On Wednesday night, Tesla announced that it has developed a new, faster Supercharger for its electric vehicles. Currently, the company's almost-13,000 Superchargers top out at 120kW.

This was class-leading when Tesla started building out the network; at the time, the fastest DC Fast charger you could find for CHAdeMO or CCS maxed out at just 50kW. But times change, and companies like ElectrifyAmerica and ChargePoint are rolling out new DC Fast chargers for these standards that are capable of recharging a car at much higher power—350kW in the case of ElectrifyAmerica and 500kW in the case of ChargePoint.

Rather than be left behind, Tesla got busy developing its own solution. It's called the V3 Supercharger, and it can support up to 250kW per car, from a cabinet that's rated at 1MW. Tesla says that "[a]t this rate, a Model 3 Long Range operating at peak efficiency can recover up to 75 miles of charge in 5 minutes and charge at rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour."

Additionally, the new design means that any Tesla plugging into it should be able to charge at the full 250kW; the current Superchargers often supply cars with much less than their maximum 120kW if the stalls are full as the chargers have to split the available power as we discovered in our recent Model 3 test.

To make better use of the Supercharger network, Tesla says it will also update its cars with a new feature that begins to prewarm their batteries when they approach a Supercharger, similar to the prewarming that occurs in some models when you use Ludicrous mode. This, Tesla says, will reduce average charging times by 25 percent.

The first beta V3 Supercharger location is now open in the Bay Area, and Tesla says it will break ground on the first proper North American V3 Supercharger location next month, ramping up later this year. We don't believe existing Supercharger sites will be upgraded, however. Instead, these V2 Superchargers will have new software that will boost them to 145kW.

As Tesla's newest vehicle, the Model 3 is already designed to suck in juice from the more powerful V3 Superchargers. Owners of Models S and X will have to wait for software updates in the coming months before being able to benefit from these 250kW stations.