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Model 3 Supercharging Capable Discussion
- Thread starter rnelsonee
- Start date
starlord111
Member
Great idea, charge for minutes plugged in. Will certainly discourage people from leaving their cars plugged in long after they've been fully charged.
With regards to the hassle of collecting fees for usage, keep in mind Elon created PayPal, he understands financial transactions, hopefully he remembers how to do it efficiently.
Rather than continue this thread can we just end it by linking to the other dozen threads (some in the S forum) that go round and round with the same arguments? And yes, I can just not read it (beat you to it! 
).
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JRP3
Hyperactive Member
I think what he said was actually not ambiguous. The ambiguity came from the screen behind him saying Supercharging Capable, and the website saying the same. Remember, just before talking about supercharging he talked about how autopilot capability and hardware was built in but not enabled. Immediately after that he talked about supercharging, but did not use any qualifiers. Maybe he misspoke but he usually chooses words carefully.
Not making it free for long distance travel still seems like an incredibly short-sighted idea.
Restrict/limit local charging, yes--that's needed to avoid queues and clogs.
The maybe 3-10 supercharge uses per year per Model 3 is not going to cause congestion or queues and it is free advertising to the extreme. Do you want to recoup 12 cents per kwh on a supercharge, or do you want your customers to brag to friends/family about how they take free roadtrips? Setting up a billing system alone would cost more than 12 cents per kwh, I'm sure.
Setting up a billing system for people who need local access makes sense. Someone using a supercharger 200 times a year should pay a good bit extra for it.
Tesla should charge other manufacturers using their Supercharger network and profit off of that. They should keep it as a unique advantage for their own customers for free word of mouth and serious goodwill. By "free" it just means the cost of the supercharger network is built-into the cost of the car, whether through options or the base cost.
The problem with things like a $1000 fee for free lifetime unlimited supercharging is that not a single consumer will even come close to using that amount in electricity/maintenance, so it will cause hesitation in purchasing the option. A smart consumer who cares about economics above all would be able to rent gas cars for the life of the Model 3 while taking a week-long vacation yearly and still come out ahead. Friends/family may wonder why Johnny over there decides to rent a gas car instead of take his electric car--is it because his electric car can't roadtrip, they wonder?
Another issue with the $1000 fee is that psychologically it prods people into wanting to use the feature more to recoup costs. For my Leaf, it came with a $1.8k feature or so for fast charging. I can fast charge for free. I'm sometimes tempting to fast charge when I don't even need it simply because it's free and I'm recouping some of those costs--I would have never fast charged if it was a free feature. Charging a fee may be self-defeating for congestion/queues as it will cause people to think that they need to use $1000 worth of electricity (many, many, many hours of supercharging) to get their worth out of it.
Tesla could very easily build it into the base cost of the car, i.e., they're selling you a $34k car + $1k supercharger funding/rollout. If they were smart, they would have planned around this. Psychologically this makes a huge difference to the end consumer.
Restrict/limit local charging, yes--that's needed to avoid queues and clogs.
The maybe 3-10 supercharge uses per year per Model 3 is not going to cause congestion or queues and it is free advertising to the extreme. Do you want to recoup 12 cents per kwh on a supercharge, or do you want your customers to brag to friends/family about how they take free roadtrips? Setting up a billing system alone would cost more than 12 cents per kwh, I'm sure.
Setting up a billing system for people who need local access makes sense. Someone using a supercharger 200 times a year should pay a good bit extra for it.
Tesla should charge other manufacturers using their Supercharger network and profit off of that. They should keep it as a unique advantage for their own customers for free word of mouth and serious goodwill. By "free" it just means the cost of the supercharger network is built-into the cost of the car, whether through options or the base cost.
The problem with things like a $1000 fee for free lifetime unlimited supercharging is that not a single consumer will even come close to using that amount in electricity/maintenance, so it will cause hesitation in purchasing the option. A smart consumer who cares about economics above all would be able to rent gas cars for the life of the Model 3 while taking a week-long vacation yearly and still come out ahead. Friends/family may wonder why Johnny over there decides to rent a gas car instead of take his electric car--is it because his electric car can't roadtrip, they wonder?
Another issue with the $1000 fee is that psychologically it prods people into wanting to use the feature more to recoup costs. For my Leaf, it came with a $1.8k feature or so for fast charging. I can fast charge for free. I'm sometimes tempting to fast charge when I don't even need it simply because it's free and I'm recouping some of those costs--I would have never fast charged if it was a free feature. Charging a fee may be self-defeating for congestion/queues as it will cause people to think that they need to use $1000 worth of electricity (many, many, many hours of supercharging) to get their worth out of it.
Tesla could very easily build it into the base cost of the car, i.e., they're selling you a $34k car + $1k supercharger funding/rollout. If they were smart, they would have planned around this. Psychologically this makes a huge difference to the end consumer.
DrManhattan
Member
It's going to be free. Seriously, i'm sure the average person will use the supercharger 6x in a year. It's only going to cost $50 a year per car. they're not going to charge for it.
Totally agree!! "all you can eat" model won't work. It will cause massive customer frustration in all busy superchargers.
vjason
Member
Something has to pay for all those new supercharger locations though, after all they are still building them.
If they include sc access for free without upping the base price that will cost them a certain amount of money.
Time will tell.
If they include sc access for free without upping the base price that will cost them a certain amount of money.
Time will tell.
For the Model S, this used to be a $1500/2500 option so it does not make sense to have it for free. In fact, for my S85, I would rather have $1500 taken off the list price and getting charged $30 per charge as I do not drive long distance so much. And my local SC at Dublin is obviously being abused. I am sure if a SC is priced slightly more expensive than at-home charging (may be 15c/kwh), we will have plenty of empty spots here.
Canuck
Well-Known Member
I don't read "standard" to be the same as "free". Making it "standard", in my view, only gives it the ability to Supercharge. Before the reveal, we didn't know if this would be the case. The ability for the Model 3 to supercharge at all was an unknown. Now we know it will come standard on every car. "Free", however, is a completely different issue. It's also really easy to do charge per use via superchargers. Every time I plug in my Model S into to a supercharger it must be authorized for use before power flows, and Tesla knows when, where, and how much power I use each time I supercharge. It's really easy to add a billing feature to this. Much easier than toll bridges, etc. which have no direct connection and often rely on sensors and cameras -- yet still do the job just fine. In my view, there's absolutely no way in the world every Model 3 will roll of the line with free, unlimited use of Superchargers. That's a recipe for disasters at Superchargers and Tesla knows that better than anyone.
I agree with the above. However, while i don't currently own a Tesla (m3 ordered), I don't think the lines across the country will be long even if 500k cars are on the road. Maybe at times.
With SC's spread across the country and primarily on highways for long distance travel - won't most people charge up at home? For example in Charleston, SC the closest SC is 65 miles away on I-95 - I would never use that one living the Metro areas.
Should tesla begin having SC's in many metro areas I can see them charging an annual subscription fee or pay per use to pay for the expensive real estate it requires.
Uncle Paul
Well-Known Member
Everybody likes free stuff.
Perhaps soon Tesla will settle this discussion.
It may be that they have not yet made their decision.
Lots of time before the cars come out to get this cleared up.
Perhaps soon Tesla will settle this discussion.
It may be that they have not yet made their decision.
Lots of time before the cars come out to get this cleared up.
Sadly by last summer, with only 1/10th that many on the road the lines were already getting frustratingly long on busy routes (eg San Francisco to Los Angeles) on busy days like summer Sunday's. It sucked. With 10x the vehicles they will need at least 5x the charging stands (assuming some use efficiency improvements) and Elon only just promised twice as many. As others have said - something will have to give.
Muaddid
Member
twice as many by the end of 2017, when the model 3 starts being sold, do you think they'll stop building then?
I'm going to say something that is going to get the most dislikes in the history of this forum.
As long as S and X owners pay at charger as well, even though they have already paid for it when buying their car.
I am only saying this for congestion reasons. It will prevent those S and X locals charging at them instead of at home.
Its not the end of the world paying a small fee at charger, we pay at pump for petrol. It's the ability of Superchargering that's important to the EV adoption.
As long as S and X owners pay at charger as well, even though they have already paid for it when buying their car.
I am only saying this for congestion reasons. It will prevent those S and X locals charging at them instead of at home.
Its not the end of the world paying a small fee at charger, we pay at pump for petrol. It's the ability of Superchargering that's important to the EV adoption.
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