
Tesla increases Supercharging prices to the point that gas might be cheaper - harshulpandav
https://www.techspot.com/news/78366-tesla-increases-supercharging-prices-point-gas-might-cheaper.html
======
pfranz
It's funny that the article it references for the price hike says, "First off,
yes sure it’s a bummer that prices are going up, but it’s still significantly
cheaper than gas."[1]

They're also trying to compare NYC an LA Supercharger/electricity prices to
"national average price" of gas including, "several regions seeing prices
under $2 per gallon." Their comparison is $32-36 to fill up a 100kWh battery
back versus 12 gallons at $2.85 for $34.20. I'm not really familiar with that
class of car (or electric cars), but I'd assume anything comparable would take
premium gas. I found a gas station in Westminster, CA (shown in one of the
pics) and a local Chevron is currently charging $3.49 for regular and $3.69
for premium. The gas station I used to go to in LA that's only a few miles
away is currently $3.09 for regular and $3.39 for premium. It would have been
nice if they're going to make a comparison, try to do an honest apples-to-
apples comparison.

The rate hike and how the cost compares to gasoline is worth noting, but the
electrek.co article it linked to had much better information.

[1] [https://electrek.co/2019/01/18/tesla-increases-
supercharger-...](https://electrek.co/2019/01/18/tesla-increases-supercharger-
prices/)

~~~
ec109685
No car requires premium gas anymore.

~~~
Tuxer
High compression ratio / turbo gas engines definitively do. Try pushing a BMW
M3 ( competition for the model 3 perf ) on 87 and you’ll see how long the
engine lasts.

Look up engine knock.

~~~
DannyBee
It lasts just fine (Source: I've done it)

The M3 has knock sensors, like everyone else.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=bmw+m3+knock+sensor](https://www.google.com/search?q=bmw+m3+knock+sensor)

If you look up engine knock on wikipedia, it will tell you the same

From:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_knocking#Knock_detectio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_knocking#Knock_detection)

"Due to the large variation in fuel quality, a large number of engines now
contain mechanisms to detect knocking and adjust timing or boost pressure
accordingly in order to offer improved performance on high octane fuels while
reducing the risk of engine damage caused by knock while running on low octane
fuels. "

~~~
brandonjm
"...while reducing the risk of engine damage caused by knock while running on
low octane fuels."

That doesn't necessarily mean it reduces the risk of engine damage to zero.
The engine still has to knock for the sensors to detect it and adjust unless
it uses flex fuel sensors. Yes modern engines CAN cope with lower octane fuel
than they were designed to use, but you would lose performance and run an
increased risk of damage. If the manufacturer states a minimum octane rating
you would likely be voiding some parts of your engine warranty by running the
incorrect fuel.

------
mdeeks
For those not familiar, Superchargers are the exception not the norm for
charging your car. You use it to travel long distances, but not typically
during your day to day commute. Superchargers are meant to be a convenience to
rapidly charge your car on the go if you need it.

If you regularly charge at home, like most people do, you can get extremely
low rates at night during off-peak hours. It only costs ~$0.12/kWh for us in
SF. Something like $9 to charge the car from 0-100% for ~300 miles of
distance.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I'm curious, do you typically pay actual "hourly rate x hourly consumption" in
a regular US household? Where I live (Europe), even though we have new fancy
"smart electricity meters" with resolution of a few seconds, all the deals
available from power companies offering electricity are based on "monthly
average rate x monthly consumption".

~~~
ghouse
In California, the three largest utilities do charge hourly rate * hourly
consumption. There are "Peak" "Partial Peak" and "Off Peak" periods defined by
summer/winter and weekday/weekend. Paper bills as well as utility websites
will show how much electricity (kWh) are used during each period. Websites
will also show hour by hour usage.

~~~
pfranz
How widely implemented is it? I lived in Los Angeles for over a decade, lived
in half a dozen places (moving between Glendale Water and Power and LADWP). A
few years ago, when shopping for houses all over the LA area I would peek to
see if they had smart meters, too. I've only seen a few and never lived
anywhere that had them.

There may have been seasonal price changes with dumb meters, but they couldn't
have done weekday/weekend without them.

Smart water meters seemed to have decent distribution. Perhaps because of the
droughts?

~~~
kenhwang
I believe most of Edison moved over to smart meters, and they're the biggest
provider in SoCal. LADWP is rolling it out at a snail's pace.

~~~
pfranz
That's good to know. Edison always showed up when looking for programs like
solar or a smart thermostat, LADWP never did. I just never lived anywhere
serviced by Edison. Looking at their service map, it looks like Edison covers
everywhere around LA/Glendale and covers a very large area all the way to the
Nevada and Arizona border.

I wonder if there's a better cost/benefit for rolling it out to a sparsely
populated (or dense pockets with large areas in between)? Where LADWP may
favor new construction or something?

~~~
kenhwang
Edison pretty much charges 2-3x more for peak usage, 30% more for "off-peak",
and 20% less for sleeping hours compared to LADWP depending on tier. So they
made a bunch more money since people don't just suddenly shift all their
electricity usage to after midnight. I remember there being a lot of outage
when they rolled out smart metering since most people had pretty drastic
increases to their electric bill.

------
cameldrv
This is probably a good move for Tesla. The reason Superchargers exist is to
enable road trips, which are a tiny fraction of most people's driving. For
anyone with enough money to afford a Tesla, if you need to use Superchargers
often, you're better off with a PHEV or a conventional car, because even with
Supercharging, you just waste so much time charging relative to gassing up.
Even so, there is a certain profile of person that buys a very expensive car
and then can't resist the allure of free electricity or the cool Supercharging
tech. With so many new Model 3s, these people will clog up the Supercharging
lanes, and make roadtrips in a Tesla even more painful. Simply increase the
price ten bucks or so, and the cheapskates and tech enthusiasts will disappear
and leave the Superchargers to the roadtrippers that have no other option.

~~~
rubito
wow that was quite the anti-salespitch...

~~~
jsendros
The truth is that in some areas, superchargers are already behind demand.
Superchargers need to have more stalls than peak demand because charging is
already slow compared to fueling up with gasoline. The time disparity is fine
if there's no wait because it basically fills the need for most people's
necessary occasional rest stops anyhow, but adding more wait would turn it
into a negative experience.

I haven't yet had to wait for a supercharger, but I have seen full
superchargers that I haven't needed to use. With the huge increase in vehicles
from the 3's being sold, I expect congestion to increase before it's
counteracted by more charging options.

I'll be pretty bummed the day I have to start waiting. Waiting might tip the
scale for me from electric being a better roadtripping experience to gasoline.
On the other hand, autopilot is pretty sweet.

I hope they don't fuck up supercharging like they've fucked up service. It's a
necessary ingredient to a great overall experience.

~~~
freeone3000
If you're interested in autopilot in a traditional car, the Acura RLX, BMW
5-series, Mercedes C-class, Cadillac CT6, and Audi A4 have equivalent systems.

------
puls
This article lost me at "Most homes are not wired to handle 120kW chargers,
which are likely not cheap to set up."

If the author had done any research, he'd realize that there's no such thing
as a 120 kW home charger. (The weasel word "likely" only confirms the lack of
research.)

~~~
crooked-v
And, of course, you almost certainly wouldn't want the extra expense of one if
they were available anyway, because if your car is _already at home_ it's
pretty unlikely that you need it charged up again in the next 20 minutes.

~~~
mcv
I think the main thing electric cars need in order to win, is the ability to
recharge _anywhere_. Slow is fine, but if it can charge during every lunch
break and rest stop, that still adds up. I'd rather have a slow charger on
every single parking space than a network of superchargers.

~~~
jmelloy
It can. You can plug a Tesla into any 110 outlet. (It's just 4x slower than a
30A/220).

------
Reason077
Electrek are reporting that Tesla have now partly rolled back the price
increase in response to the backlash:

[https://electrek.co/2019/01/22/tesla-cuts-supercharger-
price...](https://electrek.co/2019/01/22/tesla-cuts-supercharger-prices-back-
down-customer-backlash/)

------
joering2
A friend of mine owns a scrapping yard. Surprisingly he makes very good money
(business is all about logistics and knowing what you should accept
(profitable) and what will cause you troubles)

He says he hasn't accepted Tesla battery for 2 years now, because how
complicated and expensive recycling is. According to him, there is not a
single person that knows exactly how to properly secure used batter how to de-
assemble and then properly recycle. He says its a nightmare ready to come
true. He said eventually he can imagine some country will allocate yards of
lands just for a sole purpose of storing old dead Tesla batteries altogether,
just like we store dead nuclear plant rods under sea or high in mountain's
caves.

~~~
paganel
> He said eventually he can imagine some country will allocate yards of lands
> just for a sole purpose of storing old dead Tesla batteries altogether, just
> like we store dead nuclear plant rods under sea or high in mountain's caves.

And most probably those countries/regions would not be the rich ones which now
purchase Teslas like there's no tomorrow (think Norway, the Bay Area in
California), but instead the toxic dump will be passed on to relatively poor
areas of the world like the Campagna region in Italy [1] (with the added
benefit of generating some extra business for the local Mafia) or the seashore
of a sub-Saharan country [2]

[1] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/mafia-toxic-waste-and-
a-d...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/mafia-toxic-waste-and-a-deadly-
cover-up-in-an-italian-paradise-t/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ivory_Coast_toxic_waste_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ivory_Coast_toxic_waste_dump)

------
pfortuny
Honest question: where I live (typical Spanish small/medium city 300.000
inhabitants) most (like pretty much everybody) people live in flats and lots
of people do not have a way to plug their cars at night. Anybody knows how
this can affect the use of purely electric cars? Even small ones, I mean (yes,
neither I nor most people will buy a Tesla).

~~~
yread
We have underground parking here in Amsterdam under our block of flats. The
owners association discussed installing some charging poles. At 6000 eur/pole
it didn't go down very well

~~~
mcv
Why does charging have to be harder than simply plugging into a power outlet?
The building has power, a few extra power outlets doesn't cost much. The
hardest part is linking it up to every person's own electricity meter.

That is, in my opinion, what the future should look like. As long as charging
poles are expensive, they're not going to be everywhere, yet they need to be.

~~~
ac29
Standard power outlets, in the US at least, are only equipped to deliver
1-2kW, so fully charging a EV would take days (though if you only used 5-10kWh
of charge a day, it might not be a problem). It's putting in the higher
voltage, higher current outlets that's expensive.

~~~
mcv
Good point. I looked it up, and in Netherland, a regular power outlet is rated
for 3.5 kW, which is probably still not enough.

For devices that require more power than that, there's three-phase current,
also called "krachtstroom" (= "power current") in Dutch, which, from what I
understand, can deliver up to 19kW (though intuitively I'd expect it to
deliver 3 x 3.5=10.5 kW). We have this for out induction stove. Getting it was
a bit involved, because it turned out our house had only a single 35A
connection, whereas 3 (usually 3 x 16A or 3 x 25A) is more common, so we had
to have our electricity connection upgraded.

Still cost less than $6000, though, and many Dutch houses already come with a
connection that can handle this. Though that might not be true for other parts
of the world.

------
dawnerd
I always hated how Tesla used gas savings as part of "how cheap" their cars
were. It felt dishonest. Just give me the damned msrp without tax credits or
gas savings.

~~~
mdeeks
Yeah it is somewhat misleading, though they do clearly show the true purchase
price vs the "Savings price" on the final page after you configure the car.
The first few pages sort of bait you in to thinking it's cheaper though.

In the end, I thought their pricing and buying process was a breath of fresh
air compared to my experience with my Audi. By the time I walked out of the
Audi dealership I had spent about $6k more than the original quoted price they
gave me on the floor. I had about 3 pages of papers that look like excel
sheets "explaining" it all. Tesla gave us a half page sheet with maybe 6 line
items that clearly explains the costs.

The gas savings really do add up though. One of my previous comments I did a
rough TCO between the Model 3 and my Audi A4 and found we saved about $1500 a
year in fuel costs. After 5 years the car ended up being about $10k cheaper
than my Audi despite it having a higher sticker price

~~~
semi-extrinsic
> After 5 years the car ended up being about $10k cheaper than my Audi despite
> it having a higher sticker price.

This would imply a really huge running cost on the Audi over the Tesla _in
addition to gas_ \- what's that cost? Assuming it's a new car, I assume
repairs etc are covered under warranty?

~~~
mdeeks
Much of the savings was from rebate/tax credit programs. I didn't factor in
maintenance at all since they are unknowns.

My original comment with more details is here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18773680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18773680)

Also my Audi doesn't have any Autopilot equivalent so I probably should have
left that additional $5k out of the cost of the Model 3.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Ah, so if you had compared the Model 3 to a similar-segment petrol car such as
the Mazda 3 (4-door), it would be the other way around and the petrol car
would come out $10k cheaper in TCO. The Audi A4 is only that expensive because
it's a premium segment sedan, the Model 3 is (by design!) not a premium
segment sedan.

To clarify, I think you're not comparing "electric car" with "petrol car",
you're comparing it with "petrol car for which I happened to pay a $20k
premium because it's a status symbol".

------
jedberg
That's not entirely surprising. My BIL got a model 3 a few months ago. When he
takes it on trips, he's never found a supercharger that can charge at full
speed, because they're either overcrowded or broken or both.

Maybe by increasing the rates they hope to get people to use them less often
and they'll have more money for repairs.

~~~
Reason077
Also, the Model 3 can only supercharge at “full speed” when the battery is
under the 50% level or so.

After 50%, the charge rate starts to taper pretty quickly.

If the battery is cold then you may also see reduced charge rates. In cold
weather, it’s better to supercharge _after_ a long drive, as the battery will
be warm.

------
Robotbeat
They charged about 20 cents per kWh in Virginia, and gas is about
$1.92/gallon, so that was already the case.

This is caused primarily by extremely low gas prices, though, not just
Supercharger pricing.

~~~
cloudwalking
Even with gas that cheap you're paying $0.06 per mile (30 mpg). At $0.2/kWh
you're only paying $0.04 per mile.

------
tedk-42
<disclaimer>i don't own a tesla</disclaimer>

Wow. No-one pointed out that they strategically need to force people off their
super-charging network. Raising the prices and removing the 'free' for their
early adopters is an excellent start.

The fact is too many people were using it incorrectly and it's causing them
grief as the people who need to use it must queue up to do so.

------
sfopdxnonstop
Eh, so I still get to drive the best car ever made, and I'm supposed to be
upset that it's only cheaper than other cars by a little bit? No, not upset
about that.

~~~
Fins
I did not know that having a build quality somewhat lower than a Yugo and a UX
that even a Yugo designer would throw up at was part of a "best car ever made"
description.

------
IgorPartola
Rent seeking? Probably rent seeking.

~~~
manicdee
How can it even remotely be considered rent seeking to charge for a service
you provide?

~~~
IgorPartola
Rent seeking always involves charging for a service you provide. That’s not
the qualifier. Rent seeking here would be to provide cheap/free fuel until
capturing enough of the market, then raising the prices to above market price.
Not saying they succeeded. But to me it looks like they tried.

