with no subscription. GreenWay still discounts selected sites to 1.79-2.09 zł/kWh until 30 September. Against the restored tariffs, Tesla Superchargers average about 1.60 zł/kWh for Tesla owners — roughly 40% below Orlen and the cheapest DC option in the country.

Clever Tanken, Germany's market-leading fuel-price portal, has turned its Clever Laden section into a full charging platform through the Berlin startup Cariqa. Drivers can now start and pay for a session in the app at the operator's own price, with no roaming intermediary taking a cut.

BYD says it has installed 10,000 of its 1,500 kW Flash Chargers in China, half its 2026 target, and is putting the same hardware into the UK with 200-300 stations promised by year-end. The network is open to other brands, though no Tesla can draw more than 325 kW.

Germany now has between 209,605 and 233,000 public charge points depending on whose register you read, with fast chargers growing about 40% a year. Ad-hoc charging still costs 57 cents per kWh on AC and about five cents more on DC, held flat by fast chargers averaging over 2.5 sessions a day.

Geely Holding Group says it is developing a 1,000-volt vehicle architecture so its cars can draw the full 1,500 kW its Zeekr charging network already advertises. Today's 800-volt Geely cars peak near 1,100 kW; the Lynk & Co 10 charges 10-80% in 5 minutes 32 seconds and Geely wants to beat 5.5 minutes. No production date has been given, and BYD got to 1,000 volts first.

Tesla has announced 36 winning locations from its latest owner Supercharger Voting round — 16 in the US, three in Canada and nine in Europe, from Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands to Šibenik in Croatia and Obstalden in the Swiss Alps. Voting has already reopened, reportedly with 84 candidate sites.

Walmart reached 100 self-operated DC fast-charging locations across 20 US states on 24 August, every site fitted with both CCS and NACS at up to 400 kW. It charges about 23% less per kWh than Tesla, and Ionna about 34% less — in the same quarter Tesla's all-time share of US fast-charging ports fell below 50% for the first time.

With IF Metall's industrial action suspended, Tesla is commissioning 264 new Supercharger stalls across 20 Swedish sites — roughly 20% network growth, from about 1,350 to over 1,600 charging points. Every new and existing site is open to all brands.

A BYD France engineer recorded 721.85 kW charging a Denza Z9 GT at an Atlante charger in Saint-Flour rated at 600 kW, going from 47% to 80% in four minutes. Europe's charging hardware now runs roughly three times ahead of what any Tesla can accept.