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More likely Tesla understands that charging will increase congestion, not reduce it. See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomics.html http
by sowbug 9y ago
More likely Tesla understands that charging will increase congestion, not reduce it. See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomics.html http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomic...
The article actually does a horrible job of explaining the moral of the story, which is that charging a fee to discourage undesirable behavior can signal that the behavior actually is desirable or at least not disapproved (after all, you paid it, so you should get to enjoy what you bought), causing even more of the behavior.
Tesla is not trying to make money; they're trying to stop the behavior. So either they raise the price so high for commercial users that it's outright punitive, or they just say it's prohibited and skip all the money mechanics.
They chose the simpler option.
- loeg 9y ago> So either they raise the price so high for commercial users that it's outright punitive, or they just say it's prohibited and skip all the money mechanics. This sort of assumes the utility of a supercharger is the same to any commercial user, but it might not be, and a money cost would help keep capacity available for those commercial users without impacting non-commercial use too much. That said, it seems like commercial fees could be turned around and reinvested in more superchargers pretty quickly. For now, they're significantly damaging the commercial value of their vehicles, new and used. Maybe they don't consider that a problem (and I would be surprised if any Tesla made an economical taxi, even before losing supercharger access).
- greglindahl 9y agoSorry, where's the proof that there's any damage to vehicle value? If anything I see positive value in this announcement, and am hoping it gets rid of the limo drivers I always see at the Hillsdale supercharger.
- sowbug 9y agoIt's not positive value if you were intending to sell your Supercharging-enabled car to one of those limo drivers.
- greglindahl 9y agoThere's plenty of demand for used Teslas. And demand will likely increase a tiny bit if people are confident that they'll be able to find a supercharger stall the few times a year that they want one.
- notatoad 9y agoTesla is also planning to roll out their own ridesharing platform[1], so it seems like they might have an interest in discouraging the use of their cars in competing taxi services, beyond just the economics of the supercharger stations. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-rideservices/tesla-says-it-will-roll-out-uber-style-ride-services-program-idUSKCN12K2IA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-rideservices/tesla-...
- greglindahl 9y agoI suspect Tesla learned that lesson when they imposed idle fees for cars that had finished supercharging and didn't move to free up the stall. The first thought I had was of that Freakanomics article.
- IkmoIkmo 9y agoAgain, they'd just not be charging enough. The Israeli daycare study is an example of people being able to buy convenience and pay-off guilt when it's inconvenient to be on time, every now and then, through a small payment of a few dollars, which is peanuts compared to the actual cost of a typical daycare. Rest be assured, if they had to pay a $200 fine and had to do it structurally as a commercial user, it'd be a completely different story. Not that I think it makes sense to charge commercial users at this point, but that's for other reasons...