Tesla will enable cars from other manufacturers to use its Supercharger network later this year, according to Elon Musk.

The company’s CEO made the announcement on Twitter. No further details of the arrangement have been outlined.

On a charge

His tweet said: “we’re making our Supercharger network open to other EVs later this year.”

Currently the Tesla Supercharger Network is available exclusively to Tesla drivers. This means units in the UK do not have to meet the Government’s requirements for ad-hoc access to public charging.

The Supercharger points provide up to 250kW of charging power. It will require users of non-Tesla vehicles to use a socket adapter for compatibility. There are currently 600 charge points in the network.

Positives and negatives

Telsa’s Supercharger network was found to be the nation’s favourite in a recent poll by What Car?.

Users rated it very highly for reliability, charging speed, ease of payment and value for money, giving it an overall score of 89.8%.

Drivers of other electric vehicles told What Car? that the Instavolt network was their preferred public charger. It achieved an overall score of 81.2% and was the top scoring network for reliability with 92.6%.

Gridserve’s Electric Highway gained the highest score of 74.9% for location. At the same time the motorway network was rated worst for reliability, scoring just 23.7%. This network was previously operated by Ecotricity and has only recently been taken over by Gridserve. They are promising to revamp every location by the end of this year.

When it comes to charging speed, Tesla took the lead and scored 95.5% A close second comes Ionity with 95.3% – both providers offer charging speeds of above 200kW.

Tesla’s flat charging fee of 28p per kWh helped it gain the best score for value for money, too. Ionity’s 69p per kWh charge earned it a rating of just 19.5%, the worst in What Car?’s data.

The easiest networks to use were those that allowed drivers to tap and pay and didn’t require them to register. Those  with glitchy apps, lengthy sign-up processes or a requirement to use a physical charging card to activate a charge point were rated down in this area. Worst of all was Charge Place Scotland, which has a complex and lengthy registration process .

However, it was Charge Your Car that came last overall. Their charge points were deemed unreliable and had no dedicated electric car bays. This ,meant other vehicle were often parked in the way. It scored just 26.6% for reliability and 34.4% for location, and managed only 43.5% overall.

What Car? charge point survey results

Company Reliability Location Charging speed Value for money Ease of payment Overall score
1 Tesla 83.7% 74.3% 95.5% 95.5% 100% 89.8%
2 Instavolt 92.6% 63.5% 79.0% 71.0% 100% 81.2%
3 Osprey 80.6% 71.3% 61.7% 69.8% 100% 76.7%
4 Shell Recharge 75.0% 53.5% 91.7% 57.5% 100% 75.5%
5 Pod Point 70.3% 69.9% 54.7% 93.0% 70.0% 71.6%
6 Gridserve Electric Highway 23.7% 74.9% 84.6% 67.6% 100% 70.2%
7 BP Pulse 36.9% 45.0% 87.2% 52.0% 100% 64.2%
8 Ionity 60.6% 61.4% 95.3% 19.5% 70.0% 61.4%
9 Engie 53.8% 54.5% 59.5% 91.9% 40.0% 59.9%
10 Charge Place Scotland 55.0% 63.7% 60.5% 90.9% 20.0% 58.0%
11 GeniePoint 58.5% 34.6% 55.0% 70.8% 70.0% 57.8%
12 Charge Your Car 26.6% 34.4% 49.2% 67.2% 40.0% 43.5%