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Tesla Is Prohibiting Commercial Drivers From Using Its Supercharger Stations (theverge.com)
Tesla has issued a new policy called Supercharger Fair Use, which prohibits new commercial drivers from using the red-and-white charging ports. The reason behind this new policy is to help alleviate congestion and improve the experience for others who rely on the Supercharging services. The Verge reports: Tesla says that the stations are intended for drivers who don't have ready options for charging at home or at work, and that when they're not used for this purpose, "it negatively impacts the availability of Supercharging services for others." Thus, the new policy says that for vehicles purchased after December 15th, drivers who plan to use their vehicles as a taxi, for ridesharing, commercial delivery or transportation, governmental purposes, or other commercial ventures won't be permitted to use the free stations. The company tracks usage and driver behavior, and if they find that someone isn't complying with the policy, they might be asked to stop, and simply limit or block one's vehicle from the stations in certain instances. The policy went into effect on Friday, December 15th, 2017. A Tesla spokesperson said that the company does "encourage the use of Teslas for commercial purposes," and that they will work with drivers to find other places to charge their vehicles. The policy carve out an exception, saying that some stations might be excluded, depending on local circumstances.
What about my Uber business? I don't have a charger at home guys but I got to Uber to eat!
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Holy shit, one aspect I never thought would be in favor of the gasoline car is that Chevron cannot remotely disable my ability to fuel up at any of their gas stations!!!
The reasoning behind this move, which if you think about it was inevitable, is the reason why I still think all cars being put electric is infeasible. You simply CANNOT have enough fast chargers around to reasonably accommodate everyone who needs to fuel up in a day.
I still support electric cars mind you; it's just that in the end most electric cars will be hydrogen fuel cell based, where you can fuel up in a reasonable timeframe just like cars today.
People always claim that it's hard to make hydrogen which is true; but there are a lot of promising solutions to that which are improving way more rapidly than battery tech, which faces harder and harder performance gains as it's already a pretty mature field.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Be it cars or computers, vendors now decide what you can and cannot do with what you buy, and change the rules after your purchase with you having a damn say about it.
Fuck Tesla. I'll go buy me a diesel from Volkswagen. They're a bunch of cheating weasels, but at least don't get to decide when I have the right to fill up.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The more I read about how Tesla treats their customers and the cars the "sell" to them, it really looks like you lose nearly all privacy and that the car you spent a ton of money on is never, ever truly yours.
Electric, self-driving cars, are where the future is headed, however, all of this tracking will make me never purchase Tesla or any other car that tracks this much data. They have no right to know I stopped by "dildos r us" right before I went to visit my friend in prison.
Come on folks, let's hear it... you're already riled up. Here's a car analogy just HANDED to you.
This is a tell about the future of automobile transport:
The company tracks usage and driver behavior, and if they find that someone isn't complying with the policy, they might be asked to stop, and simply limit or block one's vehicle from the stations in certain instances.
Just as privacy was destroyed in personal communication, so to shall it be for transportation. I own a 1996 Chevy. I do not have to tell Chevy where I drive, nor do they get a say in where I go. They cannot block my car from certain destinations even if they wanted to.
We are on the cusp of a world where companies track everyone's driving. Arguably telecom companies already do that, but it's rapidly expanding in car companies, with GM Onstar, the Tesla system above, etc. Not only that, they will grant themselves veto power over your use of your automobile. Violate the Terms of Service? No more driving for you.
The ownership era is drawing to a close in every area, from phones, to cars, to appliances, to (legally owned) entertainment media.
All you can eat [1] buffet.
[1] Small print: Does not apply to fuckmungous fat bastards.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If one person who bought your car is delayed for charging their car it's bad, if 8 potential buyers are delayed or can't see the car because the commercial driver can't charge its way worse for business. Generally, commercial driving is way more effective and should come first in every way. Traffic and all the hell of driving will disappear when self driving cars/vans with ridesharing replace personal vehicles for most.
Not surprised by this move. Tesla has been clueless at how it will deal with the influx of added Tesla's on the road and in some dense areas the lack of supercharger stations. Interesting that they target the commercial buyer in all of this, because many probably don't have much option to just charge anywhere. This is why I am not all in on all electric at this point yet. Yes, hybrid combinations seem plausible but I'm fine with being able to fill up at any gas station and drive several hundred miles and not have anyone tell me I cannot buy gas here.
Frame, batteries, motors, wheels, seats. Let me install the automobile OS of my choice and add a few aftermarket accessories where I feel it's lacking. That's what I want.
Keep all the big brother BS, licensing, recurring revenue opportunities, and ability to brick my car remotely at any time and shove it up your ass.
Toyota is staying with hydrogen according to the most recent article I could find on the matter (April 2017).
Maybe you are thinking of Daimler? Although you should really read the whole article I linked to, in order to understand what Daimler is saying.
I can see some short term support going to all electric cars because of Tesla worrying other car makers. But long term physical reality dictates the end game, and all car makers know it.
There will always be all-electric cars mind you, they just will not be in the majority.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Chargers should be usable regardless of what vehicle is used. Slashdot supports net neutrality therefore it supports charger neutrality.
When is the last time you saw a big rig pull up to your local Chevron to fill up its gas tank? They are merely trying to separate commercial fleets from non-commercial fleets. Just like with normal ICE taxis, big rigs, construction, etc.
but I certainly don't see any hydrogen cars.
LMGTFY
But really if you'd simply have read the article I link to, you'd know that and also know Toyota's hydrogen ramp-up plan which is clearly spelled out. I believe 30k hydrogen cars a year by 2030 as they slowly ramp up fuel cell production while better forms of electrolysis are worked out for the supply side.
I guess you prefer to be the anti-Tyrian though - you drink and remain ignorant.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have never seen one in real life. I DO however see tesla's DAILY.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I think that Tesla the manufacturer's point is that commercial users should set up their own infrastructure
I agree that's a salient point, however consider its from the consumer side - you buy a Tesla with the promise you can use the supercharger stations.
Let's say I just like to drive around a lot for fun. Suddenly the Tesla system profiles me as making a lot of daily trips and suddenly I'm put in the Tesla charging jail, and cannot use the stations anymore! That is a pretty nerve-wracking concept to me, after all what if there's a Google-Docs like slip-up and suddenly for no reason at all the software classifies most drivers as being off-limits from the charging stations? For all of us working in software we know that is not an impossible scenario.
Around here there are the normal gas stations for regular drivers, and there are perhaps one to two special gas stations for commercial accounts in a 50 sq mile area.
Yes but the thing is there ARE NO commercial charging stations so you are cutting them off cold with no other options, which again goes against the promise a car buyer understood.
It's not link commercial drivers cannot use the normal gas stations if a commercial one is too far away. Normal gas stations don't give a rip who buys the gas. So Tesla has reversed the model of availability and now they look very much like commercial stations where only select cars can make use of the services - not all of the cars that they make. And again there's the very un-gas station like concept that any car may be denied service at any time because of choices a remote server makes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Tesla has no right to deny high speed charging service to customers. It's a human right enshrined in our laws.
Will there be a law suit from people who bought their Tesla without such restriction with promise of free power, and now are being restricted?
And how will they prove anything? Yeah I charge a lot, but that's for my own personal reasons, prove otherwise Tesla!
And how can they simultaneously claim to support commercial use whilst banning them fuelling up?
Elon Musk is a smart guy, but he's pricing charging-equipped parking spaces below market equilibrium and then wonders why people sit in them all day.
All he has to do is install sensors and price each charging-equipped parking space a variable rate that maintains a roughly 15% vacancy at all times, like what San Francisco does. This encourages turnover and serves the maximum possible number of people.
It's like the tunnel he wants to build to bypass Los Angeles traffic. What will he do when that new tunnel gets congested? Is he going to block commercial drivers from using it as well, or is he going to build another tunnel below that one?
--Not Elon "It's Tunnels All the Way Down!" Musk
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Tesla says that the stations are intended for drivers who don't have ready options for charging at home or at work, and that when they're not used for this purpose, "it negatively impacts the availability of Supercharging services for others." Thus, the new policy says that for vehicles purchased after December 15th, drivers who plan to use their vehicles as a taxi, for ridesharing, commercial delivery or transportation, governmental purposes, or other commercial ventures won't be permitted to use the free stations.
If there's anyone who needs fast-charging stations I'd expect it to be the commercial drivers. A typical commuter can easily recharge at home or work after they parked. But a commercial driver can have 8+ hours of sustained use during the day. Unless they can swap cars part way they're going to have to re-charge during the work day. And the time spent re-charging is directly counted in their pay.
If commercial drivers are swamping the fast-charging stations it's because they desperately need them for their Teslas to be a viable option.
I stole this Sig
So since Tesla is changing the terms of the contract are they going to buy back anyone who doesn't agree to them? There is precedence, we had a software vendor that used an internet connect license, they changed their licensing terms and locked us out for hitting it from too many locations (everyone worked from home). We had documentation confirming people working from home could be covered under the site license. The corporate lawyers got every dime back we ever paid them for licensing and training...well not exactly they got back some license fees, everything paid for training, and damages to cover training people in on a competitors contract and the lost productivity/time during the switch.
Here in D.C., there are a limited number of free chargers for electric vehicles, placed as an incentive for electric car adoption in the city. Of course, they are always being hogged by electric taxi cabs who abuse them to maximize their profits.
While I am somewhat ambivalent about this - the taxi cabs do put on a lot of miles daily, so encouraging them to go electric probably has a proportionally effect on net tailpipe emissions - it completely negates the stated social policy purpose to encourage wider electric car adoption in the city, allowing cab owners to selfishly profit at taxpayer expense.
There is also an issue where people don't move their cars after charging
I always assumed that pretty shortly the Tesla cars will simply move themselves out of the way when charged... not even joking, as supercharger throughput is going to be an issue sooner rather than later.
I can also see someone going to a restaurant, the car driving over when a space is free, then driving back to collect the occupants when done, that way you don't need a lot of extra parking around the supercharger station itself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've read through the commentary so far. Sheesh, people, did Tesla kill your father or something?
Tesla has offered unlimited use of the Superchargers to most of their customers. They initially offered it to everyone, then they announced a change ahead of time (and not retroactive). Then they decided to make their deal more generous, and just to make sure the more-generous deal applied to everyone they announced a one-time retroactive change to give unlimited Supercharger use to all Model S and Model X customers as of that date.
Unlimited use of the Supercharger goes with the car, so every car that ever had it still has it. Buy a used Tesla that has unlimited Supercharger use, you get that benefit. This hasn't changed.
Now they announced their "Supercharger Fair Use" policy that commercial users will no longer be permitted unlimited free use of the Superchargers... and that's only on new sales of Tesla cars, so anyone who has already been running a business and using the Superchargers is still being allowed to continue doing it.
What if you want to buy a Tesla in 2018 and use it for a business? You still can, just install a Tesla wall connector and you can charge the car from empty to full in less time than it takes you to get a good night's sleep. (If you have a 240 Volt circuit with enough Watts you can charge a Tesla at one-quarter the speed of a Supercharger... at your home or business!)
What if you want to operate a whole fleet of Teslas as a taxi service or something? Tesla will sell you a private Supercharger station you can set up. Rumor has it a two-station Supercharger costs about $60K, and rumor has it that Tesla might give it free with a bulk purchase of 10 cars:
https://electrek.co/2016/10/03/tesla-to-deliver-its-largest-privately-owned-supercharger-station-to-a-taxi-fleet-in-montreal/
To those of you wailing that Tesla can control who uses their Supercharger stations: yeah, they can, but so far they haven't abused this in any way; and they can't stop you (and don't want to stop you) from setting up your own charging solution.
It's true that gas stations don't control who can get gas there. But they don't give the gas for free to anyone... they charge money which is why they don't care who gets it. Also, gas stations are pretty well built-out everywhere, while Tesla is frantically building new Supercharger stations; IMHO Tesla is looking after their ordinary customers by trying to keep a few users from disproportionately using the Superchargers.
And note that all Telsas can use all the other charging stations for all the other cars, with an adapter. If you are so worried about the Supercharger, get a CHAdeMO adapter; this will charge a Tesla about half as fast as a Supercharger station, which is still pretty darn fast.
If you read all the above and you still think Tesla is doing something wrong here, I'm really curious as to just what it might be. Maybe you think Tesla should promise to just give free unlimited power forever to everyone without limit? That doesn't seem very reasonable to me.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
For instance, what if all the other parking lots for restaurants, shopping centers, etc.
I'm sure that all these extremely thin margin businesses will be delighted to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to upgrade every low-tech parking sport to a high-tech charging spot that now requires wiring, vastly more electricity and an order of magnitude more expensive upkeep than paving. Oh, and they get to give away all that electricity for free to add to the fiscal overhead fun!
Sure it will take some time to build out,
Problem is not (just) time, but expense, recurring expenses, and demand on the grid. Even just adding a handful of spots is pretty expensive which is why malls today don't have many.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I once saw an animation of how one would drive a Tesla up to the charging station where a robot arm reaches up from below and swaps out the depleted battery for a charged one. Did they not go with that? It seems that would eliminate the wait times hogging a charging cord.
Are they expensive to install? YES THEY ARE.
That's also ignoring the cost of getting wiring TO each spot, and the huge additional burden of ongoing maintenance all of the wiring and chargers entail.
So what's the hold-up? I'd say it's the complete lack of demand.
There are already areas with high Tesla ownership running into issues. There's plenty of demand in places, but why would there be a rush to build out expensive support that no-one will be paying for?
Unlike your fantasies, I have resources to back up what I am saying, not to mention simple common sense for anyone that spends ten minutes on the thought experiment of what it means to wire every spot (or even just most spots) in a parking lot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Be fun to have it boomerang ...
Or, you know, water. Which releases.... oxygen.
But not to worry. No one's going to use hydrogen in any serious way. The transport and storage issues are a brick wall.
The tech that's going to be transformative here is either batteries with a decent lifecycle and energy density (neither of which are really quite there yet in commercially available batteries, anyway), or ultracaps, which already have the lifecycle absolutely covered, but aren't even close in terms of energy density.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You see Tesla's what daily?
Do they forbid the use of Tesla chargers to mine bitcoins, just like some people abuse subsided electricity in Venezuela?
Onboard maps become out of date. Once they become unusably out of date, there comes a need to transmit payment credentials to cover the cost of producing the updates for the onboard maps. These payment credentials usually include the buyer's postal code if not full home address. So yes, the GPS company can tell that you've moved house even if it can't tell where you've driven.
And don't try evading single-source map updates by using an OpenStreetMap client, as distracted driving laws in some states treat dedicated GPS devices and general-purpose pocket computers differently.
You prefer to just be a plain old dick
Yeah I charge a lot, but that's for my own personal reasons
Sorry, your bitcoin mining rig will have to leave the trunk and find a new source of power. :-)
Anyone else get a little creeped out at the implications of Tesla "tracking usage and driver behavior" and controlling what you can do with the car accordingly? It has the feel of a software license or website's Terms Of Service. What other future behavior might they decide to prohibit? "Oh, look, you exceeded the speed limit twelve times. Reckless behavior voids your warranty."
How, exactly, does Tesla know if you're using your car for "commercial purposes"?
What data are they using to make that determination?
If they're using anything other than supercharger use data (which is all the data they should have access to).. this is downright creepy big brother shit.
I don't get it. Used or leased , I cannot make the back of the envelope maths work for current Teslas. Leased they'd be super expensive, and owned, I have a hard time with the return on a wasting asset. Maybe a model 3 will make sense, especially if the per mile costs for an all electric are so much lower than even a Prius.
So I just cannot see this problem, and article being more than Tesla oriented click bait. Maybe they're just thinking forward to when they have numbers enough of them on the road to warrant this censure?
His Tesla has a DAILY, whatever that is. It's visible to him.
Will their handshake agreements be enforced or will they have to sue?
30k hydrogen cars a year by... when?! 2030?!
Tesla has a car with a 600 mile range planned for 2020. Yes, it's a sports car, but their other models won't stay far behind. By 2030 you'll probably have 1000 miles of range. That means most people need a fast charge a couple of times a year at most (in fact, this is already the case for a large majority of people today). Also, those charges will become faster and faster. In 2030 you'll probably be looking at less than 10 minutes for 500 miles of range.
And apart from those very few long distance trips, the rest of the time you just plug in in your own garage or at work, instead of having to go to a hydrogen refueling station every week or so to fill up.
What exactly were the advantages of hydrogen again? The extra entertainment when filling stations catch fire?
30k cars a year by 2030, lol :-)
By 2025, the battery electric car will be dominate because:
1. In 2025, Norway will ban the sale of all petrol and diesel cars. Today, 40% of new cars sold in Norway come with a plug for charging.
2. The deployment S-curve is exponential which means linear thinking will give wrong results. Just look at the fossil fuel industry's linear predictions for the loss of oil sales due to the deployment of battery electric cars as an example of wrong headed thinking. Like Kodak for film versus CCD cameras.
Car manufacturers are getting the "big stick" from governments and cities that indicates the sale of their current vehicles are at risk of being prohibited in 7 years time in some markets. The car manufacturers have to adapt today or die. The only mass market viable solution for 2025 is battery electric.
Rapid S-curve deployments have seen:
Audio CDs replaced by Music downloads
Dial-up modems replaced by cable modems
Dumb mobile phones replaced by smartphones - new entrant was Apple
Film replaced by CCD cameras
CRT monitors replaced by LCD monitors
Discreet transistors replaced by microchips
Thermionic valve (tube) based equipment replaced by transistors
Horse and cart replaced by the car
History is full of the status quo changing "overnight".
Hydrogen is already dead, it just does not know it yet.
I said right from the get go this will happen!
They offer a great deal at the beginning to suck you in, then they slowly remove more and more of the perks and adding more and more caveats.
This is not the future of motoring I want; Don't let Tesla do the car industry what Steam has done for the games industry!!!
"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further..."
Wait for daylight. Look up. See that bright, hot, yellowish thing up there? Energy supply is not in any way an insurmountable problem. We're outright awash in free energy supply.
However, energy storage and transport are actual problems. And hydrogen is a case where both of those come home to roost in a most uncompromising manner.
The only answer available from our repertoire of current technology that shows the potential to address all of the actual problems in the relatively short term is the EV using battery storage; hydrogen, in any form (fuel tank, fuel cell, etc.) hasn't got the characteristics to be a serious contender, nor is there any present indication in materials science that it ever will. It's a bad bet.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Wrong. Collecting and utilizing solar energy to split water does not release CO2. This would be the ideal way to do it, if it actually needed to be done.
But it doesn't. It's irrelevant, because hydrogen has other problems - transport, storage - that are by all indications insurmountable.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Why does Tesla not simply charge for usage of superchargers so that costs are covered? When there is congestion regularly at specific sites, they could simply expand the site or build a new site nearby.
Telsa prohibits commercial drivers because there is nothing commercial about Telsa or what they have to offer.
They just want to STOP profits and dip their hands in government subsidies (i.e. money pulled out of my pockets).
Who purchases a $100k+ car to use for their Über gig?
And, since when does anyone in Silicon Valley give a flying fuck about their users/customers and their experiences? They're just cows to be milked.
Tesla fired a bunch of people recently, didn't they? And, the ramp up of their new car production is taking way longer than expected. So, my guess is that their cash flow is really tight right now and Elon et alia are trying to do everything they can to keep from having to take on more debt and/or dilute their equity. The bean counters are looking for every possible way to slash operating costs, especially those on the non-revenue-generating side of the business.
I disagree
I think we are already at the upper limits of battery technology and I only see minor improvements coming.
Railroads have wanted powerful batteries for years since they use electric motors to actually drive the train and just use diesel engines to generate the electricity for the drive motor.