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Tesla increases Supercharging prices to the point that gas might be cheaper
- sfopdxnonstop 8y agoEh, 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 8y agoI 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 8y agoRent seeking? Probably rent seeking.
- potatochup 8y agoGiven that they just laid off 7% of their employees due to cost measures I'd say likely not. They're just not longer subsidizing it for owners because they don't need so much of a draw card.
- Fins 8y agoTaxpayers aren't subsidizing them as much anymore either. Quite possible they just couldn't afford dumping electricity anymore.
- manicdee 8y agoHow can it even remotely be considered rent seeking to charge for a service you provide?
- IgorPartola 8y agoRent 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.
- dawnerd 8y agoI 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.
- potatochup 8y agoI feel like that about America in general. Sales Tax is never included, or they display the price assuming a auto pay discount or some other such 'discount'. Don't get me started on tipping.
- rorykoehler 8y agoCouldn't agree more. I want to know how much money I need to part with today without the mental gymnastics. They do the same in restaurants here in Singapore. List price... then on the bill you get tax and service charge added.
- pfranz 8y agoI know the US has an array of weirdly regulated local dealership laws that really mess up the buying market. What is buying a car like in the rest of the world? Similarly, a few years ago I went with my mom to buy a basic necklace chain for my sister. We went into a few department stores and my brain kind of melted at the mental gymnastics required. Our budget going in was like $30-50 for example. The sticker price would be $80, but the whole store was 40% off! And this rack was an additional 20% off today only! Trying to compare prices between different stores was really annoying and my mom pointed out this was normal. I think the older generation like the gamesmanship of it and younger people are really turned off by the whole idea.
- masonic 8y agoThe older generation is probably better at doing basic arithmetic in one's head. 80 x .6 x .8 =
- mdeeks 8y agoFor 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 8y agoI'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 8y agoIn 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 8y agoHow 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?
- 8y ago
- Robotbeat 8y agoThey 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 8y agoEven 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.
- pfranz 8y agoIt'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-prices/ https://electrek.co/2019/01/18/tesla-increases-supercharger-...
- ec109685 8y agoNo car requires premium gas anymore.
- Tuxer 8y agoHigh 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.
- hvidgaard 8y agoIt'll work just fine, it will however not run at full power.
- kenhwang 8y agoJust about every modern car comes with knock sensors and computer controlled knock prevention mechanisms that will compensate for lower octane, especially on high strung, direct injected, twin-turbo cars like a BMW M3. The only real downside is increased emissions for using non-optimal fuel and lower engine efficiency/power.
- cameldrv 8y agoThis 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 8y agowow that was quite the anti-salespitch...
- jsendros 8y agoThe 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 8y agoIf 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.
- jedberg 8y agoThat'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 8y agoAlso, 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.
- puls 8y agoThis 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 8y agoAnd, 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 8y agoI 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 8y agoIt can. You can plug a Tesla into any 110 outlet. (It's just 4x slower than a 30A/220).
- tehlike 8y agoI think the spirit is most homes are old and dont have the wiring to handle the load, whatever it may be.
- masonic 8y agoWere they confusing kWh with volts AC?
- tedk-42 8y ago<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.
- joering2 8y agoA 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 8y ago> 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-deadly-cover-up-in-an-italian-paradise-t/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/mafia-toxic-waste-and-a-d... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ivory_Coast_toxic_waste_dump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ivory_Coast_toxic_waste_d...
- pfortuny 8y agoHonest 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 8y agoWe 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 8y agoWhy 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.
- pfortuny 8y agoI am not your parent but in my city most of the buildings have now underground parking (lots of people park on the streets). This is where I see the main problem, afaik.
- ac29 8y agoStandard 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 8y agoGood 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.
- Reason077 8y agoElectrek 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-prices-back-down-customer-backlash/ https://electrek.co/2019/01/22/tesla-cuts-supercharger-price...