So 1000 miles doesn't seem like a lot. That's like one roadtrip and your annual allowance is gone. I wonder what the small fee will be after that.
Also, I wonder how they will be tracking usage? In the car or the supercharger network? I would assume the supercharger network, but does that mean that when you plug in, your car sends a unique identifier? I'm curious how that all works.
In the Charging Estimator section on their website, they think that a Model competitor gets 21 mpg (https://www.tesla.com/models) and gas is $2.70/gallon, so I would expect it to be based on that.
Yes the car already performs a handshake with the supercharger and verifies the car's eligibility. At some earlier point they sold lower-end Model S's that did not come with Supercharger access. Presumably they can lock out stolen cars, etc.
This feature was bound to go freemium: first make it free to build an infrastructure and have cars that need the charging stations then slowly ratchet up the pricing to make it another revenue center
Sadly, that's not a legally binding contract, and even if it were, it's too short and doesn't define things like "profit center", leaving a lot of wiggle room. Never is a long time. Elon Musk won't be running Tesla forever. Tesla may not even be around in 50 years. (I hope they are.)
It works just fine for me; maybe try again. In either case, here's the text:
Four years ago, Tesla introduced the Supercharger Network – the world’s fastest charging solution – to enable convenient long distance travel. Today, more than 4,600 Superchargers allow over 160,000 Tesla owners to drive across the continental U.S., from the Arctic Circle to the south of Spain, and across all of the population centers in China and Japan, among many other places. Supercharging has even helped owners drive their Teslas around the world.
We’ve designed our network so that all customers have access to a seamless and convenient charging experience when they’re away from home, as our intention has always been for Supercharging to enable long distance travel. That’s why today we’re announcing a change to the economics of Supercharging – one that allows us to reinvest in the network, accelerate its growth and bring all owners, current and future, the best Supercharging experience.
Ensuring Use for Long-Distance Travel
For Teslas ordered after January 1, 2017, 400 kWh of free Supercharging credits (roughly 1,000 miles) will be included annually so that all owners can continue to enjoy free Supercharging during travel. Beyond that, there will be a small fee to Supercharge which will be charged incrementally and cost less than the price of filling up a comparable gas car. All cars will continue to come standard with the onboard hardware required for Supercharging.
We will release the details of the program later this year, and while prices may fluctuate over time and vary regionally based on the cost of electricity, our Supercharger Network will never be a profit center.
These changes will not impact current owners or any new Teslas ordered before January 1, 2017, as long as delivery is taken before April 1, 2017.
The Road Ahead
Just as you would charge your cell phone, we believe the best way to charge your car is either at home or at work, during the hours you’re not using it. For travelers, the Supercharger Network has become a powerful, unique benefit of Tesla ownership. As we approach the launch of Model 3, this update will enable us to greatly expand our Supercharger Network, providing customers with the best possible user experience and bringing sustainable transport to even more people.
Net net: they intend super chargers to be for travelers and not everyday use. Probably because the super chargers are getting clogged up with people who are actually driving locally and could have charged at home.
That has been considered. But you get into a lot of corner cases. For instance. I might suddenly need to go on a long drive. I only have 25% SoC and I will use the closest supercharger to charge up to 80% and be on my way.
This way they add a cost to supercharging and people get to control their allotted free charge capacity as they see fit.
You would just charge money for Supercharger usage that isn't part of a long-distance trip. The price would still be affordable, just like this article describes. In other words, it would be just like the upcoming situation the article describes, except that Superchargers would be free if the car's GPS demonstrates that you're on a long-distance drive.
When something usually goes from paid to free, it's an indicator the product fit isn't working. In this case it's the opposite.
Now we're seeing the free incentive to buy being given a marginal cost to help ensure the spread of the service. This is likely because of increased usage and/or projected demand. So basically, it's a sign Tesla is doing ok.
The only relevant point that's missing is the economics of that.
If your car < 2017, free supercharge on some models.
If your car > 2017, there'll be a fee after some use (1,000 miles, more or less).
What will be the price of the cars > 2017? What will be the fee? It might be fair (if the price reduces enought so that the fee is compensated during the car's lifetime). It might be tricky (no price redution and a fee that just annoys those who travel and count on supercharge).
One would hope the price would drop on S/X models to reflect it but then again, they really don't need to as it may not be a major factor in sales.
It will be very interesting how they handle people who park overnight or groups which hog existing sites. They probably need to set a limit for existing cars, high enough to not annoy non commercial owners.
Plus, it might be a subtle way to increase sales last quarter.
If you work out how many $$$ are involved, it's trivial compared to the price of the cars. As another datapoint, adding free lifetime charging to the now-discontinued low-end Model S cars was $2,000.
I'd bet that the dominant economic thing is how annoying it is to rent land and construct lots of little facilities. Reducing supercharging from free-for-all to mainly long distance charging is a way to minimize the annoyance while keeping most of the benefit to car owners.
Apparently they're getting hogged up by ride sharing companies. Some even have their cleaning crews scheduled to show up at the super chargers to clean while they're charging.
I would think they would have some view of the behavior regardless of the reddit post (for sure occupancy statistics for each charger; apparently per car usage statistics).
They could probably reduce that problem by opening fee based charging stations closer to the populations the cars serve. Time is money and all that.
No one is suggesting Elon Musk read 1 reddit post 18 hours ago and changed the entire program overnight.
The reddit post is merely a current iteration of a common complaint popping up on various forums and customer feedback tools for a while now.
Elon and Tesla likely are aware of commercial use of SC stations for a long time now.
The point of posting the most-current-iteration-reddit post isn't "Elon saw this and changed the program 12 hours later" but rather "here's today's discussion of last years problem that perhaps Elon is fixing today"
Also its worth mentioning that none of this was 'free' to begin with. Tesla could afford to run these stations with no cost to the customer because the customer just paid $100,000 on a car that had enough margin to pay for perks like these.
With the Model 3 coming, I imagine competition from Chevy and others will keep prices low, so that means a cooked in premium to pay for the Supercharger network isn't in the cards anymore. Personally, I prefer things this way. Whenever a resource is free, it means the average users are simply subsidizing the heaviest users, who are often abusing the service, like ride sharing and taxi services are now. Metered pricing with a lowered up-front makes a lot more sense.
From that thread: "At times, I've even seen tesloop cars left charging over night."
I hope Tesla changes their system so that once a vehicle is fully charged, the user would be charged for the time that they remain hooked up beyond a full charge. Sort of like how Amazon AWS charges for reserved but unused public IPs. Much like an unused IP, being hooked up to the charger while not actually charging might not be "consuming anything", it is preventing others from using it.
This would discourage people from leaving their vehicles overnight or plugged in for hours on end. From my understanding the SC's are for quick charges so that travelers can get on their way quickly, preventing others from using them should incur a cost.
The car is self-driving and self-parking, right? For the problem of supercharger bays being hogged by unattended fully charged (commercial) cars, then perhaps the car can move itself to a non-charging parking bay once it is fully charged?
EDIT: Ah, there's still a cable plugged in the side!
Umm, can tesla look around and identify parking spots it can take? That itself seems like an impossible problem based on current computer vision capability.
Then what about reading signs on the parking lot, if it parks on a reserved or handicapped spot?
Tesla's self park at home (forgot what they called it) is basically meant to just drive straight into a garage. That's not going to do that job.
And it's more of a concept video. I wouldn't be surprised if it was exaggerated with assumptions (like say Tesla knowing the maps layout + sign placements on the roads+lot), because the real problem is far from being solved. Even google uses high resolution maps for it's cars.
It doesn't say "gas equivalent cost - X%" it just says "less than gas". It also mentions fluctuations related to the local price of electricity and that it won't be a profit center.
Seems totally reasonable. Gas-powered cars cost a lot to fill up and electricity isn't free either, so this totally makes sense. I'd rather go the "pay by the kWh used" route than the "pay the entire expected lifetime cost of charging built into the up-front cost of the car" route, because I know I drive significantly fewer miles than average.
This charge also changes the economics of rolling out Supercharger stations, to the point where they might actually become profitable (rather than being loss-leaders). This means that more of them will be built. That's a great thing.
Those next to service centers are likely to be on Tesla-owned land lots, but there's a bunch located in outlet malls and third-party parking lots. I'd expect the landlords to want their piece of the pie or some semblance of rent once there's a profit motive.
Perhaps not. You get a rich guy with 100k to blow on a car locked in your place of business for 30 minutes. Most companies would kill for that problem.
The Tesla charging station where I live is located at traditional style shopping mall, which is in deep decline. I'm certain they are appreciative of any captive customer, and I wouldn't be surprised if they preferred increased quantity at the expense of 'quality'.
It only takes 30 minutes to fill up a gas-powered vehicle if it's an RV. Plus, you need to babysit the RV while it's filling and can't really wander off to go shopping for 30–60 minutes.
I think your max price is a little low. In California PG&E territory the top tier costs $0.40 per. If you have the EV plan it can cost up to $0.44 during daylight hours in the summer.
I think using what is basically a penalty rate that an electric vehicle owner agrees to in order to get cheap overnight rates as the max would also be a mistake. Those customers pay ~$0.12 to charge overnight.
Rule of thumb is about half that of gas at current prices assuming you're doing a mix of night and day charging. Perhaps up to 1/3rd if you do exclusively night charging with reduced rates, assuming your local electric utility offers reduced pricing.
So maybe $1,200 saved annually compared to gas for average use.
Since 1000 miles/year is not enough to pay for actual use for almost anyone, this move effectively means new model Teslas have to pay per Supercharge visit. Non-free Supercharging should open the quick-charge market up to much broader competitive market forces.
Really? I think I use ~500mi a year, mostly to make the last leg of a ~300mi trip. It's meant for traveling and not as a replacement for charging at home.
Is the current free Supercharger access tied to the owner or the car, i.e., if I bought a pre-2017 Model S where the previous owner had free Supercharger access, would I also have access?
Supercharging supposedly reduces battery life so it was never really something you would want to do frequently anyway. They have always encouraged charging overnight (taking a few hours instead of a few minutes). Their proposed annual limit on “free” seems totally fine.
There was an article on here recently that suggested that this may actually be false, and that at least occasional supercharging might be good for the battery. There isn't quite enough data to make a firm claim, but it's an interesting observation nonetheless. Speculation was that the battery is hot for a shorter amount of time when supercharging.
Tesloop has charged their Tesla Model S vehicles to 100% constantly for almost 200k miles, and their batteries have only experienced a 6% loss of capacity.
Well I know that, this is why said study was so surprising. There might be other factors, potentially influenced by the battery pack architecture or whatnot. In any case, it seems to imply that you don't need to be afraid of using the supercharger every now and then.
I think it's pretty clear that although they may succeed in ramping up production of the Model 3 fast enough to satisfy advance orders, they probably can't ramp up installation of superchargers to match. There are economies of scale that apply to car production that aren't matched by the ability to get physical locations upgraded with the necessary high-current wiring, let alone contracts with whoever owns all those locations. If they don't reduce demand, they're unlikely to cope, and charging money is the obvious way to achieve this.
Once they're charging to charge, it makes sense to come to agreements with other manufacturers of EVs to use each other's charger networks. In the long run it makes no sense to have multiple networks of vehicle chargers, just like it makes no sense to have gas stations that only fill Fords.
In the UK, Ecotricity give me 52 fast-charges (30 minutes at 43kW) a year on their motorway (freeway) charging network for free as I use their 100% renewable tariff for my home electricity.
Tesla's allowance seems pretty weak by comparison. In fact, their allowance is only 35% of what Ecotricity offer.
If one has a Tesla, yes. I currently drive a Renault Zoe which is incompatible with Tesla superchargers, but had been considering buying a Model X.
A Tesla could charge at either 22kW using the Type 2 Mennekes connector, or if the owner has a CHAdeMO connector (about £250 from Tesla) at 50kW. Both a lot slower than a supercharger's 120kW.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] threadI guess it isn't really that surprising, it doesn't make sense to have to worry about future electricity costs when setting prices for the vehicles.
Also, I wonder how they will be tracking usage? In the car or the supercharger network? I would assume the supercharger network, but does that mean that when you plug in, your car sends a unique identifier? I'm curious how that all works.
> our Supercharger Network will never be a profit center.
Four years ago, Tesla introduced the Supercharger Network – the world’s fastest charging solution – to enable convenient long distance travel. Today, more than 4,600 Superchargers allow over 160,000 Tesla owners to drive across the continental U.S., from the Arctic Circle to the south of Spain, and across all of the population centers in China and Japan, among many other places. Supercharging has even helped owners drive their Teslas around the world.
We’ve designed our network so that all customers have access to a seamless and convenient charging experience when they’re away from home, as our intention has always been for Supercharging to enable long distance travel. That’s why today we’re announcing a change to the economics of Supercharging – one that allows us to reinvest in the network, accelerate its growth and bring all owners, current and future, the best Supercharging experience.
Ensuring Use for Long-Distance Travel For Teslas ordered after January 1, 2017, 400 kWh of free Supercharging credits (roughly 1,000 miles) will be included annually so that all owners can continue to enjoy free Supercharging during travel. Beyond that, there will be a small fee to Supercharge which will be charged incrementally and cost less than the price of filling up a comparable gas car. All cars will continue to come standard with the onboard hardware required for Supercharging.
We will release the details of the program later this year, and while prices may fluctuate over time and vary regionally based on the cost of electricity, our Supercharger Network will never be a profit center.
These changes will not impact current owners or any new Teslas ordered before January 1, 2017, as long as delivery is taken before April 1, 2017.
The Road Ahead Just as you would charge your cell phone, we believe the best way to charge your car is either at home or at work, during the hours you’re not using it. For travelers, the Supercharger Network has become a powerful, unique benefit of Tesla ownership. As we approach the launch of Model 3, this update will enable us to greatly expand our Supercharger Network, providing customers with the best possible user experience and bringing sustainable transport to even more people.
This way they add a cost to supercharging and people get to control their allotted free charge capacity as they see fit.
When something usually goes from paid to free, it's an indicator the product fit isn't working. In this case it's the opposite.
Now we're seeing the free incentive to buy being given a marginal cost to help ensure the spread of the service. This is likely because of increased usage and/or projected demand. So basically, it's a sign Tesla is doing ok.
If your car < 2017, free supercharge on some models. If your car > 2017, there'll be a fee after some use (1,000 miles, more or less).
What will be the price of the cars > 2017? What will be the fee? It might be fair (if the price reduces enought so that the fee is compensated during the car's lifetime). It might be tricky (no price redution and a fee that just annoys those who travel and count on supercharge).
It will be very interesting how they handle people who park overnight or groups which hog existing sites. They probably need to set a limit for existing cars, high enough to not annoy non commercial owners.
Plus, it might be a subtle way to increase sales last quarter.
I'd bet that the dominant economic thing is how annoying it is to rent land and construct lots of little facilities. Reducing supercharging from free-for-all to mainly long distance charging is a way to minimize the annoyance while keeping most of the benefit to car owners.
https://pay.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/5bgdp5/another...
Apparently they're getting hogged up by ride sharing companies. Some even have their cleaning crews scheduled to show up at the super chargers to clean while they're charging.
They could probably reduce that problem by opening fee based charging stations closer to the populations the cars serve. Time is money and all that.
The reddit post is merely a current iteration of a common complaint popping up on various forums and customer feedback tools for a while now.
Elon and Tesla likely are aware of commercial use of SC stations for a long time now.
The point of posting the most-current-iteration-reddit post isn't "Elon saw this and changed the program 12 hours later" but rather "here's today's discussion of last years problem that perhaps Elon is fixing today"
With the Model 3 coming, I imagine competition from Chevy and others will keep prices low, so that means a cooked in premium to pay for the Supercharger network isn't in the cards anymore. Personally, I prefer things this way. Whenever a resource is free, it means the average users are simply subsidizing the heaviest users, who are often abusing the service, like ride sharing and taxi services are now. Metered pricing with a lowered up-front makes a lot more sense.
I hope Tesla changes their system so that once a vehicle is fully charged, the user would be charged for the time that they remain hooked up beyond a full charge. Sort of like how Amazon AWS charges for reserved but unused public IPs. Much like an unused IP, being hooked up to the charger while not actually charging might not be "consuming anything", it is preventing others from using it.
This would discourage people from leaving their vehicles overnight or plugged in for hours on end. From my understanding the SC's are for quick charges so that travelers can get on their way quickly, preventing others from using them should incur a cost.
EDIT: Ah, there's still a cable plugged in the side!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI
Then what about reading signs on the parking lot, if it parks on a reserved or handicapped spot?
Tesla's self park at home (forgot what they called it) is basically meant to just drive straight into a garage. That's not going to do that job.
Yes.
https://youtu.be/A5QFXrpQ-ps?t=2m27s
And it's more of a concept video. I wouldn't be surprised if it was exaggerated with assumptions (like say Tesla knowing the maps layout + sign placements on the roads+lot), because the real problem is far from being solved. Even google uses high resolution maps for it's cars.
> fee to Supercharge which will be charged incrementally and cost less than the price of filling up a comparable gas car.
Electric cars should be much cheaper to run. Local wholesale electricity price + X% would seem more fair.
This charge also changes the economics of rolling out Supercharger stations, to the point where they might actually become profitable (rather than being loss-leaders). This means that more of them will be built. That's a great thing.
That said, certainly earning something from supercharging stations helps the economics of expansion significantly.
For the largest Model S battery (100 kw-h), the math is real easy, ~$7 to ~$20. They say 300 miles range for that battery.
I think using what is basically a penalty rate that an electric vehicle owner agrees to in order to get cheap overnight rates as the max would also be a mistake. Those customers pay ~$0.12 to charge overnight.
http://teslaliving.net/2014/07/07/measuring-ev-charging-effi...
(bumps the numbers to ~$8 and ~$24)
So maybe $1,200 saved annually compared to gas for average use.
Once they're charging to charge, it makes sense to come to agreements with other manufacturers of EVs to use each other's charger networks. In the long run it makes no sense to have multiple networks of vehicle chargers, just like it makes no sense to have gas stations that only fill Fords.
Tesla's allowance seems pretty weak by comparison. In fact, their allowance is only 35% of what Ecotricity offer.
A Tesla could charge at either 22kW using the Type 2 Mennekes connector, or if the owner has a CHAdeMO connector (about £250 from Tesla) at 50kW. Both a lot slower than a supercharger's 120kW.