My solution for LA Uber drives is to charge at Red Sage's house.
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My solution for LA Uber drives is to charge at Red Sage's house.
Xminus6
Member
While I also prefer the pay-upfront model I don't see how this would be a problem for Tesla. Tesla is vertically integrated in a way that other charger/car pairings are not. Tesla could fairly simply charge you a fee each month based on how much energy you took from the Supercharger network. If the Superchargers can't now read the VIN of the car being charged, I assume it would be only slightly trivial for it to be able to do so. Enter a credit card number into your smartphone Tesla app and voila!, on-demand charging. No need to pay at the "pump" when the same company that connects to the car also owns the pumps.
I would like to see a pre-pay option, but not a "for life" type of solution. Rather, I would like to see the ability to purchase SC use for a period of time, say a month, or a couple of weeks. This way, folks who don't travel much, can purchase SC access when they plan on taking a long distance trip. Everything can be done online from the owners Tesla page, allowing specific dates, etc. Tesla can then send an update to the Model 3, activating SC during that period.
As for the "for life" option, I think the 2k price would be too high, in my opinion. We already know that some of the same options (AWD for instance) will be cheaper than they are on the S, so it would make sense to me that the SC option would be as well. I would suspect somewhere between 1k - 1.5k.
As for the "for life" option, I think the 2k price would be too high, in my opinion. We already know that some of the same options (AWD for instance) will be cheaper than they are on the S, so it would make sense to me that the SC option would be as well. I would suspect somewhere between 1k - 1.5k.
JeffK
Well-Known Member
But the Model 3 will use the new 20700 cells which means higher energy density per cell and therefore a lower cost per kWh.
Semantics... call it what you want... the point is that it's funded from vehicle sales. The question is do you then charge people to use something that they paid to build. The only reason for pay per use would be to deter usage... there's better ways to prevent 'abuse'.
If you divert ~$2k of 'advertising' money from each vehicle sale and use that to fund the supercharger network it's sustainable indefinitely provided it's only used for travel and not daily charging. Offer pay-per-use as an alternative and it all breaks down. It's kinda like health insurance. The system only works if healthy people that rarely get sick also pay into the system.
wallet.dat
Member
Pay-up-front is a lot cheaper to implement and requires just a quick write and then subsequent queries to a db table, and the cost is built into the price of the car. PPU requires a payment system, which requires physical CC reader hardware at each SC location -- or at the very least it requires the user to have a smartphone with a billable Google/Apple account.
Every owner has a Tesla account. It would be trivial to do monthly billing to a credit card. Handling billing exceptions would be the hassle, not the implementation.
Any competent software developer, when building the software relating to customer accounts and supercharging, would consider the potential of future billing.
Garlan Garner
Banned
Why are we asking this question? Elon already said that SC will be an optional package. Are we bored or what?
The article quotes Musk from yesterday when he was answering a shareholder question, here it is:
“… we wanted to make it really straightforward and easy, that’s why the Superchargers are set up at -least today – for people on board the car to travel long distances for life. Obviously, that has fundamentally a cost… The obvious thing to do is decouple that from the cost of the Model 3. So it will still be very cheap, and far cheaper than gasoline, to drive long-distance with the Model 3, but it will not be free long distance for life unless you purchase that package. I wish we could [make it free], but in order to achieve the economics, it has to be something like that. What Tesla’s motivation is, to make electric transport as affordable as possible. That is what informs all of our actions. It’s not because we want to make things more expensive, it is because we can’t figure out how to make it less expensive. That’s all.”
The article quotes Musk from yesterday when he was answering a shareholder question, here it is:
“… we wanted to make it really straightforward and easy, that’s why the Superchargers are set up at -least today – for people on board the car to travel long distances for life. Obviously, that has fundamentally a cost… The obvious thing to do is decouple that from the cost of the Model 3. So it will still be very cheap, and far cheaper than gasoline, to drive long-distance with the Model 3, but it will not be free long distance for life unless you purchase that package. I wish we could [make it free], but in order to achieve the economics, it has to be something like that. What Tesla’s motivation is, to make electric transport as affordable as possible. That is what informs all of our actions. It’s not because we want to make things more expensive, it is because we can’t figure out how to make it less expensive. That’s all.”
I have only used once in a year to test to make sure either works on my S. I would prefer they offer pay as you go on 3. It doesnt have to be hard to setup a credit card on file and when you plug up it auto charges. I can see there motives for doing one time fee to continue supporting expansion.
Yep... pay as you go will work when the EV population stabilizes... I don't expect that to happen anytime soon....
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
This sentence implies there will be two options: "free long distance for life" and another one that will still be cheaper than gasoline, but won't be "free long distance for life". At least that was how most people seemed to have interpreted it.
Of course there are many schemes that can potentially be cheaper than gasoline and doesn't have to be pay per use (for example it can be for a period, like one week/month/year).
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
I think this is really the ultimate solution. Having say 2-3 charges per month for free provides Tesla a huge competitive advantage and allows them to make good on the "long distance travel" benefit of the Supercharger network. Provide a small baseline for free to give everyone the benefit, then aggressively ramp up the pricing to discourage abuse/overuse.
As a purely hypothetical example:
PER MONTH (calendar month, rolling 30 day period, however you want to define the unit of time):
0-3 hours: Free
4-10 hours: $15/hr
10+ hours: $50/hr
But, the ultimate solution for consumers is probably not the best for Tesla. As a likely very infrequent user of Superchargers, I'd have a hard time making the math work on a $2k up-front charge (or whatever it may be). But I'd probably pay it anyway because the convenience of having it on those rare occasions is hard to put a price on.
I voted 'Pay per use'. I gotta be honest, most Model 3 owners won't be able to just throw $2,000-$2,500 for the add on.....I car for the masses right? I want the smoothness of a one time fee, but also don't travel nearly enough to pay that. If it were $500-$1,000 like someone else said, then I think more people would be willing to pay all that upfront at the beginning.
Curt
Roadster Signature #55
What I really want is the opportunity to pay and get Supercharging for my Roadster.
Garlan Garner
Banned
Now THERE is an issue. I vote for Curt to get supercharging.
Chopr147
Active Member
I need to look and find that video where Musk very clearly states charging will be free "forever". Or is it just superchargers to be pay per?
No doubt. Though, you can unwatch threads, and just avoid clicking titles such as "How would you prefer to pay for Supercharging?" That's one reason I changed the title, so it was more descriptive of the content.
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