Here's yet another alternative: Tesla could use the "Uber"model for determining cost of charging at supercharger. If the SC has few people charging, cost is low; if lots of demand, cost is high. That lets market forces manage the congestion problem at certain superchargers. (Are these extremely busy ones mostly in California? That's my impression...)
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Model 3 Supercharging Capable Discussion
- Thread starter rnelsonee
- Start date
Thanks for sharing, that's pretty interesting about the wait times. West Coast is Tesla country for sure! I have seen the same 4-5 around Charleston and the nearest station is 65 miles away from the city.
I definitely wouldn't complain about paying for a quick charge, especially since it's cleaner and less expensive than gas.
I think that many are looking at supercharging the wrong way. They are looking at the $2000 or so supercharging activation cost or w/e it is or will be, and saying that will not pay to support supercharging for all the Tesla cars on the road. Look at it this way.....Tesla had to buy a factory to build the roadster, S and X and now 3, and had to buy all the equipment, they will not add $ on the cars to cover the infrastructure costs. That would be hundreds of thousands of dollars/car in the beginning. Building a company is incredibly expensive, building the infrastructure is one of the most expensive parts. Recuperation of costs is made back over many many many years.
Tesla will lose money for a certain amount of time as they heavily invest in supercharging. Over time, the investment will slow and will turn to more maintenance than adding additional capacity as needed. The $2000 activation on base models or included in price of higher optioned is more than enough to cover maintenance and electricity costs (and to an extent linear minor expansion of the supercharging network in the future).
As many have pointed out, a vast majority will rarely use the supercharging stations (few times/year), an even smaller amount will "abuse" the supercharging access. $35k is not a cheap car and I would assume that many of the owners are not penny pinchers/cheap/frugal w/e you want to call it. If the model 3 cost $20-$25k then yes you would enter the realm of the true mass market car and would probably have a significant number of people abuse the system.
$2000 activation on base model or already included in higher optioned models and then free for life is extremely doable for Tesla in the long run and will be a great money maker. Please do not be caught up in Tesla immediately making a return on investment, if that was the case, the first cars off of any line from any manufacturer would be hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions of dollars. The model 3 deposits alone are enough to double the supercharging stations from 613 to 1226. Imagine $2000/vehicle (whether baked into the cost of the vehicle or as an activation) for all teslas produced forever. Once the infrastructure is solid, they pay for electricity and upkeep.....definitely no where near $2000/vehicle life. Economies of scale take effect too here.....as more Teslas are sold, the more money Tesla makes on each $2000 for supercharger access. I'd estimate that after 2020, well over 50% of the $2000 fee will be profit.
To put into perspective, if 100K vehicles used a SC, each and every day based on 90kw recharge....that's only $316.8M/year in electricity at a discounted rate of 10cents/kwh. $90M if 100k vehicles charged 100x/year.
Lets say tesla sells 1M vehicles in 2020 (yea i know, not likely)....each car charges 100x/year. Thats $900M in electricity costs at 10cents/kwh. But...at $2k/vehicle they had revenue of $2B. That's 1.1B to spend on maintenance and further build out of the SC network. Do the math...Tesla can not lose at "free for life" when they in someway incorporate the SC fee into the car even with numerous "abusers".
Please excuse my rambling.
Edit: yes I realize that the costs of electricity for each vehicle is additive over each year the car is on the road. Still...no where close to $2000 on average across entire fleet
Tesla will lose money for a certain amount of time as they heavily invest in supercharging. Over time, the investment will slow and will turn to more maintenance than adding additional capacity as needed. The $2000 activation on base models or included in price of higher optioned is more than enough to cover maintenance and electricity costs (and to an extent linear minor expansion of the supercharging network in the future).
As many have pointed out, a vast majority will rarely use the supercharging stations (few times/year), an even smaller amount will "abuse" the supercharging access. $35k is not a cheap car and I would assume that many of the owners are not penny pinchers/cheap/frugal w/e you want to call it. If the model 3 cost $20-$25k then yes you would enter the realm of the true mass market car and would probably have a significant number of people abuse the system.
$2000 activation on base model or already included in higher optioned models and then free for life is extremely doable for Tesla in the long run and will be a great money maker. Please do not be caught up in Tesla immediately making a return on investment, if that was the case, the first cars off of any line from any manufacturer would be hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions of dollars. The model 3 deposits alone are enough to double the supercharging stations from 613 to 1226. Imagine $2000/vehicle (whether baked into the cost of the vehicle or as an activation) for all teslas produced forever. Once the infrastructure is solid, they pay for electricity and upkeep.....definitely no where near $2000/vehicle life. Economies of scale take effect too here.....as more Teslas are sold, the more money Tesla makes on each $2000 for supercharger access. I'd estimate that after 2020, well over 50% of the $2000 fee will be profit.
To put into perspective, if 100K vehicles used a SC, each and every day based on 90kw recharge....that's only $316.8M/year in electricity at a discounted rate of 10cents/kwh. $90M if 100k vehicles charged 100x/year.
Lets say tesla sells 1M vehicles in 2020 (yea i know, not likely)....each car charges 100x/year. Thats $900M in electricity costs at 10cents/kwh. But...at $2k/vehicle they had revenue of $2B. That's 1.1B to spend on maintenance and further build out of the SC network. Do the math...Tesla can not lose at "free for life" when they in someway incorporate the SC fee into the car even with numerous "abusers".
Please excuse my rambling.
Edit: yes I realize that the costs of electricity for each vehicle is additive over each year the car is on the road. Still...no where close to $2000 on average across entire fleet
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And then there was the perfect storm over Christmas: Long Queues Cause Multi-Hour Wait For Tejon Ranch Tesla Supercharger -- Here's Why It Was The Perfect Storm
ImEric
Member
This is why I believe that it should be a metered pay-up-front system. Let's say Supercharger access costs 2k upfront, and you get $1500.00 kwh of Electricity at, let's say $.16/kwH. Let's say the car gets about 4 miles/kWh. Then you'd essentially be getting 37,500 miles to drive before you have to reload your account. That would mean that most people would never reload their accounts, and it would essentially be "free" every time you go to a super charger, for the life of your ownership. People like that mail carrier in the TeslaMotors video who drive around rural roads all day everyday might end up using that in two or three years, and thus, would have to purchase another $500.00 or $1000.00 pack to reload their accounts.
Or, maybe you could automatically start off with $250.00 applied to your MyTesla account with the purchase of the car. The electricity itself would be sold at a locked in rate, determined by Tesla at the time of purchase. They could then incentivize you to purchase larger packs (ie a $250.00 pack for $0.20/kwh, $1000.00 pack for $0.15/kwh). At that rate, everyone would start off with 5000 miles of supercharger use but could add to it at any time. To your point, someone who practically never uses superchargers would never pay extra for supercharging. For those of us who LOVE road trips, we'd happily pay the $1000.00 to drive an additional 25k miles... or even just pay the $250.00 to get an additional 5,000 miles.
I haven't worked out the exact pricing structure or anything, but it seems that knowing there is a cost associated with Superchargers should be enough to dissuade people from camping at them when they don't need to, as well as begin to recoup a portion of the money associated with the service/infrastructure.
starlord111
Member
diamond.g
Active Member
diamond.g
Active Member
Is 100 miles too much for considering something as local area? From Washington DC that would make Baltimore MD and Richmond VA local. I don't think folks consider DC to be local to either of those cities.
Snowdog
Member
That is irrelevant. Supercharger use should cost more than charging at home to discourage overuse.
I always assumed that Supercharger free for life thing would end with the Model 3. It just doesn't seem sustainable on a wide scale.
SureValla
Member
payment required or not. I feel peak times will be an issue until Tesla comes up with a genius solution I can't think of right now
You could probably set the price per minute or kWh as high as you want and you'd still get lines at supercharging stations at Christmas with people wanting to drive their new 3 to show off to the family.
You could probably put in 30 superchargers at every station on 95 in CT and you'd still have an issue on holidays. Then the rest of the year they'd sit there doing nothing for 95% of the time. I'm sure CA is worse.
I'm not sure what the solution is but charging a fee won't fix the issue at peak times.
Chuq
Active Member
In general, if charging costs were equivalent to actual cost to provide, superfast charging would be the same as petrol.
Charging between 10pm and 6am, in your own house, off a standard power point, doesn't really impact the grid very much at all (it is underused at this time so there is plenty of excess capacity).
Fast charging results in a huge spike on grid load and so requires a big connection. The grid at that particular point needs to be built to a capacity that can deal with a high transfer rate of energy. The costs are bigger, hence the charging costs are bigger.
It just so happens that Tesla have gone one step further and effectively shifted these costs into a pre-paid "included with the car" format.
Valets cost money, but their services hopefully create more value than their cost. Kind of goes without saying, but this is the whole point of having employees!
The obvious impact of supercharger valets is that supercharger stalls that have already been built will be used more efficiently in terms of utilization - the valets will remove a vehicle shortly after charging is complete. A robocharger would achieve the same.
A non-obvious advantage of supercharger valets (versus robochargers) may be that they cut down on abuse of local supercharging. It would be interesting to see the data on this. A robocharger may actually increase local-use abuse by making it easier to top up!
ummgood
Member
Intelligent software can also be used to control abuse. I would guess if the ideal is to keep supercharging free that would be impossible if they had to staff the superchargers. I wouldn't put it past Tesla to come out with some amazing tech to deal with the situation without having to use employees.
Snowdog
Member
Valets would be ok, if this was a profit center, but it isn't.
It looks like Tesla is creating a potential future liability in Supercharger network. Between massive power bills, maintenance, and now Valets, this will be a larger drain on Tesla, the bigger the network gets.
The current model that in theory takes a certain amount from each car to support the network could work, if they were keeping this in some kind of fire-walled account to server only Supercharger support, but I don't see any evidence of that. It looks more like it just goes into general revenues, and since Tesla is operating at an overall loss, there is no "Supercharger Fund" growing to meet future needs of the network.
Any time you label something as free, or paying a one time fee for "all you can use", you invite abuse. Tesla needs to recoup Supercharger costs and have some kind of pay for use model in the long term.
ummgood
Member
I have a question about the Valet's. Are they free for Tesla? Do they work strictly on tips? There are several restaurants around the Austin area that have valets and I am pretty sure the restaurant doesn't pay them...
diamond.g
Active Member
If I were an aspiring business person, I'd see if it was possible to get some chademo stalls with Tesla to chademo adapters and place them near high traffic SC's and charge a small (say like 5 dollar) fee to charge. Even 62kW is better than nothing.
SpiceWare
Member
I used to valet park during college back in the late 80s, early 90s. I worked for a company that had contracts with shopping malls, restaurants, and also did private parties. The restaurants, etc paid the company, the company paid the valets. I don't recall exactly, but I made somewhere along the lines of $20-25 per 4 hour shift, plus any tips.
Best night was a private party where I made $125 in 4 hours - actual work was under an hour as everybody showed up close to the same time and left close to the same time. During the party we worked on homework, and the hosts even provided us with dinner.
Have you ever had 62kW from a CHAdeMO? The most I've ever gotten was 38kW. Anyway do you know the saying "How do you make a small fortune? You start with an large fortune and buy an airline." It's the same with DC charging stations, they're a nice idea but a good way to lose money. With the expense of CHAdeMO stations I just don't see how it could be profitable to install one unless it's subsidized by someone-- and there's no reason for a location owner to subsidize one if there is a Tesla supercharger nearby.
diamond.g
Active Member
I guess I am underestimating peoples willingness to wait for free energy. Of course at the same time, if there is a huge line and there are alternative 'quick' charge location close by that can be used I suppose the waiter can't complain about the line.
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