Future Supercharger Costs

[Tes1a1856]

I've been researching the realities of owning a Model 3 pretty heavily for a couple weeks now. Oddly, it wasn't until today that I realized just how expensive Superchargers are, occasionally costing as much or more than it would to refuel my Honda Civic. Like most people, I would plan to charge at home the majority of the time, but the truth is that you can't take a road trip to a place further than ~120 miles away without likely having to charge, let alone a cross country trip.

I haven't seen much speculation about whether people believe Tesla will try to reduce these prices in the future, which is curious to me because right now it's the single biggest factor for me in determining whether or not I want to buy a M3. The supercharger network is often cited as being one of Tesla's biggest advantages, but if it costs as much as fueling a gas car, that's not such a great advantage anymore. The fact that charging prices have skyrocketed, in some cases, doubling over the last year makes the whole thing feel unstable. I imagine Tesla wouldn't want to shoot themselves in the foot by charging more than gas, but who knows. Honestly, I never imagined prices would be this high.

So, does anyone care to speculate? Is Tesla just trying to recoup fees and expand its supercharger network? As more Teslas are on the road do we imagine these prices will be reduced? Or perhaps increased because of the introduction of government taxation? I know there's been macroeconomic factors at play over the last year, but that aside, does anyone care to share their opinion?

 

[Soul Surfer]

Over the last months, I have driven from Toronto to Montreal twice. What you are not factoring in, is good planning. In both cases we stayed at hotels which offered free tesla chargers. So therefore the cost of doing close to 2,500 km came out to less than $61 Canadian. There are plenty of stops and places which offer free charging. When you begin to factor this into your travel plans, your overall supercharging costs become a smaller element. Oh, and that $61 Canadian, translates into about $40 American.

 

[CWhite]

Do you plan on supercharging all the time? I only do about 20% of my annual driving on long trips where I rely on Supercharging (or destination charging as Sole Surfer called out)
My area also varies supercharger price greatly depending on time of day, you should see if that applies for where you are thinking of charging.

 

[EVRider-FL]

Most of my supercharging has been on road trips between FL and New England, and it’s definitely been cheaper than buying gas. Did you compare the cost of supercharging with other high speed charging networks? Is the alternative to buying a Tesla a different EV or another ICE car? If ICE, did you compare the cost of charging at home with buying gas?

 

[SalisburySam]

I've been researching the realities of owning a Model 3 pretty heavily for a couple weeks now. Oddly, it wasn't until today that I realized just how expensive Superchargers are, occasionally costing as much or more than it would to refuel my Honda Civic.

Yup, there are such examples.

I haven't seen much speculation about whether people believe Tesla will try to reduce these prices in the future, which is curious to me because right now it's the single biggest factor for me in determining whether or not I want to buy a M3.

OK, here’s some speculation for you: Supercharging prices are unlikely to be reduced and very likely to continue to increase. Like milk, homes, property taxes, toothpaste, and pretty much everything else you can think of. Gasoline prices have remained low due to oversupply, government subsidies, and competition, none of which is extant for Superchargers.

The supercharger network is often cited as being one of Tesla's biggest advantages, but if it costs as much as fueling a gas car, that's not such a great advantage anymore.

It is a huge advantage, but not one of consumer cost. The advantages are density, availability, and reliability over all other options. Tesla (and you) have to pay for that.

The fact that charging prices have skyrocketed, in some cases, doubling over the last year makes the whole thing feel unstable. I imagine Tesla wouldn't want to shoot themselves in the foot by charging more than gas, but who knows.

No foot shooting involved, nor instability either. Superchargers don’t directly compete with gas stations.

Honestly, I never imagined prices would be this high.

Hold that thought. And check back in a couple of years when today’s pricing will seem to be the “good ‘ole days” of cheap charging.

So, does anyone care to speculate?

I have, and here it is again: it’s going to get more expensive. There, my 2¢ and worth every penny you’ve paid for it.

Is Tesla just trying to recoup fees and expand its supercharger network?

Yes, why would you believe otherwise? And now with NACS, even more so.

As more Teslas are on the road do we imagine these prices will be reduced?

Perhaps from time to time to reflect some microeconomic conditions, but in general? Hardly.

Or perhaps increased because of the introduction of government taxation?

Yeah, that’s always fun, likely (I’ve never seen a politician avoid a revenue opportunity), and only adds to the cost.

I know there's been macroeconomic factors at play over the last year, but that aside, does anyone care to share their opinion?

Well, yes, as above.

 

[RTPEV]

Did you take into account the volatility of GAS prices into your analysis? And if so, how did you forecast that?

Yes, Supercharger pricing did experience a bubble in the past year, but so did energy costs across the board. And even though it may have temporarily doubled, the starting point was dirt cheap and probably unsustainable anyway. It's still far cheaper than traveling on fossil fuels in most places.

Frankly I think it's a fool's errand to try to analyze this to this level of detail. Nobody has a crystal ball that good. However, keep in mind that right now Tesla pretty much has a monopoly on fast charging (what other networks exist are fairly pathetic in terms of reliability and availability, so right now they might as well not exist). But this will not always be the case, as long term there will almost certainly be viable competition to keep prices appropriate.

"[Supercharging prices are] the single biggest factor for me in determining whether or not I want to buy a M3."

If this is the case, you might want to rethink your decision anyway. There are plenty of other reasons to get an EV (or a Model 3 specifically). If your number one priority is the cost of taking road trips (including hypothetical cross country road trips) on an occasional basis, then maybe you should consider something like a used hybrid that gets 50mpg and a tent, because you know, hotels ain't cheap either!

Just to put things into perspective (and contradict my comment about over-analyzing this), I actually have been traveling quite a lot recently.

Earlier this month we traveled 462 miles to visit friends. I started with a 100% charge at home. I charged 3 times (only two were necessary, but we had to pee anyway). Those 3 charges were $6.84, $11.40 and $6.48 (total $24.72).

I plugged into my friend's wall outlet and charged while were visited there, so left close to 90% SOC. I did buy them dinner and a beer, so I suppose you could say there was some cost there as well). We then drove 120 miles to a campground and Supercharged just prior for $13.26. I could have paid an additional $8/night for an electric hookup at the campground, but supposedly there weren't any electric sites available for our dates (although we did not see them occupied during our whole stay)--so instead I relied on Supercharging and public charging. We did a lot of driving around while in that area, so we did end up Supercharging again before leaving a few days later, for another $20.28. And then we drove home the next day (360 miles) with two stops (again, could have made it with one, but had to pee) for $10.23 and $5.40.

Total trip miles (including side trips) for the trip was 1,052 and charge cost: $73.89, or 7.02 cents/mile.

Then we turned around headed to my son & daughter-in-law's as they were having a baby. On the way up, we drove 301 miles and charged once for $10.56. We stayed at a hotel with free charging and were able to keep mostly topped up. On the way home (291 miles) we charged once for $8.68. Total miles (including local driving) on this trip: 632 for $19.24 (3.04 cents per mile -- thank you free charging at the hotel!)

Next, we just got back home from a trip to the beach. This one actually didn't work out that well...it was very hot and the cabin overheat sucked power from the car at an enormous rate. And, the rental we had had no outlets as far as I could see (if I had picked the house, I would have probably picked one with at least some accessible outlets, if not an outright L2 charging station). We relied somewhat on public charging, but this beach did not have much. We even had to make a side trip to Supercharge partway through the week (this is the first time in over 5 years I have had to do that--hopefully this will get better in the future). Total stats for this trip (again, starting with 100% charge at home and returning home with a low SOC): 479 miles with 3 Supercharges: $33.68 (7.03 cents per mile - thank you hot, unshaded parking and no outlets), although you could argue that about 50 of those miles were only needed because I needed to drive 50 miles round trip to a Supercharger mid-week).

This was an extraordinarily huge road trip month for us due to several significant life events and pre-planned trips. 2163 miles and $126.81 in Supercharger costs. That still only amounted to 5.86 cents/mile (which if you can do that in a gas car, you are doing REALLY well). More importantly, if you add up all the meals, hotel & campground stays, and other expenses along the way, we're talking in excess of $2000. So the actual transportation cost is in the 5% range for these kinds of trips. Now if you would ask me if I would base a car buying decision solely on something that for example is going to make my total transportation cost 4% instead of 5%, there'd be no way (I think with gas you'd probably be more in the neighborhood of 10%, however). And add up total transportation costs for the entire year, and it's not even close.

 

[Grabthar]

You also have to be aware that a lot of superchargers have variable pricing. The FUD people will point out how expensive it is but only use the peak rates and charging to 100%. In reality, neither is typically true. You usually only charge up to the minimum you need and it would be hard to hit the peak on every single charger on a road trip.

The cost also varies location to location so using the price of a station near you might not represent the true "average" price that you'll see when road tripping. Most people don't rely on superchargers for their usual charging but if you are one that will have to, then learn the pricing curve before supercharging to save the most money.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Need more information.

We don't know what the trend will be.

What might help is that
1) US EV sales are rising. 810k in 2022, trending to over 1 million in 2023
2) the industry is shifting to NACS

So we may see higher utilization rates at chargers, and more charging competition helping to improve the economics of charging

Also, increased EV ownership may see improved destination charging which is almost always cheaper than DCFC. Depending on how people travel, this can significantly lower the amount of DCFC and refueling costs.

For example, on a recent vacation we had lunch while using a destination charger at $1.50/hour; a destination charger at a hotel for $1/hour, allowing us to avoid DCFC for that part of the vacation and leave with 100% ; free destination charging in a paid lot (cheaper than alternative on-street parking); a brief destination charge at $2.50/hour in a town east of Pittsburgh while we ate some stuff we bought at a bakery; and the hotel we stayed at west of Pittsburgh lent us a (good) extension cord and allowed us to charge on 120V overnight for free, which allowed us to add 30%-40% to the battery over a couple of nights.

Also, one or two of our DCFC charging stops had relatively cheap DCFC (Kona EV using Electrify America in PA) at $0.19/kWh.

Also remember that if you have home charging you charge more cheaply, leaving with 100%, so it's only the _additional_ miles that have higher cost.

So, with all that, consider truly how much high-cost charging you would need per year. It might be less than you think.

If you are a road warrior or take a lot of trips and would do a lot of DCFC, take a look at other networks with monthly subscriptions that lower the cost of charging. Some Tesla owners have found some cheaper DCFC on other networks.

 

[RTPEV]

Also remember that if you have home charging you charge more cheaply, leaving with 100%, so it's only the _additional_ miles that have higher cost.

AND arriving back home with a low SOC (I try to target about 10%). So effectively the first and last "tanks" are not at Supercharger rates.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

AND arriving back home with a low SOC (I try to target about 10%). So effectively the first and last "tanks" are not at Supercharger rates.

I could have been clearer that you can arrive home low. I just think of DCFC as part of the additional miles, rather than saying first and last "tanks".

(
Having just done my longest trip* in my Kona, I can say that I had no problem with having enough chargers on the route** but optimizing to arrive with low SOC was more challenging. A feature like Tesla's energy graph would have been really helpful. I had identified bail points in case of _lower_ efficiency but I should also have looked one step ahead in case of _higher_ efficiency.
)

* Central Maine to WRJ, VT to Pittsburgh, PA and then back home to Central Maine.
** A Better Route Planner, and then made the odd adjustment.

 

[RTPEV]

I could have been clearer that you can arrive home low. I just think of DCFC as part of the additional miles, rather than saying first and last "tanks".

(
Having just done my longest trip* in my Kona, I can say that I had no problem with having enough chargers on the route** but optimizing to arrive with low SOC was more challenging. A feature like Tesla's energy graph would have been really helpful. I had identified bail points in case of _lower_ efficiency but I should also have looked one step ahead in case of _higher_ efficiency.
)

* Central Maine to WRJ, VT to Pittsburgh, PA and then back home to Central Maine.
** A Better Route Planner, and then made the odd adjustment.

I know what you mean about being hard to optimize arriving at a low SOC, particularly when you also have to worry about things like a site being completely down and you need to plan your route with reasonable backups in case that happens.

When we had our ID.4, I used a USB dongle with a third-party app that sent live data to ABRP (at least as long as I had cell coverage), which then provided a reasonable equivalent of Tesla's energy graph. This was an absolute game changer and really did help replicate the Tesla experience. Add to that it's live station availability data for networks that supported it (which on the route we took was essentially Electrify America) and it made the trip we took (2000+ miles) relatively trouble free.

The problem is that it required all kinds of third-party hardware & software and the knowledge to know how to get everything talking to each other and how to use it. For me, that's all part of the fun, but it's definitely something that needs to be made seamless for the general public. But if it can be done, it will be amazing.

* Note that even Tesla is not perfect here...it's very good, but there are definitely a few things I would like to see improved.

 

[E90alex]

Even if a road trip with supercharging costs more than gasoline, your total “fuel” cost will likely be lower as long you can charge at home the rest of the time. Even better if you have free charging available at work or something.

As with everything else, costs are more likely to increase overtime rather than decrease. Including gasoline prices in the long term. They might fluctuate up and down short term but overall will increase with time.

So the calculation as to whether it will be “worth it” to you purely in terms of fuel cost will be continuously variable and highly dependent on your local costs for gas and electricity. But unless you ONLY rely on supercharging all the time during peak hours, fuel costs should be overall lower with the Model 3. That’s not even factoring savings from not having to do oil changes and other ICE-related maintenance.