Tesla Motors looks to be expanding its footprint in Europe much like larger rival Ford. The electric car company, via a pair of recent announcements, is building up its related infrastructure to support Model S owners as the orders hopefully start to pile up like they have in the United States.

In one announcement, Tesla said it opened a new assembly plant in the Netherlands city of Tilburg. This facility, which will serve as the final assembly and distribution point for Model S vehicles sold in Europe as well as Tesla’s European service and parts headquarters, has a size of 18.900 square meters. From here, parts can be distributed to anywhere across the continent within 12 hours because of its location in “proximity to the port of Rotterdam and the high quality and availability of transportation infrastructure. An excellent rail and motorway network connects Tilburg to all major markets.”

image via Tesla Motors
image via Tesla Motors

An interesting thing to note is we talked about Tesla’s plans for Tilburg back in December, writing at the time the company planned to open the facility in that month. It isn’t immediately clear of the time lag, but it likely doesn’t matter that much for Tesla fans since some of the very first Dutch, Belgian, French and German Model S customers just received their cars at the brand new facility.

Meanwhile, over in Norway, Model S drivers who are just now getting their cars have a new Supercharger network to recharge their EV’s batteries at. Much like the one we just covered here in Oregon, the Norwegian locations in Lyngdal, Aurland, Dombås, Gol, Cinderella and Lillehammer are designed to “provide half a charge in about 20 minutes, delivering up to 120 kW DC (Direct Current) power directly to the Model S battery using special cables that bypass the onboard charging equipment.” And, best of all, it is free.

Tesla believes this new network places its chargers within 320 km of 90 percent of Norway’s population, as well as within about the same distance with 60 percent of the country’s total land mass. As an example of what might be capable with this national deployment, three Model S vehicles were driven 500 km recently to Oslo from locations in the north, west and south of Norway along the major routes of Trondheim-Dombås-Lillehammer-Oslo; Bergen-Aurland-Gol-Oslo; and Stavanger-Lyngdal- Cinderella-Oslo. During the trips each car charged at two of the new Supercharger locations.