With news that electronic car manufacturer Tesla is to site three ‘superchargers’ in Portugal in 2017, pundits are asking: “Is this just the first step” towards establishing southern Europe’s first ‘giga-factory’ on national soil?
It is a question that for now is still receiving no answers.
But this weekend, the company at the hands of a ‘visionary’ who has been invited onto Donald Trump’s advisory council announced its supercharger expansion plans for 2017, and they involve three sites in Portugal: one between Lisbon and Porto, one in the Alentejo and one in the Algarve.
As Dinheiro Vivo explains, this news follows Tesla establishing a registered office in Lisbon (click here) and having been in talks with the government (click here).
For now, DV simply outlines the beauty of a ‘supercharger’ network: It is a site where electric car batteries can be charged at a rate of 16 times the speed of normal charging stations.
Giving the example of a Tesla Model S vehicle, 20 minutes could see its battery restored to half capacity.
Tesla currently has more than 4800 ‘superchargers’ in 769 locations around the world, says DV – and the company is hoping to double this tally by the end of 2017.
It is all “positive news for Portugal, but the great hope lies in the eventual arrival in our country of Tesla’s future factory in Europe”, the online paper reiterates, adding that Spain, France, Holland, the Czech Republic “and more recently Hungary are all in the running”.
