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Tesla owners in California uneasy as Supercharging costs are on a constant rise

24 points by CarCooler 4y ago

Vladimof 4y ago
solar energy is still expensive to harvest with the current market...
paulmendoza 4y ago
California electricity rates are high. Tesla mostly just has to pass along these costs.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  The article mentions that MD and DE rates have also gone from 31c to 41c per kWh. That’s a 32% increase. Wasn’t aware that we were seeing electricity price increases anywhere near that on this coast. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care much: I rarely use these networks except on occasional long trips, so the extra $6-8 per 200 miles driven isn’t a killer. But hopefully this is not the first sign of Tesla exercising its vendor lock-in to juice profits. The supercharger network is currently the best selling point for the car.
  - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
    Ouch! I understand that using a SuperCharger in the middle of the day is a very different use case than charging at home, but here in Georgia, the overnight charging rate is a penny per kwh. Lots of incentive to be sure to have a full charge before leaving for the day and make sure if you buy an EV that your common usage patterns don't require you to charge away from home often.
    - jjtheblunt 4y ago
      We charged in Arizona overnight at home for years for something similar to your Georgia rate. It seems that thrifty trick is often overlooked in the discussions.
      - matthewdgreen 4y ago
        I don't think it's overlooked. Pretty much anyone with an EV either installs home charging, or can't install home charging for some practical reason (they live in a condo, can't run wires to street parking, etc.) I just feel bad for people in the second category who bought Teslas thinking they could supercharge, and didn't realize they were about to see +1/3 increases in their fueling costs.
        l1tany11 4y ago
        Home refilling is a paradigm shift that most people don’t fully understand/appreciate yet. People have gone their entire lives filling up at a station, so it’s hard to believe that you really can go from going to a station every week to basically never doing that again. Plus with all the focus on the superchargers and dc fast charging in the marketing and media it really does go misunderstood. It’s not just that you can fill up at home, it’s that realistically you have to. And as you mentioned some people just can’t. Something like 10% of Teslas get flipped because people buy them with no way to fill up at home and then don’t want to live with the alternative (and who can blame them). 300 miles of advertised range may mean that most people filling up at home almost never go to a supercharger, but if you don’t have that option, you’re probably going to be quickly thinking that’s not even half as much as you want. Electric pickups are coming, and they are going to disappoint a lot of people, and won’t work for tons more. Currently some trucks (Ram 1500) have 1000 mile range. That’s not for no reason. They will still sell like hot cakes, and many businesses owners will trip over themselves in the rush to get several and love the economics, but it’s not going to be for everyone.
        jjtheblunt 4y ago
        One irony is that I home charged on 110v for > 7 years. Teslas could too. The reason that is viable is that average daily mileage was sub 50 miles, and 110v for 8 hours or so was fine. If people want to drive much further than that average, as they own average, then 220v charging overnight would easily suffice, if available to them.
- cma 4y ago
  Elon used to say almost all would soon be disconnected from the grid. And he also said every charger affected by California blackouts would get a megapack installed long before that.
  - pengaru 4y ago
    Musk says a lot of things.
RandyRanderson 4y ago
Solar cell tax coming soon. I'm sure there's already somewhere that does this already.
- pumanoir 4y ago
  They tried it in Spain [1]https://www.morairainvest.com/sun-tax/ https://www.morairainvest.com/sun-tax/
- fy20 4y ago
  You joke, but recent changes to the NEM3 proposal would have you taxed for electricity generated by your own solar panels that you use directly (i.e. it doesn't even go to the grid).
t_mann 4y ago
What kind of article is that? A summary of a few Reddit and Twitter posts, almost seems like it's been autogenerated. A human journalist would maybe have thought of including the info by how much fuel costs for combustion engines have increased over the same period.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  I think a more relevant criticism would be that the article lacks information on the underlying costs of electricity, so we don't know if Tesla is passing along costs or increasing profit.* Nobody needs a journalist to tell them stuff about gas prices they can see by literally driving around any neighborhood on the planet, unless the goal is just to defend Tesla (which is not journalism either.) I for one am glad to learn about the price increases from this article, because I probably wouldn't have thought to check before my next trip. * Unfortunately this is difficult, since Tesla is probably the only reliable source for its own cost information and they fired their PR department. https://electrek.co/2021/04/28/elon-musk-no-new-tesla-pr-department-manipulating-public-opinion/ https://electrek.co/2021/04/28/elon-musk-no-new-tesla-pr-dep...
tamaharbor 4y ago
The distribution utility infrastructure in the US will need to double its capacity in order to service just a 40% EV penetration rate. That will increase electricity costs substantially. Perhaps the transition has not been very well thought out.
simonblack 4y ago
I keep seeing parallels with razors and razor-blades. As well as with heroin and the heroin-dealers: "The first hit is always free." Once you have that electric car, you have no choice but to use electricity, no matter what the current rate for it happens to be. (Ditto for petrol and diesel, of course.)
- pornel 4y ago
  I'm not sure what's your point. All cars are dependent on their fuel, and electricity is the easiest one of these to create. You can even generate it yourself at home without being dependent on anyone, and this is much easier than having your own private military-industrial complex for independent oil extraction ;)
rektide 4y ago
> When the EPA devised MPGe in the early 2000s, the government agency calculated that 33.7 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity is comparable to a gallon of fuel in terms of its energy content. This (or some other) baseline should be used. A $/gallon price should be displayed per this figure, for electricity, in all signage & at the pump. I think there deserve to be a lot of super pissed off angry electric car drivers, who rightfully see & understand they are paying an equivalent of like $8/gallon for gas. Electricity costs should be on par per dollar with energy delivery costs of gas. But we accept shitty infrastructure & dont even realize how sickeningly maddeningly cheap car drivers are handed energy. Absolutely uncool, unacceptable.
over_bridge 4y ago
Isn't this just the corporation circle of life? Hot new company appears. It offers great value and undercuts the old guard. As they grow in market share their rate of growth starts to slow as do their investor returns. They start to focus on locking people into their ecosystem with integrations instead of acquisitions. Then once it's hard to leave, they jack up the price. The captive audience has to keep paying despite diminishing, but non-zero, value to them. Eventually prices become too much and they are undercut by the next startup a generation later. The cycle continues. Tesla will lock up most of the supercharger market, become indispensable and then eventually charge like it. See also cloud and streaming services. I wish companies could be happy to reach a stable equilibrium where profits and prices are both steady but that doesn't seem to be possible under the growth model.
- trixie_ 4y ago
  Except the price is up for all charging stations and all new Teslas work with the CCS standard. Adapters coming soon. So no it’s not all a conspiracy to price gouge people. Regardless most people charge at home for significantly less and start each day with 300 miles of range.
  - nemosaltat 4y ago
    Also Tesla have added recently additional visibility to charging costs. In the mobile app you can select your location and utility rate plan, including manual entry options if you desire, and the app will give you stats. There’s a percentage break-down of Supercharging/at-home/other, your spend, and percentages of at-home usage time relative to the rate plan you selected (or manually entered). I feel fortunate to not have tk commute with an ICE in CA right now.

24 points by CarCooler 4y ago

Vladimof 4y ago

solar energy is still expensive to harvest with the current market...

paulmendoza 4y ago

California electricity rates are high. Tesla mostly just has to pass along these costs.

matthewdgreen 4y ago
The article mentions that MD and DE rates have also gone from 31c to 41c per kWh. That’s a 32% increase. Wasn’t aware that we were seeing electricity price increases anywhere near that on this coast. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care much: I rarely use these networks except on occasional long trips, so the extra $6-8 per 200 miles driven isn’t a killer. But hopefully this is not the first sign of Tesla exercising its vendor lock-in to juice profits. The supercharger network is currently the best selling point for the car.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Ouch! I understand that using a SuperCharger in the middle of the day is a very different use case than charging at home, but here in Georgia, the overnight charging rate is a penny per kwh. Lots of incentive to be sure to have a full charge before leaving for the day and make sure if you buy an EV that your common usage patterns don't require you to charge away from home often.
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    We charged in Arizona overnight at home for years for something similar to your Georgia rate. It seems that thrifty trick is often overlooked in the discussions.
    - matthewdgreen 4y ago
      I don't think it's overlooked. Pretty much anyone with an EV either installs home charging, or can't install home charging for some practical reason (they live in a condo, can't run wires to street parking, etc.) I just feel bad for people in the second category who bought Teslas thinking they could supercharge, and didn't realize they were about to see +1/3 increases in their fueling costs.
      - l1tany11 4y ago
        Home refilling is a paradigm shift that most people don’t fully understand/appreciate yet. People have gone their entire lives filling up at a station, so it’s hard to believe that you really can go from going to a station every week to basically never doing that again. Plus with all the focus on the superchargers and dc fast charging in the marketing and media it really does go misunderstood. It’s not just that you can fill up at home, it’s that realistically you have to. And as you mentioned some people just can’t. Something like 10% of Teslas get flipped because people buy them with no way to fill up at home and then don’t want to live with the alternative (and who can blame them). 300 miles of advertised range may mean that most people filling up at home almost never go to a supercharger, but if you don’t have that option, you’re probably going to be quickly thinking that’s not even half as much as you want. Electric pickups are coming, and they are going to disappoint a lot of people, and won’t work for tons more. Currently some trucks (Ram 1500) have 1000 mile range. That’s not for no reason. They will still sell like hot cakes, and many businesses owners will trip over themselves in the rush to get several and love the economics, but it’s not going to be for everyone.
      - jjtheblunt 4y ago
        One irony is that I home charged on 110v for > 7 years. Teslas could too. The reason that is viable is that average daily mileage was sub 50 miles, and 110v for 8 hours or so was fine. If people want to drive much further than that average, as they own average, then 220v charging overnight would easily suffice, if available to them.
cma 4y ago
Elon used to say almost all would soon be disconnected from the grid. And he also said every charger affected by California blackouts would get a megapack installed long before that.
- pengaru 4y ago
  Musk says a lot of things.

RandyRanderson 4y ago

Solar cell tax coming soon. I'm sure there's already somewhere that does this already.

pumanoir 4y ago
They tried it in Spain [1]https://www.morairainvest.com/sun-tax/ https://www.morairainvest.com/sun-tax/
fy20 4y ago
You joke, but recent changes to the NEM3 proposal would have you taxed for electricity generated by your own solar panels that you use directly (i.e. it doesn't even go to the grid).

t_mann 4y ago

What kind of article is that? A summary of a few Reddit and Twitter posts, almost seems like it's been autogenerated. A human journalist would maybe have thought of including the info by how much fuel costs for combustion engines have increased over the same period.

matthewdgreen 4y ago
I think a more relevant criticism would be that the article lacks information on the underlying costs of electricity, so we don't know if Tesla is passing along costs or increasing profit.* Nobody needs a journalist to tell them stuff about gas prices they can see by literally driving around any neighborhood on the planet, unless the goal is just to defend Tesla (which is not journalism either.) I for one am glad to learn about the price increases from this article, because I probably wouldn't have thought to check before my next trip. * Unfortunately this is difficult, since Tesla is probably the only reliable source for its own cost information and they fired their PR department. https://electrek.co/2021/04/28/elon-musk-no-new-tesla-pr-department-manipulating-public-opinion/ https://electrek.co/2021/04/28/elon-musk-no-new-tesla-pr-dep...

tamaharbor 4y ago

The distribution utility infrastructure in the US will need to double its capacity in order to service just a 40% EV penetration rate. That will increase electricity costs substantially. Perhaps the transition has not been very well thought out.

simonblack 4y ago

I keep seeing parallels with razors and razor-blades. As well as with heroin and the heroin-dealers: "The first hit is always free." Once you have that electric car, you have no choice but to use electricity, no matter what the current rate for it happens to be. (Ditto for petrol and diesel, of course.)

pornel 4y ago
I'm not sure what's your point. All cars are dependent on their fuel, and electricity is the easiest one of these to create. You can even generate it yourself at home without being dependent on anyone, and this is much easier than having your own private military-industrial complex for independent oil extraction ;)

rektide 4y ago

> When the EPA devised MPGe in the early 2000s, the government agency calculated that 33.7 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity is comparable to a gallon of fuel in terms of its energy content. This (or some other) baseline should be used. A $/gallon price should be displayed per this figure, for electricity, in all signage & at the pump. I think there deserve to be a lot of super pissed off angry electric car drivers, who rightfully see & understand they are paying an equivalent of like $8/gallon for gas. Electricity costs should be on par per dollar with energy delivery costs of gas. But we accept shitty infrastructure & dont even realize how sickeningly maddeningly cheap car drivers are handed energy. Absolutely uncool, unacceptable.

over_bridge 4y ago

Isn't this just the corporation circle of life? Hot new company appears. It offers great value and undercuts the old guard. As they grow in market share their rate of growth starts to slow as do their investor returns. They start to focus on locking people into their ecosystem with integrations instead of acquisitions. Then once it's hard to leave, they jack up the price. The captive audience has to keep paying despite diminishing, but non-zero, value to them. Eventually prices become too much and they are undercut by the next startup a generation later. The cycle continues. Tesla will lock up most of the supercharger market, become indispensable and then eventually charge like it. See also cloud and streaming services. I wish companies could be happy to reach a stable equilibrium where profits and prices are both steady but that doesn't seem to be possible under the growth model.

trixie_ 4y ago
Except the price is up for all charging stations and all new Teslas work with the CCS standard. Adapters coming soon. So no it’s not all a conspiracy to price gouge people. Regardless most people charge at home for significantly less and start each day with 300 miles of range.
- nemosaltat 4y ago
  Also Tesla have added recently additional visibility to charging costs. In the mobile app you can select your location and utility rate plan, including manual entry options if you desire, and the app will give you stats. There’s a percentage break-down of Supercharging/at-home/other, your spend, and percentages of at-home usage time relative to the rate plan you selected (or manually entered). I feel fortunate to not have tk commute with an ICE in CA right now.