DOUGLAS COUNTY, Ore. — This story is available courtesy of KGW's news partner Portland Business Journal.
That giant Tesla Supercharger station planned for a small town in Douglas County, Oregon, is up and running.
The company’s Tesla Charging account tweeted about the new 51-stall station off Interstate 5 in Sutherlin late last week. And on LinkedIn, a Portland-based Tesla EV infrastructure project developer posted that he was “proud to be part of the team that built the largest charging site outside of California.”
It’s good news for Tesla drivers plying I-5 — the Sutherlin station, 165 miles south of Portland, is about 30 miles north of one in Myrtle Creek and 50 miles south of another in Creswell, filling an 80-mile Tesla charging gap on the major north-south route. (According to a poster on the Tesla Motor Club forum, the largest gap on I-5 is now a 62-mile stretch in California between Redding and Mount Shasta.)
The Sutherlin outpost also figures to boost business for a clutch of fast-food joints at the same exit and nearby.
But less clear was whether the station will benefit drivers of electric vehicles that don’t come out of Tesla’s factories.
The Tesla-owned Supercharging network has always been a perk for the Teslarati alone. But the company and White House announced last week that Tesla will make at least 3,500 new and existing Superchargers (and 4,000 slower Tesla “Destination” chargers) available to all electric vehicles by the end of next year.
No details on locations have been released, however. Attempts to reach Tesla about plans for the Sutherlin station through its press email address bounced back with the reply that “the mailbox is full and can't accept messages now.”
Tesla Superchargers can charge at up to 250 kilowatts, adding as much as 200 miles of driving range in about 15 minutes. In Oregon, Tesla drivers report charging costs between 17 and 38 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending on location and time of charging. Most Teslas can travel about 4 miles on a kilowatt-hour of juice.
