An Update to our Supercharging Program

[bro1999]

I think that's been raised before and the upshot was that there is nothing concrete in the contract, so it might turn out to be, retrospectively, defines as "The lifetime of YOUR ownership of the car"

Companies end support for products after so many years. Same with cell phone manufacturers and firmware updates. At some point in time in the future, free, unlimited Supercharging for existing Teslas will come to an end.

 

[Garlan Garner]

Companies end support for products after so many years. Same with cell phone manufacturers and firmware updates. At some point in time in the future, free, unlimited Supercharging for existing Teslas will come to an end.

Not exactly true. Unlimited data on cell phone carriers is an option everywhere. As soon as one carrier offers unlimited data...all others have to fall in line or they will lose their customer base.
It might be free again as soon as "lets say" Toyota creates a comparable EV and offers free SC'ing chargers to their customers. I don't know this for sure, but potential Tesla customers would run to buy a Toyota EV that offers FREE SC'ing.

 

[SW2Fiddler]

I think that's been raised before and the upshot was that there is nothing concrete in the contract, so it might turn out to be, retrospectively, defined as "The lifetime of YOUR ownership of the car"

Totally true about the contract, Max and I were quoting the marketing materials seen on the Web. Wording has changed (I posit that it is because new models have come out) over time. We're all giving our best guesses while waiting for Tesla to release more details.

 

[AMPd]

Not exactly true. Unlimited data on cell phone carriers is an option everywhere. As soon as one carrier offers unlimited data...all others have to fall in line or they will lose their customer base.
It might be free again as soon as "lets say" Toyota creates a comparable EV and offers free SC'ing chargers to their customers. I don't know this for sure, but potential Tesla customers would run to buy a Toyota EV that offers FREE SC'ing.

First you get my hopes up

...Toyota

Then shoot them down

 

[MP3Mike]

And since the AC runs off of the 12V line, which comes from the battery

Actually I'm pretty sure that the AC is powered by the 400v battery.

 

[apacheguy]

Oh, interesting. So just to confirm this affects all battery sizes?

Actually I'm pretty sure that the AC is powered by the 400v battery.

Yep. AC compressor runs on HV.

 

[Saghost]

Actually I'm pretty sure that the AC is powered by the 400v battery.

Some of each, but you're mostly right - the compressor is 400V, the fans on both ends are 12V.

None of which really matters because while you're Supercharging, the battery is in parallel with the Supercharger and all the loads, including the dc-dc converter and thus the 12V bus - power from the Supercharger is carrying all the loads either way.

The question that led to this is valid, and I don't know the answer. I'm going to speculate that Tesla will make the 400 kWh be energy available in the battery, like the car's screens display, but they could easily go with energy delivered instead.

 

[Saghost]

Oh, interesting. So just to confirm this affects all battery sizes?

I don't think we know that yet, or what options Tesla might offer for Supercharging packages.

The implication is that it affects all battery sizes, but they could choose to bundle more kWh into a battery upgrade, or sell a one time package, or strictly do by the kWh afterwards - we just don't know yet...

 

[Max*]

For those just joining, a summary of the last 10 pages:

Person 1: Look at me!!! Look at me!!! I live in NYC, and I'm better than the rest of you poor shlubs living in the 'burbs. Look at me!!! Look at me!!!
People 2-5 arguing with person 1.

 

[Max*]

I feel safe and saying that 95% of all Superchargers never experienced congestion. If California was removed from the equation .... I believe that percentage would comfortable sit at 99%

You feel safe saying that because you've visited a lot of superchargers? Wouldn't you need a Model S to visit superchargers?

I feel safe saying that I like to make up numbers 87.543254327895% of the time too.

 

[Max*]

That changes the "life" to a different "life?" Nah.
Regardless, when I purchased mine, it was "for the life of the Model S"
Need to learn how to work the wayback thingy, give me a moment.

I wasn't aruging about the life, or the Tesla, just who it belongs to.

And I do recall them saying for the life of the Model S too, so I believe you here.

Listen, I don't think that Tesla will actually do this. But I'm also not naive enough to think that it's not a possibility. Remember ranger service? Remember alignment being included in the service plans, and then not being included, and people had to go and complain to get their alignments done since they pre-paid for them, etc. etc. etc.

Again, I'm with you, 99% chance Tesla keeps it for the life of THE car, not YOUR car. But I wont put it at 100%.

 

[tls]

You feel safe saying that because you've visited a lot of superchargers? Wouldn't you need a Model S to visit superchargers?

I feel safe saying that I like to make up numbers 87.543254327895% of the time too.

I don't know how it is in Virginia, but in 18 months so far traveling in New York and New England I've never, ever run into a Supercharger that was full. Not once. I've run into one or two that had spots ICEd, and I've gotten the last spot a couple of times, but I've never seen one that was full. I Supercharge between 1 and 3 times a week, so I guess I must have made somewhere around 100 Supercharger visits.

How many times have you had to wait for a Supercharger spot? In about how many visits?

 

[Max*]

I don't know how it is in Virginia, but in 18 months so far traveling in New York and New England I've never, ever run into a Supercharger that was full. Not once. I've run into one or two that had spots ICEd, and I've gotten the last spot a couple of times, but I've never seen one that was full. I Supercharge between 1 and 3 times a week, so I guess I must have made somewhere around 100 Supercharger visits.

How many times have you had to wait for a Supercharger spot? In about how many visits?

I grew up in NYC, and still have family there, and have family in Boston. In also about 18 months, I've put on close to 30k mlies on my car. Most of that up and down the east coast (DC<-->NYC, DC<-->Boston, a few trips south too)

I'm not going to try to count how many times I've supercharged, maybe less than you, maybe more, I just don't know/care.

Maybe you forget, but before the expansion, Delaware was congested ALL the time. I've posted pictures of 4-5 car waits at DE.

Also the 2 superchargers at the NJ rest areas are occasionally full (4 cars, 4 slots). I've never had to wait in NJ, but I have arrived/left with no open spaces.

While I never personally waited at the local SpC (the one in MD, crap I forgot, around 270) it had 2 slots, and there was often a line. It was the "temporary" one that was "temporary" for several years.

So that's just 3 examples, here on the east coast.

And while this is more of an ICE issue, not a packed issue, the SpC in CT (Greenwich? I forget), where the signs allow you to park a regular car or a Tesla, yeah, I've had to actually wait there for someone to pull out.

 

[RubberToe]

The retail cost of electricity in a multifamily dwelling in New York City is in the neighborhood of $0.21-$0.25 per kWh. Perhaps it's not so surprising our resource usage per capita is a tiny fraction of that in any state West of the Mississippi.

Of course, at the same time, it's immensely complex and often not practical to install EV charging here at all. For example, my building has 200A of service supplying twelve families. Upgrading the service would require trenching about 50 feet of bedrock to lay a new cable, and guess what? The feeder to the nearest transformer vault is only 13.5kV (typical for Manhattan) so if you know anything about utility engineering you can probably see where this is going. These are typical conditions for the 50-odd buildings on both sides of my street stretching from one end to the other about 3/4 of a mile. Oh, I forgot, we're all supposed to live in detached homes on the Peninsula with overhead utility wiring, right?

Sigh. Charge overnight? That must be very nice if you can arrange to do it (you know, like if you live somewhere where everyone else in the country pays to subsidize your resource usage, like by moving billions of gallons of water around against gravity). Me, if I want the car charged up on Monday morning after I drive home Sunday evening, I have one choice, really: hit my "local" Paramus or Greenwich supercharger and get called a jerk on TMC for doing exactly what I'm contractually entitled to do and what my local SvC staff consistently say is perfectly fine to do.

I repeat: the whole world is not California (thank goodness). Other places have other conditions and other needs. Now can we put a cork in the smug talk about how nobody should use their local Superchargers already?

tls,
In all seriousness (unusual for me, I know...) your situation, and others like it, is one reason why I'm not on the anti-local charging bandwagon. There are all kinds of circumstances where Tesla owners cannot reliably charge where they live. Your power situation there in New York is one of many examples. As the vehicle fleet over time shifts more and more to electric power, getting all owners vehicles charged will become an ongoing issue. I think workplace L2 charging would take care of a lot of these situations, but again, corner cases still abound.

Cheers,
RT

 

[Saghost]

I grew up in NYC, and still have family there, and have family in Boston. In also about 18 months, I've put on close to 30k mlies on my car. Most of that up and down the east coast (DC<-->NYC, DC<-->Boston, a few trips south too)

I'm not going to try to count how many times I've supercharged, maybe less than you, maybe more, I just don't know/care.

Maybe you forget, but before the expansion, Delaware was congested ALL the time. I've posted pictures of 4-5 car waits at DE.

Also the 2 superchargers at the NJ rest areas are occasionally full (4 cars, 4 slots). I've never had to wait in NJ, but I have arrived/left with no open spaces.


And while this is more of an ICE issue, not a packed issue, the SpC in CT (Greenwich? I forget), where the signs allow you to park a regular car or a Tesla, yeah, I've had to actually wait there for someone to pull out.

I suspect you kept hitting peak travel times - in all the times I drove past Newark before the expansion, I never saw it full so I assume your timing matched some other people's.

I've only waited once, at Highland Park at around dinner time on a week day. In Newburgh on a Sunday afternoon I caught someone pulling out and took the last stall.

 

[sorka]

I'm still entirely correct to note that many solar panels (and by extension, many solar panel installations) are not even net energy neutral; never mind net carbon neutral.

You couldn't be more wrong. But let me guess, you're one of those that drank the "it costs more energy to produce a Prius than a Hummer" Coolaid, which was completely fabricated and then debunked.

 

[Max*]

I suspect you kept hitting peak travel times - in all the times I drove past Newark before the expansion, I never saw it full so I assume your timing matched some other people's.

Friday night/Sunday evening were my typical SpC @newark times. So yeah, those are likely peak times, but nonetheless, there's a reason they expanded it --> congestion.

 

[sorka]

That article's errant nonsense -- it equates economic payback with net energy use, which is only true if the cost of energy is the same everywhere. Which is simply not so.

There's a rooftop I can see from mine that has a couple of dozen large panels in the shadow of another building. There's no way, in 20 or 25 years -- particularly remembering the loss in efficiency over a 25 year lifespan, which the popular-press article you quoted also ignores -- those panels will ever offset the carbon spewed into the air in China to make them.

You keep posting nonsense without any credible links or evidence to back up your claim.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf

This is strictly based on energy requirements. Care to dispute it?

 

[sorka]

I do think there's a danger in an overly simplistic approach towards it, though. As much as I know we're probably all better off that the bozos who put those panels on the next roof over, where they're in the shade most of the day, got a huge subsidy check and preferential tax treatment for doing it, it chaps my hide, you know?

You can't get the rebate unless you can document and certify that your installation won't be blocked by trees now or in the future(some minimum number of years but I forget how many). If the installer faked that documentation to the federal government, then they are guilty of fraud.

 

[Venomized]

So if I bought a CPO or used Model S private sale would the car qualify for the free unlimited supercharging?