Model 3 Supercharging Capable Discussion

[stopcrazypp]

Once again, assuming facts not in evidence, attempting to fix a problem that does not exist. And no matter how many times you rephrase this, it still smacks of being rather elitist in that it is an attempt to separate Model ☰ Owners from those who bought Model S and Model X with 'FREE for LIFE!' access to Superchargers. Or, more harshly, to separate the so-called 'unwashed masses' from those who have 'earned the right' by paying more for their cars. C'mon, MAN!

There is absolutely no need to adopt a 'pay per use' model for Supercharger access -- AT ALL. None. Doing so simply confuses the issue unnecessarily. Who can use a Supercharger? Where? When? The answers should simply be Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime. Period.

Once again, you don't get my position.
1) I have a Model 3 reservation, I don't own a Model S or X.
2) I live in an urban area (SF Bay Area).

My suggestion is not to separate the cost model of Model 3 from Model S/X. I am vehemently opposed to that.

hiroshiy's comment demonstrates an example of the problems at urban stations and I previously linked similar situations in Hong Kong. These problems are unavoidable in urban stations because a local user will put multiple times the demand of a distant one (this is simply because daily local travel makes up a much larger proportion of travel than long distance travel). Tesla may be spending money to expand the network, but it will mainly be to fill in the remaining gaps (many routes and countries are still not covered), not to provide for urban demand.
Model 3 Supercharging Capable Discussion

It is trouble enough that Tesla has abandoned installing superchargers inside NYC (Manhattan). My suggestion is a hybrid solution where stations can continue to be added inside the city, but those would be paid per use. They would be rebranded, for example "citychargers" or "urbanchargers". "Superchargers" will continue to remain free (subsidized by a cut out of the margin as it is today). This is simple and easy to understand. Those stations also allow for a paid fallback for any long distance travelers. This solution allows Tesla to keep all their promises (so no messy "grandfathering"), and would not involve a separate policy for the different models. It will limit pay per use only to the most affected areas (not the stations in the middle of nowhere).

For me personally, I will likely be using such an urban station frequently and I would be quite happy to pay a per use fee. Under my suggestion, Tesla can build one right inside SF proper (or Manhattan proper) without worrying about hoggers. It will also provide a nice solution to urban users without a dedicated garage (gives Tesla nice funding to build more such stations). Outside of this suggestion, it would require waiting around for third parties charging providers to pick up the pace, which is much slower (Tesla couldn't wait for that to happen in Hong Kong and China).

 

[nwdiver]

There is absolutely no need to adopt a 'pay per use' model for Supercharger access -- AT ALL. None. Doing so simply confuses the issue unnecessarily. Who can use a Supercharger? Where? When? The answers should simply be Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime. Period.

I'd like that... but I'm very skeptical that the network would be able to sustain hundreds of thousands of people using local superchargers to reduce their electric bills...

 

[Scannerman]

IMO, SC use should be a per minute charge, with a sliding scale. Haven't thought about it much, but .10 a minute for the first 25 minutes, with it increasing at 10 minute increments after that would discourage people from hogging an SC space for several hours while they shop or dine. They could even have an automated system that calls/texts your cellphone to warn you of the increasing rates. The rates might have to be even higher than that, to discourage the livery/taxi people and the locals from abusing it.

This makes really good sense to me. There will always people who tend to abuse a good thing, and as a result one has to build in both a carrot, and stick!

Scannerman

 

[Post]

I don't believe per use access fees is the way to go. Supercharger abuse is the result of the convienence of the station and lack of alternative charging options. If someone can plug into L2 while at work, or while running errands, a visit to the supercharger may become an inconvenience rather than a perceived necessity.

My own speculation as to what will happen with Model 3 is that there will be promotion of Powerwall and SolarCity. Rather than charge $2k to enable Supercharger access, I imagine a program of free restricted use (a 24 to 72 hour cool down on repeat use of the same charge location) or unrestricted and unlimited use for Model 3 drivers who are Powerwall or SolarCity customers.

It would be nice if some of the energy spent driving this thread to nearly 20 pages could be channeled into local areas, lobbying government and business for expanded L2 and L1 access (at multi hour parking, abundant L1 options for sub 25kwh vehicles could help keep L2 open for >50kwh vehicles).

 

[CuriousG]

Maybe you didn't read my 1st post, but I want to pay for it. That is not in question. However, I want to pay as I go. I don't want to pay a large sum up front.

Oh you mean like the $1,000 reservation?

 

[Kurt Foster]

What would be the point of this unless tesla has the long term goal of creating SUSTAINABLE Transportation. The superchargers are powered off of solar, so they make 1 million, each with 12 slots... There you go, solar powered cars! Tesla will get enough money as it is from selling the battery technology after they've built Gigafactory 100...

 

[paladinfello]

I haven't read every page of the thread so I don't know if this has been mentioned before. Perhaps the best way to deal with "locals" using Superchargers is only charging locals when they use their neighborhood Supercharger. Tesla knows where we live, they also know where the car is charger. It wouldn't be that hard to program the car/backend to know when a vehicle is charging within say a 50 mile radius from home. Any Supercharging done within this radius would be charged some rate (flat, per-use, per-kW, per-min, whatever). Or maybe you get one free local Supercharge a month, the details can be flushed out later but I'm sure that something along these lines would reduce some of the demand on the urban stations.

 

[ohmman]

I haven't read every page of the thread so I don't know if this has been mentioned before.

It has. Multiple times by multiple posters. It's a difficult implementation because there are enough use cases where charging 25 miles from home is a legitimate undertaking.

 

[diamond.g]

I haven't read every page of the thread so I don't know if this has been mentioned before. Perhaps the best way to deal with "locals" using Superchargers is only charging locals when they use their neighborhood Supercharger. Tesla knows where we live, they also know where the car is charger. It wouldn't be that hard to program the car/backend to know when a vehicle is charging within say a 50 mile radius from home. Any Supercharging done within this radius would be charged some rate (flat, per-use, per-kW, per-min, whatever). Or maybe you get one free local Supercharge a month, the details can be flushed out later but I'm sure that something along these lines would reduce some of the demand on the urban stations.

Other folks have mentioned the same.

 

[paladinfello]

It has. Multiple times by multiple posters. It's a difficult implementation because there are enough use cases where charging 25 miles from home is a legitimate undertaking.

Other folks have mentioned the same.

Sorry bout that. 17+ pages of reading, I'll get right on that... =/

 

[ohmman]

Sorry bout that. 17+ pages of reading, I'll get right on that... =/

Yeah, I get it. I've been there. One tip that might help, the search in the upper right includes a checkbox for "search this thread only". I'm not saying you can always find what you're looking for, but it's helpful.

 

[Ben W]

??? How much do you expect a fee to decrease supercharger use? Any fee would be a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of expanding the infrastructure or the $2k funded up front as occurs now with the S/X. The SC network is a large part of the reason Tesla has more pre-orders in 1 week than the Bolt is likely to sell in 5 years.

I'm pretty sure that the vast... vast... VAST majority of people would be willing to pay $2k more for a Tesla and the SC network is a large part of that.

Without diverting ~$2k from every vehicle sale there will not be a supercharger network large enough to support new vehicles...



.... it's <6% of the cost of the base model....

Yes, I expect the fee would decrease supercharger abuse substantially. It would make local charging uneconomic to anyone (vs home charging), and would deter people from staying plugged in after they're finished charging. It's less about the per-minute revenue to Tesla; they would be happier to prevent the abuse than to collect the per-minute fee in these cases.

$2k may be only 6% of the base model cost, but it's ~50% of the profit margin. If the ultimate cost to Tesla of providing sufficient SC's were to drop from $2k/car to $1k/car because of a policy they implement, they could either (A) make the car $1k more affordable to buyers, (B) make $1k more profit per vehicle (effectively raising their profit margin 25%), or (C) some combination. This is why implementing a policy that reduces the ultimate SC cost per vehicle (for buyers + Tesla) is so important.

Anecdote: I have a quite successful iOS app on the App Store. When the price is changed from $0.00 to $0.99, its download rate drops by 100x!! 99 cents may sound insignificant (or $0.25/minute for supercharging) but it MASSIVELY affects behavior.

P.S. callmesam, really? Disliking every one of my posts in this thread, without even commenting as to why?

 

[diamond.g]

Yes, I expect the fee would decrease supercharger abuse substantially. It would make local charging uneconomic to anyone (vs home charging), and would deter people from staying plugged in after they're finished charging. It's less about the per-minute revenue to Tesla; they would be happier to prevent the abuse than to collect the per-minute fee in these cases.

$2k may be only 6% of the base model cost, but it's ~50% of the profit margin. If the ultimate cost to Tesla of providing sufficient SC's were to drop from $2k/car to $1k/car because of a policy they implement, they could either (A) make the car $1k more affordable to buyers, (B) make $1k more profit per vehicle (effectively raising their profit margin 25%), or (C) some combination. This is why implementing a policy that reduces the ultimate SC cost per vehicle (for buyers + Tesla) is so important.

Anecdote: I have a quite successful iOS app on the App Store. When the price is changed from $0.00 to $0.99, its download rate drops by 100x!! 99 cents may sound insignificant (or $0.25/minute for supercharging) but it MASSIVELY affects behavior.

P.S. callmesam, really? Disliking every one of my posts in this thread, without even commenting as to why?

I would rather Tesla charge 1.5k at build or 2k after. If you don't need to SuperCharge then don't. If there is such a desire for fast DC charging, but not demand at the price which Tesla wants to charge, then the free market (aka chademo) should deliver.

Should Tesla include it for higher battery options? I dunno. Part of me says no. But then again I admit I am not sure if I am going to get the larger battery, lol.

 

[SW2Fiddler]

A car hire service, like a limo service, or Uber driver.

An Uber driver owns the car and does not "work for a Fleet or a Service." Fleets should arrange their own fueling!

Would Tesla want to discourage / prevent those types of customers?

Elon congratulated Bjørn Nyland and as far as I know, gave him a Model X.

They are not only receiving subsidised unlimited fuel but they are using it for commercial gain.

See again, the universally-loved Bjørn and his gig delivering for hire and well-documented use of SuperChargers. Same as an Uber, except there's no passenger getting Brand Exposure.

 

[ikjadoon]

All right, I feel like we've lost sight of a few important things here:

1. Tesla has been thinking about this problem for over a decade. They imagined 400,000 Tesla EVs on the road at some point in the future. See this video from March 2015 where Tesla CTO JB Straubel said,

"We offer these free to our customers. You know, we thought about this for a long time. And it turns out, the energy cost is actually very low. It's more about the cost of the convenience of having access to the infrastructure. But a full charge or even a 50% charge on a Model S: you know, it's less than $10. So, it's really not entirely worth the hassle of trying to deal with a whole separate billing structure. And, you know, in the future, of course, I think it will make sense to figure out how we will phase in some sort of financial structure, but it's gonna take time. And for the beginning million cars, this is a pretty viable way to do it."

I don't think an extra 200,000 cars has dramatically changed their decade-long plan. Why would he even joke about a million cars if it wasn't even remotely possible?

2. Faster charging, more stations (specifically tailored to # of 3 orders in an area), and more slots per station will alleviate most of these issues. Tesla is actively working on each goal. We're currently at one new Supercharger per day globally and that was before the 325,000 pre-orders. With faster charging (down to 20 minutes instead of 30 to 40), that Newark, DE Supercharger station can process about 50 cars per hour.

3. Worried about locals charging: there will always be more false positives, I think. Verifying addresses, keeping them up to date, weeding out commuters, etc.

4. The only fee I can think of: vacant cars that are finished charging are fined $1 to $5 per minute. These should be fined because Tesla has no attendants at most Superchargers to mitigate forgetful/careless owners.

5. At peak times, in the worst case, 90-100% charging is disabled. You don't need a Supercharger for that trickle speed. Go find a Level 1 destination charger and hog that parking spot at Applebee's.

6. If we really are anxious and we really want the "complicated, but fair" solution: you reserve spots at the Supercharger. Based on your final destination (as programmed by your navigation system) and current charge level, Tesla reserves a Supercharger slot for you and gives you a reservation # -- at that time, only your car will work in that slot. Tesla is already thinking about this. If you fake plug in some destination but your car never goes there (and you do this plenty of times), Tesla fines you. If you skip on your reservation a few times, Tesla fines you. It's not necessarily a complicated algorithm.

--

For everyone who says "free access Supercharging" is economically unfeasible, "traggedddddyyy of the commonnnnnnsss!", "all-you-can-eat buffet": yes, I understand. But don't you think Tesla thought of these problems literally the day they conceived of having Superchargers? It's not new information for them.

Yes, more pre-orders than expected, but you know what: it's a heck of a lot easier to ramp up Supercharger production rate than Model 3 production rate. They'll ramp up as needed.

When Tesla makes its $20,000 car, sure: let's talk about pay-per-go then.

 

[EVnut]

my first thought was definitely discourage taxi services using them. They are not only receiving subsidised unlimited fuel but they are using it for commercial gain.

Of course the downside to this is that a Tesla-based taxi service is great marketing for the car.. and taxis do a huge number of km in a day, so changing them from oil to electric does serve the company's overall environment plan well.

There must be a good compromise in there somewhere. Charge them a nominal commercial fee and let them have at it? Arrange to have their own supercharger installed at cost for their own use?

 

[Chuq]

Arrange to have their own supercharger installed at cost for their own use?

I remember there was someone who had SCs installed at a private location - can't remember the details though!

 

[TaoJones]

Sigh. And once again: What wasn't said.

 

[nwdiver]

Yes, I expect the fee would decrease supercharger abuse substantially.

'USE'... not 'ABUSE'... how much would you expect a fee to decrease supercharger 'USE'. ABUSE can easily be fixed by blocking cars within a certain radius of where the car is parked every night. If 500k cars hit the road in 2020 Tesla needs to throw ~$1B into the network in 2020/21... no reasonable per use fee would raise anywhere near that much $$$. It's a catch 22. Tesla doesn't want fees high enough to discourage travel... but they need to raise ~$1B/yr to expand the network. The only workable solution is diverting a portion of sales revenue into the network.

 

[Ben W]

'USE'... not 'ABUSE'... how much would you expect a fee to decrease supercharger 'USE'. ABUSE can easily be fixed by blocking cars within a certain radius of where the car is parked every night. If 500k cars hit the road in 2020 Tesla needs to throw ~$1B into the network in 2020/21... no reasonable per use fee would raise anywhere near that much $$$. It's a catch 22. Tesla doesn't want fees high enough to discourage travel... but they need to raise ~$1B/yr to expand the network. The only workable solution is diverting a portion of sales revenue into the network.

I would expect the total average use (minutes per owner per month) to drop roughly in half with pay-per-minute billing, vs. all-you-can-eat. This would allow Tesla to accommodate the total demand with half as many charging stations. The advantage of pay-per-minute billing has almost nothing to do with the cost of electricity; rather, it's all about the cost of building out the infrastructure. If Tesla can get away with "throwing" $500m instead of $1b into expanding the network for 2020/2021 while satisfying demand, then that would let them either make that much more profit off the cars, or lower the sticker price by that much while maintaining profit margins. Either way, it's a huge win for Tesla, and also for its most price-conscious consumers. The ~$50m/year Tesla might make off the pay-per-minute fee is almost beside the point; the $500m/year saved through the smaller network build-out is much more important.

Either way, a substantial fraction of the cost of building out the network will inevitably be "baked in" to the car's sticker price. The rest can be made up with the per-minute fee. This arrangement would allow Tesla to offer SC capability in the most economical way to the largest number of buyers. Sure, Tesla might be able to sustain their current SC pricing model up to a million cars, but by 2025 there will be a million S/X's alone on the road (presumably also with that pricing model), on top of several million (hopefully!) Model 3's. I think the cleanest way Tesla could transition to the inevitable (IMO) new system would be to apply it to all Model 3's right from the start.