SA and TAS are majority renewable powered overnight. For the rest of us, we can aim to charge with excess solar as much as possible, else buy 100% renewable grid power. Every kWh of 100% green power is a kWh not purchased from a fossil generator.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Does using supercharger actually save money for a road trip compared to petrol?
- Thread starter Futuretech
- Start date
SA and TAS are majority renewable powered overnight. For the rest of us, we can aim to charge with excess solar as much as possible, else buy 100% renewable grid power. Every kWh of 100% green power is a kWh not purchased from a fossil generator.
I am new.. This is my 11th post.
Are we not allowed to talk about other EV charging networks?
Tesla seems to charge a significant premium to use their chargers, even to Tesla customers, Despite the fact they aren't significantly faster, and many are located very far off highway.
Most people will leave for a trip with a full charge from home, costing a mere dollar or so. Most people will return home without a full charge, and be able to charge at home for a mere dollar.
So for many trips EV's will be significantly cheaper.
Superchargers are priced so they are a similar price to petrol. LPG or diesel may even be cheaper than a EV using a supercharger. However, many other charging options exist other than superchargers. Many ~20-50kw DC chargers are half or less the price of a supercharger. If you aren't in a rush on the road to cover a long distance quickly, make use of these.
For most people they don't need a supercharger for many trips beyond the city. A Sydney to Melbourne trip, that makes sense, not to Canberra.
Just drive to Canberra, charge at the hotel your staying at, or at a slower DC charger while at the airport. A quick check seems to indicate Ikea near the airport has free DC fast charging. Or one at the shopping centre is also free. So effectively your drive to Canberra could cost just a few dollars in energy. The V2 supercharger costs $0.56 per kw according to plugshare, the V3 in the Tuggeranong shopping centre is I assume more expensive.
For most RWD cars, unless you need to quickly charge up from <40% a supercharger is basically a waste, you are paying a premium for mere seconds faster charging compared to a 50Kw charger that is probably a third the price. For a RWD car, there is no point is selecting a V3 supercharger over a V2 supercharger, the 125Kw of the V2 is faster than your car can handle most of the time, and even for a 5%-80% would only save you seconds.
I don't really understand why Tesla locates them in CBD's. Far more useful on the major highways. We really need more high capacity V3/V4 on the highways
Thinking about it - I think that networks are eyeing off the much more profitable opportunities of getting people who live in high-rises and units (with no solar and ability to charge at home) to charge regularly from a supercharger, than the hoteling theory outcomes of highway driving. Tesla has moved first for this market, probably.
Anyone else think that this theory is likely?
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Supercharger use is 100% voluntary, and you will not hurt anyone's feelings if you charge elsewhere.
The Macquarie Centre, Tuggeranong, Pacific Fair, and Indooroopilly superchargers are most definitely targeted at that audience. Cheaper level 2 AC charging would do similarly well in those locations for much less premium.
ZenRockGarden
Active Member
In my part of the US, I travel at night to get off-peak pricing at superchargers which means I can fill up for like $20. total. Easily 2x to 4x cheaper than filling a gas car depending on exactly what kind of petrol vehicle you compare to.
The ACT is '100% renewable power' - despite having no evening generation or bulk storage... it's word games.
Unlike a petrol car, in an EV your first and last "fill" of the trip will be at home, using your home rate (14c off-peak in my case).
I'm pretty confident they're right as of yesterday when I sent it. It does have the updated Chargefox $0.45/kWh for their 50kW chargers in there.
Devonport Supercharger is $0.64/kWh. The most expensive I know of in Australia at the moment are $0.66/kWh. You may have been looking at the idle fee ($1/min) - if you're paying idle fees, you're doing it wrong.
Right, and the Ioniq 5 / EV6 today. But this is a Tesla forum, and I think we're mostly interested in how the charging networks stack up for Tesla charging.
It has wires connecting it to wider transmission infrastructure with wind farms on the other end, and has Power Purchase Agreements in place to buy the output of some of those wind farms. So long as the purchased output of those farms is sufficient to cover the territory's consumption, or alternate renewables are contracted for to fill any gaps (eg hydro), the claim is fine.
Of course you don't want to double-count, so if SA is generating oodles of wind power but it's selling that elsewhere under PPAs while it buys its own consumption from the normal market mix of generators, you can't count it as 100% renewables.
There's definitely a push on that regard but I thought it'd be more for 25kw and below
Would you be able to find out the cost of supercharger beforehand?
Yes, hit the 'charge' button (lighting bolt symbol) on the in-car map and zoom/scroll to find the Supercharger you're interested in - tap on it, and it'll show you the cost, typical and current utilisation and some other details:
Your right my bad.
Again, you are right. I am learning a lot today. It appears I was confused with the idle charge fee.
So you will be able to charge your Cybertruck at much faster speed at tritium's 350Kw chargers, that are also cheaper. Also, Tesla owners, have to pay a premium to charge slower at Tesla's slower chargers because tesla's slow technology in tesla cars?
If Nissan came out with a 150Kw charger, you would expect to charge market rates, not some Nissan premium for a charger that is slower than market rates, even though Nissans can't charge any faster than 150kw. Also the idle fees should also be a consideration, we want cheap available charging, but those idle fees are pretty high for Tasmania.. Maybe instead of such high idle fees, they could put in more chargers?
Charge fox is $0.60 per kwh at 350kw. Doesn't matter if you plug in a leaf, or a EV6 or a Tesla. Tesla should be charging $0.60 or less per kwh. Probably more like 0.55KwH. Tesla bills the charging network as a big selling point of buying a Tesla. The difference between 200kw and 250kw is marginal, most people have a RWD car, so will never even need anywhere near that, and currently 250kw is only hit in limited circumstances on dual motor cars for only a few minutes.
True. But I am saying Tesla Supercharger isn't particularly good value. Even for Tesla owners. There are as fast and/or cheaper chargers pretty much everywhere. Tesla's do seem much more reliable.
If you are at all concerned about trip costs, use a non-tesla charger pretty much, always. They will tend to be more convenient, cheaper, almost as fast. Tesla is the fastest for dual motor Teslas, but if you have a RWD conceivably there would always be a cheaper and better option.
Last edited:
As others have pointed out there are many flaws with your opinion. One being that tesla only charges for power delivered into your battery.
Others have also noted that the slight difference in cost is not normally a determinant of whether they use a supercharger. You're paying more for reliability and convenience, which many have widely expressed is much better with the tesla supercharger network.
Your statements saying that there are other options which are widespread are just flatly wrong. Other networks are poorly maintained, unreliable and patchy.
Thinking that you somehow understand how to value the supercharging cost better than tesla, which has huge amounts of data, is laughable.
ZenRockGarden
Active Member
Must be regional. In the USA the Tesla charging network is vastly better maintained, located, and is as cheap-or-cheaper than anything else in most locations. I would consider getting a low-end Lucid if it wasn't for the fact that I'd lose access to the supercharger network which is just SO good in my area and everything else is really awful.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
You are welcome to your opinion, but it is based on a lot of misunderstanding.
E.g., so called '350 kW' chargers are usually 350 - 500 Amps
E.g., average kW is mostly a matter of C-rate
E.g., Hyundai plays marketing games by walling off more of the top of a battery from usable SoC, and allowing higher C-rates that will lead to more degradation
E.g., some fast charger companies charge by kWh from the meter, while Tesla charges per kWh after the charger
There may be more, after a short while I stopped paying attention to your misinformed criticisms.
Last edited:
"The ACT only generates about five per cent of the electricity its residents actually use.
The rest is drawn from the National Energy Market, which is overwhelmingly powered by non-renewable energy sources like coal and gas.
So for every watt of ‘dirty’ energy that Canberra draws from the grid, it pays to feed the same amount of ‘clean’ energy back into the system.
While 21 per cent of those payments are mandatory under the national Renewable Energy Target scheme, the ACT government pays the remainder voluntarily, at a cost that is expected to peak next year at around $5.50 per household per week.
The renewable energy the ACT purchases is drawn from solar and wind farms spread across the Territory and four other states."
from - The ACT is now running on 100 renewable electricity
So not really - it just buys it back when it's happening - for sure 90% of the evening power is coal
I value Tesla SC's way above any of the other offerings in Oz at this point in time. They are reliable, have many stalls and my car know where they are and what's available.
For the times that we have to use them am more than happy to pay the very little extra. If and when the other networks get close then would assess the options but for now it is easily Tesla by a wide margin.
For the times that we have to use them am more than happy to pay the very little extra. If and when the other networks get close then would assess the options but for now it is easily Tesla by a wide margin.
Chuq
Active Member
i seemed to upset people here with my comment regarding the best value charger. I am sorry, we seemed to have gotten off on the wrong foot.
There are 4 in WA, 4 in Adelaide, 4 in Queensland. There is 1 in Tasmania? None in the Northern Territory. These are large states you can put many Californias and Texas's in these states.
Many of these charge stations are only 2-6 chargers. There aren't a lot of alternatives, and most of these are off the freeways, in small towns. I just think the network can be improved, and particularly with chargers in regional areas on major routes, not just in the middle CBD of a Town. Really they are two different markets of charging, town typically are commuters and dont' perhaps need fast charging.
NSW is quite bad too, nothing away from the coast. Mean while NRMA... has free chargers.. You can not drive around NSW without using the NRMA chargers.
Also almost all of the chargers are V2, there are basically no V3 chargers in Australia.
The US looks like this.
A fantastic network, with many V3 chargers. Many large sites.
I just think it would be nice to have something a little bit more like this. But apparently I am wrong. Praise the Elon, Praise the Tesla, It can not be improved.
Apparently people are unaware how charging works overseas, and the level of convenience and affordability that isn't offered here. Tesla doesn't have the fastest chargers, not the widest network in Australia. Its nice. But it doesn't run the market.
I would have thought this would account for less than 10% difference, like for like. How much do you think this accounts for?
I am not going to pay to use a charger that isn't working. How many superchargers are located next to a highway? There are no superchargers in my work car park? Yes, others are less reliable. I have said that.
Currently in Australia, which is big as the USA. It looks like this.
There are 4 in WA, 4 in Adelaide, 4 in Queensland. There is 1 in Tasmania? None in the Northern Territory. These are large states you can put many Californias and Texas's in these states.
Many of these charge stations are only 2-6 chargers. There aren't a lot of alternatives, and most of these are off the freeways, in small towns. I just think the network can be improved, and particularly with chargers in regional areas on major routes, not just in the middle CBD of a Town. Really they are two different markets of charging, town typically are commuters and dont' perhaps need fast charging.
NSW is quite bad too, nothing away from the coast. Mean while NRMA... has free chargers.. You can not drive around NSW without using the NRMA chargers.
Also almost all of the chargers are V2, there are basically no V3 chargers in Australia.
The US looks like this.
A fantastic network, with many V3 chargers. Many large sites.
I just think it would be nice to have something a little bit more like this. But apparently I am wrong. Praise the Elon, Praise the Tesla, It can not be improved.
What is the original post of this thread. Something about saving money? My point is you can also charge at home and charge at other chargers than Tesla for low cost or Free, or charge at a destination charger. Apparently that offends people.
Apparently people are unaware how charging works overseas, and the level of convenience and affordability that isn't offered here. Tesla doesn't have the fastest chargers, not the widest network in Australia. Its nice. But it doesn't run the market.
Similar threads
- Article
