56 European supercharges * $150k = $8.4M, about 10k cars delivered in Europe * $2000 = $20M revenue. Tesla is well in the black here, but there are ongoing costs too. At 10 visits/day per supercharger site, average charge 40kWh that's 672 MWh per month. Industry electricity prices are around 90 EUR/MWh (source :
http://isi.fraunhofer.de/isi-wAsset...rison_industrial_electricity_prices_final.pdf). Let's call it $130/MWh or a total of slightly less than $1M per year. Finally maintenance costs of infrastructure at 5% of original price per year or $420k. Total annual lay out then becomes $1.4M, meaning current supercharger grid is paid for the next 8 years with current revenue. Is Tesla reporting a reserve for ongoing future supercharger costs since this is a promise to their customers where they have accepted money but not yet delivered the product?
Known unkowns
- Leasing cost of parking space (negative impact)
- Actual use instead of estimates use (negative/positive impact)
- Actual maintenance cost (negative/positive impact)
Note : future sales will bring in more revenue but then again will generate a commensurate cost in adding newer stalls, added electricity costs and maintenance. Unless Tesla is frontloading supercharger deployment and is not planning to grow the network in lockstep with the number of cars on the road.