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Chevy Bolt - 200 mile range for $30k base price (after incentive)

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I think it higher than that, high enough to discourage people from using it as a "home" charger.

anything over $5 and I would just charge at home or try to find a public/destination charger that is free or rolled into the price of the stay. But then you also lose the marketing value of the long trips for cheap line.

I only pay $.10 per kWh at home and on a S60 or a bottom pack Model 3 that doesn't want to sit through the taper (slow charge at the end) a flat fee would be enough to make me avoid it all together if there is a cheaper option.

Make it $0.10 per kWh rounded down to the next lowest kWh + a surcharge for any time spent during the taper (say double the non taper rate) and an additional surcharge if you leave the car attached after charge completes and that'd keep the slots opening up. And even then it'd be more expensive than charging at my house.

Make that per kWh rate vary based on state or congestion at the specific location if you want. But the goal should be to have a base price that is comparable to home charging so that only the taper and unattended car penalties dissuade long trips. Keep the charges minimal for people on the move that aren't abusing the system.

Another problem with flat fee is if you decide to move to another charger when someone arrives or leaves. You want to be on a unused pair to get the fastest rate but a flat fee penalizes moving and starting a new session.

If you do a flat fee it should be a per day fee not per session so that a road trip with 3 supercharger stops is all on that one $5 fee. But the "avoiding home charging" user would still pay the same $5 for one session.

Also consider those "missing supercharger routes" that add 1000 miles to a trip and more supercharging sessions. If you charge per session people will just fly or drive a gas car instead.

Plenty of ways to structure the fees I just don't want to see it a nationwide flat fee that would be considered expensive in states with cheap electricity. And I'd say Tesla doesn't want it to seem expensive to take long trips.
 
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== compromised
It doesn't matter if I do 99% under 200.
It is about that 1% that I cannot do with this car.

Next!

He said "households".

A significant number of households (maybe even near the 99% he references), have more than one car, and I'd bet very near 100% of them don't require both cars to be able to drive more than 200 miles in a day.

I'd bet a shiny nickel that it's that way for 99% of the population in my county of 350K persons.
 
I don't want to drive this thread further off topic, but Elon said 2 years ago supercharging would be free on the Model 3 (back then called Gen 3 / Model E). I presume that is talking about non-pay-per-use, not necessarily a free option (back then 60kWh Model S was still available).
http://insideevs.com/elon-musk-confirms-free-supercharging-for-tesla-gen-3-model-e/

Although no one has pinged Elon or Tesla about it recently, I don't think they will change their stance.
 
I don't want to drive this thread further off topic, but Elon said 2 years ago supercharging would be free on the Model 3 (back then called Gen 3 / Model E). I presume that is talking about non-pay-per-use, not necessarily a free option (back then 60kWh Model S was still available).
http://insideevs.com/elon-musk-confirms-free-supercharging-for-tesla-gen-3-model-e/

Although no one has pinged Elon or Tesla about it recently, I don't think they will change their stance.

Since then JB Straubel has said in multiple presentations that when they hit 1,000,000 cars or there about they'll have to monetize the supercharger network. He didn't say how but he said it would be a issue and implied some sort of transition with older cars getting free for life access still.

I think we are around 110,000 Teslas built/sold in early 2016 (cumulative from 2012 to now), maybe we hit 200,000 by end of 2016. 300,000 by end of 2017 and 500,000 by end of 2018, so 2019 or 2020 before the supercharger terms need to change?

That leaves several years to sell the first few hundred thousand Model 3 cars with free supercharger access.
 
Not if it's still cheaper than gas, which it would be.

Not here, not if you are charging $5 flat fee no matter how many miles I get for it.

If my next supercharger hop is 100 miles and I need 33 kWh to do the hop I might supercharge for 30 or 40 kWh and go. In that scenario you are charging me 5 cents per mile to supercharge.

At 0.10 per kWh I'm paying about 2 cents a mile in my Leaf. At $2.50 a gallon I pay about 4 cents a mile in my Prius.

Except now gas is $1.65 here meaning I pay about 2.7 cents per mile to drive the Prius now but electrical costs aren't going down.

You make it more expensive to drive because you want to charge more for supercharging and I can just switch to the Prius and drive cheaper.

Figure your cost per mile with a supercharger fee and make sure it allows you to drive the Tesla for less than 2 cents a mile and then you can say it's always cheaper than gas (at least as long as gas stays above $1.25 a gallon).

So maybe things are more expensive in New York or California but not all parts of the country have high costs and high salaries. Here in flyover country the cost of gas and electricity is pretty cheap.
 
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At 0.10 per kWh I'm paying about 2 cents a mile in my Leaf. At $2.50 a gallon I pay about 4 cents a mile in my Prius.

Except now gas is $1.65 here meaning I pay about 2.7 cents per mile to drive the Prius now but electrical costs aren't going down.

You make it more expensive to drive because you want to charge more for supercharging and I can just switch to the Prius and drive cheaper.

Since most of your charging is going to be done at home the cost of supercharging isn't really going to be the determining factor in your overall cost per mile. If the cost per mile of the Prius drops below the cost per mile of an EV does that mean you're going to give up your EV for a Prius?
 
Since most of your charging is going to be done at home the cost of supercharging isn't really going to be the determining factor in your overall cost per mile. If the cost per mile of the Prius drops below the cost per mile of an EV does that mean you're going to give up your EV for a Prius?

I live in a house with more than just myself. I have a 2 car garage and my primary 2 vehicles are currently a Leaf and a Prius. I drive one, my wife drives one. But our schedules aren't the same and the cheaper car to drive is the Leaf so I drive the Leaf more than the Prius and she drives the Leaf if I'm not using it.

If gas got below $1 a gallon I'd probably change that to favor the Prius and drive it more than the Leaf.

If some point down the Road I buy a Tesla it will replace a car but I'll still consider range and cost per mile for any trips I make. If my choice comes down to paying a flat fee for charging that is more expensive per mile I'll avoid that fee no matter which car I'm in.

I already avoid Blink network chademo and L2 chargers because they have fees I consider excessive. Its cheaper for me to drive the Prius on a long trip if that route doesn't take me past free L2 or chademo chargers.

Tesla would lose a strong marketing advantage for the Model 3 vs Bolt/Leaf/Volt/Prius if they made supercharging as expensive as chademo charging and SAE/CSS charging.

You seem to think I'm making up some sort of hypothetical situation. I'm telling you how it is right now and how I look at the coming cars that I might upgrade to in the future based on my current cost to drive.

How much it costs me to charge at home doesn't factor in for long trips, that is all about how much does it cost me to charge if I travel more than a half pack distance away from home.

Blink fees for my Leaf are something like 25 cents a mile. I'd never take my Leaf on a long trip when I can just hop in the Prius and drive that same trip for 3 or 4 cents per mile and not deal with charging away from home. And yet I drive the Leaf for 100% of my driving now and 20% of my wife's. The Prius sees very little use, if we drove it any less the gas would go stale.



Tesla has the advantage that no other EV has, free charging is hassle free charging. Plop a flat fee on it and you will have a large group of people avoiding it and no longer seeing the speed of charge as a pure advantage, they'll use a chademo or L2 charger if it's cheaper. What percentage will do that will depend on the range of their vehicles and the length of their trips and the size of their checking account but it's still a non zero percentage.
 
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It's not really fair to talk about the price before tax credit (at least for the US). Also we don't know that the base Bolt will be equal to the base Trax. It could be optioned higher.

I would say that it's highly probable that the base Bolt will have cloth rather than the pictured leather seats. As Bangor Bob points out in his post below, CCS is optional. The C&D article also indicates that there is no on-board Navigation system on the vehicle they drove. Wheels (alloy or steel w' aero covers), audio system, and moonroof are other items that we don't know about. It's fair to point out that the base Bolt could very well be better than the base Trax, but we won't know until later this year.

Fast-charging optional?

We Drive the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV – News – Car and Driver | Car and Driver Blog

"Fast-charging capability will be optional using the SAE’s CCS standard"

Probably tied to having "Premium Interior" or something dumb like that. :facepalm:
 
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If gas got below $1 a gallon I'd probably change that to favor the Prius and drive it more than the Leaf.

....

In your case dhanson, it appears that you're optimizing for cost of energy in your choice of vehicle. That's a reasonable basis for optimization.

Others will optimize on other basis (such as ability to complete the trip with no fossil fuels, as long as the cost is vaguely in the same vicinity for the non-fossil fuel choice).


Regarding charging for Supercharger usage, whether its by session, by kwh, or by any other metric - the moment you bring money into it beyond a capitalized access fee that is part of the vehicle purchase, the entire system will require a reasonably significant upgrade in the form of a payment system. One idea above that would minimize the payment system upgrade is the idea of having a linked credit card that gets billed by the session - Tesla is already collecting session metrics (there's just no associated billing system required at present).

It may well be that there will be a need in the future for that linked billing and payment system, but realize that it's a nontrivial increase in complexity. I believe Tesla has been wise in many ways by leaving that out of the puzzle entirely thus far. I'm hoping that continues to be the case for many years to come (ok - I'm hoping for free forever).
 
I fully expect local supercharging to not be free (I imagine people will get a limited number locally, like two superchargers per month for free). I expect there will be a subscription plan of some sort available for users who have no home charging.

I also expect that long distance will either be free or an up-front option.

The Supercharger network could not reasonably handle demand from "local moochers" at M3 volume.

Just keep in mind that to compete with the Bolt long charging, Tesla doesn't have to try hard at all. A horrible mis-mash of mostly 1 and 2-stall fast charging stations that'll go no faster than 80% in an hour, other than a very, very few stations going over 50 kw speed. Horrible charging locations--dealerships, who have arbitrary restrictions on charging such as needing dealer's plates for charging, or only charging during business hours. And not to mention very few of those stations are optimized for travel--sitting mostly in cities, with few between cities. My fast charging experience on my Leaf has been pretty crappy, and combo CCS is even rarer than chademo.
 
Same old GM. Pretty decent car and all they can do is try to attack Tesla. 'We believe in the 3000 dealers', 'we believe in not having to travel out of state for service'.. Dig dig etc etc... Why do they do this, its just puts a sour taste in my mouth and I owned and loved a Volt at one time ....

"All they can do is try to attack Tesla"? I cannot see a long presentation reduced to just two sentences. Thanks to Tesla EVs have come back strong and are bought by people who probably would not have bought them. But alot of people cannot and probably will not buy a Tesla soon for more reasons than the starting price. Until the Model 3 becomes a real vehicle other companies are out there offering other choices for buying sooner.
 
The fact DC charging isn't standard says a lot. They aren't serious about long distance travel and won't be deploying a decent network. They'll wait for it to happen.

I hope the Model 3 simply comes with a per use charge for Supercharger access. You'd be required to link a credit card and would be charged a certain amount when you plugged in. No need to swipe your credit card or anything.


No fast DC charging would have been a deal breaker for me to get the Model S as the "first car". However, I'd consider Bolt/3 as the second car, I'd be happy with 150 miles, and I would not care about supercharging.

What's the percentage of Leaf buyers that get the DC port?

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...But a lot of people cannot and probably will not buy a Tesla soon for more reasons than the starting price. Until the Model 3 becomes a real vehicle other companies are out there offering other choices for buying sooner.


I'm sure this is true, but would love to hear examples you may have heard . Brand loyalty (to other brands, that is)? Lack of dealers? Company too young? Don't like the mission forced in your face? No local service?

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== compromised
It doesn't matter if I do 99% under 200.
It is about that 1% that I cannot do with this car.

Next!


If 99% refers to "every time I use the car I can only do 99% of the things I need to do", then I agree, that would be a wrong car for you. If 99% means "I can use this car 99% of the time, but not once in three months", then I disagree - it isn't about that 1%.