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Tesla details how it’ll charge new owners to use Superchargers
- Urgo 10y agoTesla Blog Post: https://www.tesla.com/blog/building-supercharger-network-future https://www.tesla.com/blog/building-supercharger-network-fut...
- DanFeldman 10y ago> To put the affordability of Supercharging into perspective, customers will pay about $15 for a road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles, about $120 from Los Angeles to New York, about €60 from Paris to Rome, and about ¥400 from Beijing to Shanghai.
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- dingo_bat 10y agoIs electricity generation using renewable sources inherently cheaper than coal, hydro and nuclear?
- RichardHeart 10y agoIt depends on where you live. Lots of wind? Lots of sun hours? Lots of subsidies?
- zaroth 10y agoNo, see LCOE. (which can be calculated with or without accounting for externalities) Not surprisingly all current technology is relatively competitive with the others. If it wasn't the case, we would have a clear winner and there would be nothing interesting to discuss! https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoWhat does this mean for the folk who loudly proclaim "[solar/wind] now cheaper than coal"?
- nradov 10y agoSolar and wind power can be cheaper than coal (by spot price) in certain limited areas at certain times of the day. The problem is that solar and wind are incapable of providing reliable base load capacity. Once you add energy storage (batteries, molten salt, pumped hydroelectric, etc) to provide power when it's dark with no wind blowing the costs go way up.
- prostoalex 10y agoNot inherently, but renewables generally have high cap-ex but low op-ex. Therefore highly depends on your entry price (this year's solar panels are cheaper than last year's). Seems like solar is at 3c/kWh (production cost before transportation) in certain regions now http://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-prices-plunge-to-new-lows-as-dubai-auction-nets-under-3ckwh-84894/ http://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-prices-plunge-to-new-lows-a...
- tedmiston 10y agoFor reference using a Prius ~52 mpg combined (advertised) and current gas price in SF, for the drive from SF to LA: 383 / 52 * $2.61 = $19.22 Or a Honda Civic: 383 / 34 * $2.61 = $29.40 (Assuming their definition is one way not roundtrip.)
- tuna-piano 10y agoAnd in other US states and points in time, gas is cheaper. For example, in December in Greenville, SC gas was $1.90 a gallon which would make gas in a prius cheaper than the Tesla supercharger. 382 / 52 * $1.90 = $14 Data from (I used Greenville, SC): https://www.gasbuddy.com/Charts https://www.gasbuddy.com/Charts EDIT: From Tesla's blog post "What’s important is that in every region, Supercharging will remain simple, seamless and always significantly cheaper than gasoline." Looks like Tesla will be pricing the electricity differently in different states as well. I wonder if the changes in their electricity prices based on the region will be enough to offset currently low gas prices.
- dlevine 10y agoWith that said, I'm guessing that the current cost estimates are based on a Model S, which is a much larger car than either a Prius or Civic. The Model 3 will most likely have significantly better range per kwh than the Model S, reducing the cost even more.
- URSpider94 10y ago... but supercharging in SC will be roughly half the cost of what it is in CA, meaning the equivalent trip would only cost $7.50 in a Tesla.
- tavrobel 10y agoWhat 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.
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- will_hughes 10y ago(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 10y ago> 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 10y ago> 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.
- kylec 10y agoI'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.
- perryh2 10y agoThe charging rate is very low when there are many Teslas charging at a station so sometimes it could take 3-4x longer than usual when at a busy location. I'd expect to be charged the same amount in those cases.
- Phlarp 10y agoCurious they don't catch more coverage on this fact as it seems to directly contradict the narrative of a "super-charger". What prevents them from being able to charge all ports at full power? This seems like another notch on the long list of hidden caveats with a Tesla. Other examples being constant surveillance/telemetry and the thermal battery throttling (0-60 in 2.xx seconds but good luck maintaining that!)
- prostoalex 10y agoTo be fair, "very low" is like 220 mi/hr compared to standard 360 mi/hr based on my experience. They do have a disclaimer on charging rate: "Charging from 10% to 80% is quick and typically provides ample range to travel between most Superchargers. Charging from 80% to 100% doubles the charge time because the car must reduce current to top off cells. Actual charge times may vary." https://www.tesla.com/supercharger https://www.tesla.com/supercharger
- perryh2 10y agoNot sure why this isn't possible. I learned this the hard way last time I spent 8 hours driving to LA from the bay area during the holiday season. If I was in a hurry on holiday to get to socal I'd much prefer driving a regular car with gas. The capacity at each charging station is visible from the map though.
- patcheudor 10y agoI'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?
- 7alman 10y agoProbably illegal, but its worth a shot. Let me know how it goes.
- patcheudor 10y agoDoubtful it would be theft of service since I'd assume you are entitled to use the power available from your car for accessories. This leaves us with maybe a terms of service violation?
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- Deestan 10y agoIt would fall under the ever implicit "this is not the intended use case and you know it" clause. It would succeed no better than showing up with a barrel at a burger shop and start filling it from the free ketchup dispenser.
- rl3 10y ago>It would succeed no better than showing up with a barrel at a burger shop and start filling it from the free ketchup dispenser. Not to mention the mechanics of converting the ketchup in the barrel to usable energy would be inefficient and convoluted at best. Better to find some other way to power one's Bitcoin mining rig. :) Though, you could likely dodge any criminal charges by way of insanity in that scenario!
- jzwinck 10y ago
- vacri 10y agoStill 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 10y agoStreet 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 10y agoMaybe replace some of the meters on the streets with paid chargers (meter + charger fee going to municipality).
- closeparen 10y agoStartup idea: electricity delivery trucks making house-calls, or a fleet of workers driving cars to charging facilities and back while their owners sleep.
- iamgopal 10y agoWhat 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.
- devoply 10y agoAll the gasoline in the ground will eventually be burned by people regardless of price. It's a question of how quickly. If not by first world countries then by third world countries. As far as I know the CO2 stays there once it is there and accumulates, so does it really matter how fast it's burned?
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 10y agoCo2 sinks include: 1.- equilibriation with oceans (10 year timescale increases system capacity by order of magnitude - but harmful to marine life) 2. - hydrocarbon/peat formation (not really a major process in an icehouse climate and quite slow anyway) 3. - marine carbonate formation (100 year timescale, potentially very large sink, can be negatively affected by process 1) 4.- silicate weathering (1000 year timescale infinite capacity). So rate of release is very important. If CO2 release too fast ocean acidification from 1 prevents 3 and 3 and 4 don't have time to act.
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- nhaehnle 10y agoI think this is a fair question, and deserves an answer instead of being downvoted. 1. There's no gasoline in the ground, but various forms of oil. Sounds like a nitpick, but is actually crucial, because getting usable fuel from tar sands and fracking are dirty and expensive operations -- especially once the externalities of environmental damage is accounted for. With current trends in wind and solar, it is quite likely that at some point, extracting fuel from tar sands and fracking will simply no longer be competitive. (You may argue that things like planes are unlikely to ever go electric; but it's likely we'll at some point have scalable fuel generation from electricity.) 2. CO2 doesn't necessarily stay in the atmosphere. First of all, there are natural processes that take CO2 out of the atmosphere and store the carbon in the ground/the oceans. That's how oil and coal formed in the first place. Of course, those natural processes are slower than we'd like. That's why carbon sequestration is a seriously discussed thing, i.e. filter CO2 out of the atmosphere industrially, and/or speed up the natural processes (like growing forests). Creating an economic incentive for this is a big part of the idea of carbon emissions trading. In the end, it's viable to have a neutral economy in terms of CO2. We really need that anyway in the long term because oil is finite. If we get there faster, we'll get there without having gotten all oil out of the ground.
- CptJamesCook 10y agoI'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.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- forgetsusername 10y ago>I waited for over 40 minutes for other people using the chargers to leave. And yet "free Supercharging for life!" was advertised as a major advantage for owning a Tesla. I agree, this is the most realistic option. If waits are long with 0.5% market share, how bad would it be with their expected 500,000 cars on the road over the next couple years?
- TulliusCicero 10y agoWell I mean, presumably as they sell more cars and their market share goes up, they'd also continue to build more and more superchargers.
- jfoster 10y agoThey gave up on the idea of automated battery swap stations, right? It's a shame; I thought they were a great idea, but perhaps there's good reasons why they can't work in reality.
- iplaw 10y agoI don't know if they gave up on it, or if it's simply not ready for primetime and/or the market isn't currently open to the idea of battery sharing. Once marketshare increases, car sharing increases, etc., and people become more accustomed to sharing property (and charging becomes the norm for everyone), the convenience of a 3 minute battery swap will likely win over - and Tesla will be ready to roll out their tech.
- flexie 10y agoAnyone 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?
- man_of_wax 10y agoI'm asking myself the same question, with my diesel car It costs me about 110 euros to do 1400km $64 for a tesla is extremely expensive. In italy home electricity costs about 0.20 euro/Kw I don't know how much it costos on a Tesla supercharger
- dalore 10y agoMore stuff to see so you take the scenic route?
- rerx 10y agoEnergy is very cheap in the US. See [0] for some 2011 comparisons. [0]: https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-electricity-prices-kwh.html https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/average-elect...
- linsomniac 10y agoThe 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.
- ColonelPhantom 10y ago"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.