
Tesla details how it’ll charge new owners to use Superchargers - waqasaday
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/12/tesla-details-how-itll-charge-new-owners-to-use-superchargers/
======
linsomniac
The analogy has been made "You wouldn't leave your car at a gas pump". But
Tesla charging is different, a gas car takes ~4m to fill, not long enough for
you to do much else. A Tesla on a road trip takes 20-40 minutes to charge. So
long you aren't going to stand there, but not long enough to a sit down meal
or walk the half mile from the hotel with the charger to a fast food
restaurant and eat, visit a gift shop, etc... To name some examples of what we
did on a recent road trip.

With the Tesla, a road trip is a different cadence from gas, where many
peoples tendency seems to just get on with it and minimize these fueling
interruptions. With the Tesla, we would talk to locals, visit the train
museum, go to gift shops, I'd drop them off at historic districts and go
charge.

It didn't feel like we were waiting for the car to charge, but that was
because we were doing other things. If I now have to go back and move the car
because the stalls are 50% full, that changes the road trip a lot.

Something not common knowledge: Superchargers operate in pairs. If there are 4
stalls, only 2 of them at a time will operate at full speed. If you are
charging on stall 1A and someone pulls into 1B, they get a much slower charge
rate until 1A completes charging.

So a 50% full supercharger is actually "full", but the remaining stalls can be
parked at and will start charging full rate as things finish.

Because of this, I was kind of expecting the idle fee to be when the stalls
were all full. If there are no stalls left, you are making someone potentially
wait while your car sits there idle.

The longer term plan is they hope to make the cars move themselves when
charging is done. That would be awesome.

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CptJamesCook
I'm glad the superchargers will no longer be free for new Tesla owners. I wish
they would charge existing Tesla owners for the power as well.

I went to charge my Model X at the Whole Foods in Menlo Park on Friday night,
because mine was broken. I waited for over 40 minutes for other people using
the chargers to leave.

I'd much rather pay a market rate for the power from Tesla and have the units
open when I need them, than take the chance of waiting for hours because
people are clogging the spots to get free power.

~~~
kelvin0
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but even if it becomes a paid service, you might
still have to wait for other paying customers to leave? Unless right now there
is a problem of people taking their sweet (inconsiderate) time in the parking
spot since they are not getting charged?

If that is the case, some HN posters had an interesting theory: once some
customers start paying, they might feel entitled to stay at a charging station
even longer (which would not fix your issue of waiting forever to access it).

Hope your charger gets fixed soon!

~~~
johnward
> Unless right now there is a problem of people taking their sweet
> (inconsiderate) time in the parking spot since they are not getting charged?

Per r/teslamotors that seems to be the bigger issue. Once a vehicle is charged
people don't move it promptly because they have no incentive to do so.

~~~
kardos
Isn't that the case at a gas station too?

~~~
bdcravens
As another commenter pointed out, gas fuel times are so short that you
typically don't wander off far. Additionally, there are some safety concerns
around leaving the fuel hose attached when you're not there.

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kylec
I'm kind of surprised that they're so adamant that the pricing should be hWk
based. It seems to me that time-based pricing would have made sense -
Superchargers are a limited resource, so a time-based approach would have
encouraged people to only charge for as long as they needed it. Above 80% a
Tesla charges much slower, so it uses much less electricity, but it still
takes up a stall.

It would have also dovetailed nicely with the per-minute fee they will be
charging Tesla owners for leaving their vehicles plugged in after they're done
charging at busy Superchargers.

~~~
3pt14159
They should stop fighting market mechanisms and do dynamic pricing. It's
_obviously_ the way it should be done. Price should change upon the cost of
the underlying electricity and there should be surge pricing once queues form
to discourage overcharging during peak usage.

Elon is normally so smart I don't understand why he's fighting the math based
approach here.

~~~
msandford
People like predictable pricing. You sign a lease rather than renting month to
month so your housing can't double in price just because. If it can cost
between $0.50 and $500 to "fill up" your Tesla, that would SUBSTANTIALLY alter
the way owning a Tesla is perceived.

~~~
3pt14159
People also like being able to get an uber when they really need one instead
of relying on cabs that never show up on Friday nights. The cost of
electricity to _completely_ fill up a Telsa is between $5 and $20 depending on
time of day and where exactly you are in North America. With 1-3x surge
pricing call it $5 to $60. If you're filling up half a tank (say from 25% to
75%, the fast charging window) that's going to cost you $2.50 to $30, and
usually around $10. This isn't even worth thinking about it for current Tesla
owners.

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patcheudor
I've always wondered if Tesla tracks the use of the Superchargers to the
vehicle mileage. As an example, if I setup a bunch of bit-coin miners in the
trunk, tapped into the vehicle battery and continually visited a supercharger
to power the rig would Tesla know something was up?

~~~
jzwinck
You would be tying up a $100,000 depreciating asset to mine bitcoin for a few
weeks or months until you are discovered. You could make more money by not
buying the car.

~~~
dalore
But if you were buying the car anyway...

~~~
na85
You'd still be paying for the mining rig, and you won make your investment
back.

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Urgo
Tesla Blog Post: [https://www.tesla.com/blog/building-supercharger-network-
fut...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/building-supercharger-network-future)

~~~
tavrobel
What was the deal before this? Just free electricity?

This seems like a pretty fair and obvious way to move forward: the electricity
isn't free, and it doesn't seem like they are attempting to turn a profit off
of the electricity cost like a Gas station does. It curtails the externalities
of Uber/Taxis freeloading off of infrastructure that has ongoing costs to
maintain but provides a good value for buyers for a few longer distance trips.

~~~
will_hughes
(The other reply answering this seems to have been deleted)

It used to be unlimited supercharging. The assumption was that people would
primarily charge at home, and use the supercharger only for long distance
travelling.

It seems that in practice far too many people were using the supercharger as
the only place to charge their vehicle, with a fair number of people using it
for commercial purposes.

The Tesla Taxis at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam were apparently all using the
supercharger facility, rather than setting up their own charging
infrastructure.

Also, it wasn't, technically, 'free' \- a supercharger fee was charged either
on purchase of the car or afterwards.

~~~
prostoalex
> Also, it wasn't, technically, 'free' \- a supercharger fee was charged
> either on purchase of the car or afterwards.

Not in the US, all Tesla vehicles ordered before January 15th of 2017 came
with free supercharger access.

~~~
dingaling
> came with free supercharger access.

By no means 'free': there was a $2000 Supercharger access fee included in the
purchase price of the S85, or $2500 to enable it after purchase for the S60.

Not available for the S40 variant which wasn't permitted to use the
Superchargers.

~~~
prostoalex
I am not seeing it. Buying a new S today
[https://www.tesla.com/models/design](https://www.tesla.com/models/design)
offers the following premium options: autopilot - $5k, full self driving -
$3k, premium package - $3.5k, smart air suspension - $2.5k, subzero - $1k, hi-
fi sound - $2.5k, rear-facing seats - $4k, high-amperage onboard charger -
$1.5k.

Everything else is included in the price of the vehicle and is standard
[https://www.tesla.com/models](https://www.tesla.com/models)

Under specs they list

* Access to Tesla's expanding Supercharger network

* Mobile connector with 110 volt, 240 volt, and J1772 adapters

* 17" capacitive touchscreen

* Onboard maps and navigation with free updates for 7 years

* Automatic keyless entry

* ...

~~~
tempestn
Even if it's included standard, it's still priced in though, right? Same
reason "Buy three tires; get the fourth free" isn't really free.

~~~
prostoalex
I guess we'll find out in 3 days after the Great Supercharger Unbundling
occurs.

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vacri
Still waiting to hear on how they're going to solve charging for those of us
without garages. They're not going to want all of us to do all our charging at
the stations...

~~~
astrodust
Street parking may be a problem until they have plugs on things like meters.

In some places it's already common to have plugs close to parking, it's for a
block-heater used on extreme winter days. Adapting these for electric cars is
probably not hard.

~~~
apercu
Maybe replace some of the meters on the streets with paid chargers (meter +
charger fee going to municipality).

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flexie
Anyone knows what it is that makes the short Paris - Rome trip (1,400 km) cost
$64, whereas the New York - LA (4,500 km) costs only $120?

Is it because of taxes, or is electricity just more expensive in France/Italy
even without taxes? Or is Tesla just charging Europeans more?

~~~
rerx
Energy is very cheap in the US. See [0] for some 2011 comparisons.

[0]: [https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-
elect...](https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-electricity-
prices-kwh.html)

------
iamgopal
What I am worried about is, all the work done to make affordable electric car
will go in vain if gas prices reduce due to the adoption of electric vehicle
and hence ultimately no effect on co2 emission.

~~~
astrodust
Electric vehicles will ultimately become more convenient and will win on that
basis alone. Electric car designs can be more flexible, and performance will
continue to increase above and beyond the already _ludicrous_ levels in some
Tesla models.

When you think about gasoline engines they're terribly inconvenient. They need
a lot of maintenance. They have tons of finicky moving parts. They need
gasoline, which is only sold at select retailers, and the price of gasoline
changes constantly, often spiking higher without warning.

It's only because this enormous infrastructure has built up around gasoline-
powered cars that any of that is bearable. Can you imagine gasoline-powered
cars trying to make inroads in a world that was historically all-electric?
It'd be absurd. Somehow electric cars are gaining market share even when going
against tradition, so it seems inevitable they'll hit some tipping point and
gasoline will be considered the exotic, difficult to obtain fuel.

When people can charge their car overnight for free with a wind-turbine, or on
the weekend with a solar roof they'll have little reason to prefer gasoline
powered cars.

~~~
gambiting
There's loads of people who live in places which conceivably won't have the
ability to charge electric cars, ever. Terraced houses in the UK - you have to
park on the street, and the spaces are not marked - sometimes you can fit 30
cars on one side, sometimes 40, depending on how and what people park.
Sometimes you park in front of your own front door, sometimes you have to park
in a parallel street because maybe the neighbour has visitors and there's no
more room. How do we solve that? Have 40 charging points on each side of every
residential street in the UK? Not only would that be ugly as a sin, but also
hideously expensive.

~~~
cocoflunchy
How about driving to the nearest charging station?

~~~
andygates
This ties into charge/range anxiety, with short-range cars that journey might
itself eat into the day's driving and we all like a full phone...

One 250-mile cars are commonplace, it'll go away.

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ColonelPhantom
"or whether or not yours is the only Tesla at the charging station”

Why? To discourage using nearly-filled Supercharging stations? It does seem
pretty unfair.

