Here’s the world’s first Tesla V4 Supercharger charging a VW ID Buzz

Tesla has only one V4 Supercharger in the world — it opened in March to Tesla drivers and was recently made available to all EVs. The V4 Supercharger is located in Harderwijk, the Netherlands, which is just an hour away from my home in Amsterdam where Tesla has its EMEA headquarters. And since I’ve been testing an all-electric VW ID Buzz for the past few weeks (review coming!), well, I just couldn’t resist a visit.

Tesla has over 45,000 Superchargers worldwide. About 17,000 are in the US, and of those, only about a dozen stations in New York and California are open to other EVs. But in Europe most Supercharger stations are already available to other EVs, many have been for years. So it was no surprise to see Tesla open up its first V4 Supercharger to all comers so quickly.

The V4 charging stall is taller than previous generations and importantly includes a much longer cable. That means some non-Tesla EVs won’t have to park at odd angles to reach the charging port and block other charging stalls in the process — a problem we’ve seen MKBHD demonstrate in his early testing in the US. 

I mean, look how easily the three meter-ish (10 feet-ish) cable reaches the fat VW ID Buzz van in that picture above, while perfectly straddling the parking space like a good citizen.

The V4 charger is theoretically capable of providing up to 615kW of power (615A at 1,000V) but the app says it’s limited to 250kW at the moment — same as V3 charging stalls — which pales in comparison to local Fastned and Ionity chargers that go up to 350kW. But really, it’s fine because the ID Buzz maxes out around 170kW anyway. Oddly, I only saw it charging at 51kW with my battery at 61 percent full, which is unusually low for the ID Buzz’s charging curve (it should have been drawing closer to to 80kW or 90kW at that point). But hey, this was one sample point and I didn’t have time to linger.

I won’t bore you with the steps to charge a non-Tesla EV at a Tesla Supercharger as they remain the same as before. The difference in Europe is that we don’t require a Magic Dock adapter since all Tesla Superchargers have been fitted with CCS ports that are compatible with every Model 3, Y, S or Model X sold here since May 2019.