Elon Musk Suggests Tesla Model 3 Won't Get Free Supercharger Use (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge: In response to a question about how the company would handle an influx of Model 3s to its Supercharging stations, which are currently offered as a free service to Tesla customers, Elon Musk said at Tesla's annual shareholder's conference in Mountain View, California, "it will not be free long distance for life unless you purchase that package." He did not specify what the "package" contained, nor did he say how much it would cost as an add-on with the purchase of a Model 3. His full quote reads: "Obviously, [free Supercharging] fundamentally has a cost. [...] The obvious thing to do is decouple that from the cost of the Model 3. So it will still be very cheap, and far cheaper than gasoline, to drive long-distance with the Model 3, but it will not be free long distance for life unless you purchase that package. I wish we could, but in order to achieve the economics, it has to be something like that." Tesla did recently announce their Gigafactory Grand Opening will be held on July 29, even if it isn't scheduled to begin production on lithium ion cells until next year.

Comments

More context

[93 Escort Wagon]

From the article:

"Elon Musk addressed a question from a young Model S P85D owner about how the company would handle an influx of Model 3s to its Supercharging stations"

So basically some rich guy wanted to know if he had to share his charging station with the unwashed lower classes.

Re:More context

[fyngyrz]

"for free" meaning, you paid a hell of a lot more for your vehicle and part of that went for supercharger use.

Funny use of "for free", but okay.

Me, I'm looking forward to my "not for 'free'" electricity consuming Tesla, if they can just get them built. Breath-holding does not seem to be called for here.

Re:More context

[AaronW]

Most superchargers are next to restaurants and other amenities. Out of all of the superchargers I've visited I think I only went to a McDonalds once. One was next to a nice brew pub, several at shopping malls, a couple at Black Bear diners. Where possible they seem to try to locate them where there is a variety of places to eat and/or shop. I find it's often nice to stop at places other than McDonalds. For example, I went across the street from the one in Folsom, CA to City Burger where they have awesome burgers, much better than anything you'd get at McDonalds/Burger King, etc. The one in Rockland, CA is right near a combination bar/restaraunt/theater where you can eat your dinner while watching a movie. There's also a mall nearby as well. The one in Truckee, CA is near some restaurants and a 24/hour Safeway. I've stopped there a couple of times to make a pit stop and pick up a couple six packs on my way to Reno and pick up over 50 miles of range even though I don't need the charge.

I think it makes sense to charge for their use with the model 3. The Superchargers are designed for long distance travel, not so much for people wanting to get a free charge. It's been a problem at some chargers where the locals charge there rather than charging at home or work and they clog them up. I read about one where there's a person who frequently parks their car at a supercharger and leaves it hooked up overnight (which is considered extremely rude).

I think the best thing Tesla could do would be to require an account to use them and charge a bit more than it would cost to charge at home to encourage people to do most charging at home or work. Even though it's free for me since I have a P85 (over 41K miles on it), I wouldn't mind all that much if it wasn't free since that would help encourage people not to clog it up instead of charging at home.

There's a Supercharger just off the freeway along the route between my house and where I work but I only use it rarely, only if I'm low and need to travel a long distance. It's just not worth my time to stop there (and that's one of the few where there's not much around it since it's at the Tesla factory). It's just more convenient and cost effective to charge at home since it takes me 5 seconds to plug in at night and 5 seconds to unplug in the morning with no waiting. If I need a full charge at home it takes roughly 5 1/2 hours at 80 amps, something that's easily done overnight. Since my typical charge is a fraction of that I usually lower the current to 40A so there's less loss and let it charge a couple hours overnight when the rates are the lowest.

Charging at home is pretty cheap, even though the area I live in has some of the most expensive electricity in the nation. I have a separate meter for my car and I pay around $50/month and drive around 1000 miles/month. $50/1000 miles is quite cheap considering the size of the car.

How Is This a Surprise?

[EndlessNameless]

Lower margins on a mass-market vehicle means there isn't enough money to pay the electrical bill for the lifetime of the vehicle.

Are people really getting worked up over basic and obvious economic decisions?

I know two people who own Teslas, and both of them bought the in-home charger regardless of the availability of "free" charging. Topping up costs way less than a tank of gas, and they don't feel like wasting time at the station.

The only reason Tesla could offer free charging in the first place is because the electricity costs so much less than gasoline. Their "free" fillup simply was not a large value to begin with---except for the convenience it offered on long trips.

Re:"Gas" = Electrons

[CaptainLard]

To be useful electric cars REQUIRE home charging.

Or work charging. Or anywhere you can run a 2cm cable to. If every car took 20 min to "refuel" but a refueling station had the footprint of the head-on space between 2 parking spaces instead of massive underground storage tanks I'm sure someone could figure out how to avoid grinding to a halt.

Re:Solar panels?

[AaronW]

I've argued with a number of people on the Tesla forums on how stupid this is.

Covering every horizontal surface other than the windows on a car would be frightfully expensive and it would add more weight. The body under the cells would need to be more rigid to prevent the cells from cracking, plus since cars are rarely perfectly flat there would have to be an expensive cover over the cells. It would have to stand up to rocks and other things as well as the flexing a car normally has while driving. If you think denting a normal hood is expensive, imagine how expensive it would be if it were covered with solar?

It's far better to instead install solar on your roof rather than the very limited return one would get with solar added to a car.

I know someone with a Fisker Karma which does have solar on the roof. From what I have read it costs around $5000 to add the solar to the roof of the Karma for a very limited rate of return. It's not going to be as efficient as a normal solar panel since it will not be aimed towards the sun, plus it needs a much thicker coating over the panels in order to protect them. Additionally, it adds weight to the car as well as the extra support for those panels to prevent cracking or damage from various things encountered while driving. Someone ran the numbers and figured out the rate of return is around 500 years until the panel pays for itself. It barely adds anything to the range of the car and is mostly used to keep the 12v battery topped off and to help cool the interior. It's also going to be expensive since you want to try and keep the solar panels from getting too hot. The solar panels on my house are quite light with plenty of air circulation under them. They're also perfectly flat and aimed at the sun so they're a lot more efficient and a lot cheaper.

  For my Tesla I much prefer having the panoramic roof where I can just open it a bit to help keep the car cool. On top of that, the panoramic roof adds additional head room and it's nice to open when the weather is nice. The glass used is amazing in that it does not let much heat into or out of the car.

Solar on the roof of a car might generate 100 watts. It would take around 3 hours of sun to add one mile of range since my car (with my driving and sticky tires) typically takes almost 300Wh/mile.