Model 3 Supercharging Capable Discussion

[Garlan Garner]

That's why it works

I'm disappointed that Tesla is planning to allow M3 owners to opt out. I want the supercharger team to have an embarrassment of riches. If Tesla sells 500k cars in 2018 I want them to have $1B to spend on expanding the supercharger network. If they run out of places where a supercharger is appropriate they can start covering stations with solar PV, installing batteries and buying wind farms to displace consumption to lower future O&M. At some point it will become self-sustaining and they can reduce then eventually eliminate the fee.

Give it time. Tesla / Elon already said that it was doubling or something like that - the number of SC's out there. It will happen.

 

[Garlan Garner]

Of course you can. Superchargers cost money to build, but they also cost money to operate. Construction can be funded by vehicle sales, but you can still charge people for using them.

Yes. they charged me $2500. That's my right to use fee.

 

[Jeff N]

Both models should be available honestly.

People who have a long commute or travel a lot will need supercharging.

Those like myself who have a short commute and only take long trips a couple times a year probably don't have much interest in paying $2000 or more to charge remotely.

I think this is a likely direction for the next 5-10 years. The pre-pay customers will help build the system and the per-use customers will be able to do occasional road trips without facing arbitrary usage restrictions.

 

[gregincal]

Yes. they charged me $2500. That's my right to use fee.

Yep, you paid $2500 for supercharging for life, that's fine. I didn't, it was included for free, but there was a promise. None of that means that can't have a different system for the Model 3.

 

[SageBrush]

That's why it works

I'm disappointed that Tesla is planning to allow M3 owners to opt out. I want the supercharger team to have an embarrassment of riches. If Tesla sells 500k cars in 2018 I want them to have $1B to spend on expanding the supercharger network. If they run out of places where a supercharger is appropriate they can start covering stations with solar PV, installing batteries and buying wind farms to displace consumption to lower future O&M. At some point it will become self-sustaining and they can reduce then eventually eliminate the fee.

I'm fine with this approach too, although then Tesla might as well bump the car price up and ditch the option. The real decoupling is going to be free/cheap from abuse.

 

[MissAutobahn]

How do you guys think to pay each single charging?
Are you also paying every single call with your mobilephone, because you are affraid, you could pay to much with a flatrate mobilephone?
Are you upset about people who use their mobilephone whole day and even don't have to pay more than you do with a few calls?

Maybe the solution will be "pay-pal"

 

[Garlan Garner]

Yep, you paid $2500 for supercharging for life, that's fine. I didn't, it was included for free, but there was a promise. None of that means that can't have a different system for the Model 3.

It wasn't included for free...you paid for it...just not as an option. Just like the MS owners paid for M3 development and may not have known it.

 

[Garlan Garner]

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.

Weather people can afford the one time payment or not is a totally different topic. My thought is....if you can't afford it then don't by it. Charge at home.
To charge a depleted MS in Chicago where I live costs $3.82 in electricity. I know its a higher cost elsewhere so don't blast me with those comments.
It's amazing to me how all of the ICE drivers out there have $40 - $60 to put in a gas tank, however quibble over $4 in electricity.

 

[Garlan Garner]

How do you guys think to pay each single charging?
Are you also paying every single call with your mobilephone, because you are affraid, you could pay to much with a flatrate mobilephone?
Are you upset about people who use their mobilephone whole day and even don't have to pay more than you do with a few calls?

Maybe the solution will be "pay-pal"

Excellent Post.

 

[ohmman]

I'm disappointed that Tesla is planning to allow M3 owners to opt out. I want the supercharger team to have an embarrassment of riches. If Tesla sells 500k cars in 2018 I want them to have $1B to spend on expanding the supercharger network.

I agree with this to some extent. However, I see where Tesla's stuck between being able to offer a reasonable base car for $35k and also offer Supercharging with the car.

 

[ggies07]

Weather people can afford the one time payment or not is a totally different topic. My thought is....if you can't afford it then don't by it. Charge at home.
To charge a depleted MS in Chicago where I live costs $3.82 in electricity. I know its a higher cost elsewhere so don't blast me with those comments.
It's amazing to me how all of the ICE drivers out there have $40 - $60 to put in a gas tank, however quibble over $4 in electricity.

This makes no sense. We are talking about a service for long distance travel, not charging at home, how would I get to another state? I guess it would just have to be something to save up for and I and others wouldn't take long distance trips until then. I'm certainly not going to go into debt just to say I can "travel anywhere around the US for free" when I take like one long road trip a year. haha

 

[Winston Wolf]

Put me in the camp that even $1000 is too much for supercharger access for how little I'd use it. When we make cross country trips, it'll almost assuredly be in the family mini-van, and not in the Model 3. There just isn't enough space to carry our stuff for anything longer than a day or two. Now on the rare occasion that we use the Model 3 for a weekend trip or something else where we can pack light, i'm more than happy to pay for supercharger time in the same way that I pay for gas. I get the argument that someone has to pay for the infrastructure, but aren't we also paying for that in the price of gasoline? I also know there are legal issues with "re-selling" public utilities, but perhaps if Tesla called it an infrastructure charge, you could mitigate that issue. How do hotels get away with charging for phone calls? Those are a utility, but they seem to be within the law by charging guests an absurd amount to make a long distance call from the phone in the room.

Some personal math:
$1000 / $3.00/gal = 333 gallons of gas for the theoretical price of super charger access.
If I don't get a model 3, I'd probably get an accord...so let's say the accord gets 25mpg for a road trip (being conservative here)
That means I can drive over 8000 miles for that $1000, which is about 10 trips to see my family in another state. We might make this trip in the model 3 maybe once per year. So doing this, I'm in the red for 10 years. You'd better believe that I'd start using the local super charger to recoup my costs earlier which will lead to overcrowding. I don't want that. No one does. I'd much rather pay a $10-15 hook up fee every time I stop and call it a day.

 

[gregincal]

I guarantee you that part of every car purchase is earmarked to "marketing" and part of that "marketing" is earmarked to Superchargers. So therefore the Supercharger network build out is tied to car purchases. If as Elon says they are decoupling the Supercharger network from the base purchase I assume that means that the "marketing" earmark is being reduced.

Nope sorry, corporate finance doesn't work that way. They are operating at a loss because they are building for the future. Saying that they spend part of the money from each car on superchargers makes a much sense as those people who say they are losing money on each car because they are operating at a loss.

If they have free cash flow for whatever reason they can choose to spend some of that on supercharger construction. Likewise if they are in a cash crunch they can halt supercharger construction no matter how many people choose to buy the supercharger option. The decision of how much money to spend on supercharger construction quarter to quarter has to do with overall company business decisions, not income from particular source.

However, operating expenses for superchargers do need to be paid each quarter That has no relation to how many cars they sell that quarter, but rather how many people used the superchargers.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Weather people can afford the one time payment or not is a totally different topic. My thought is....if you can't afford it then don't by it. Charge at home.
To charge a depleted MS in Chicago where I live costs $3.82 in electricity. I know its a higher cost elsewhere so don't blast me with those comments.
It's amazing to me how all of the ICE drivers out there have $40 - $60 to put in a gas tank, however quibble over $4 in electricity.

They aren't quibbling over $4 in electricity, but rather probably $20-30 in access charges once the network costs are figured in. What you pay to charge at home is irrelevant to what it costs Tesla to maintain their network to provide an equivalent amount of charge.

Elon has already said in that statement that they couldn't make the economics work out including it with the car. So they have to figure out something else. Elon mentioned the "free long distance for life" option, but didn't elaborate on the other option that would be cheaper than gasoline. That's what people are speculating on.

 

[Jeff N]

charge" freedom type vision of the superchargers. (Every pay per charge network I've used has also had serious reliability issues, a significant amount of which are poor payment systems going down preventing charging). I really like Tesla's one time charge -- no fumbling with billing/RFID cards, charging network accounts, etc. It is such a nice experience to just plug in and charge, I hope it continues.

Tesla already has a payment authentication system to keep out cars that are not pre-paid. It seems to be reliable. ChargePoint per-use billing authentication is also reliable -- if the authentication network connection is down the charging stations continue to work and just record the data locally until communications are restored. That means there could sometimes be fraudulent charging when the communications are down and that's just a cost of doing business.

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.

As I noted above, Tesla already has a system. It's just so automatic and easy to use that nobody thinks about it. CCS charging will likely support the same kind of scheme (but perhaps with stronger crypto-based authentication) in the future (plugging in the car will automatically authenticate the vehicle) without an inherent need for each driver to carry around an RFID card or use a smartphone app. This isn't just my speculation -- there is CCS standards work happening to enable this.

The base model 3 ($35k) will be a 60 or 70kWh car with ~50kWh usable similar to the first 40s that were 60s. To unlock the extra ~10 kWh will cost $5k and if you want supercharging it's another $2k. You have to do both to activate supercharging... just like with the 40s. That might be where the 'Supercharging cost $7k' rumor came from.

So much for Tesla's Supercharger advantage over the Bolt EV and other non-Tesla 200+ mile BEVs. I don't think that's realistic. Tesla needs a way to leverage the Supercharger sales advantage without forcing everyone to pre-pay thousands of dollars when they just want reliable but occasional fast charging on a pay as you go basis. Lots of people prefer pay as you go -- that's why home ink jet printers are cheap up front but expensive to use over time. Similarly, ICE cars are cheap up front but expensive over time. We shouldn't scare all of those customers away from buying Model 3 or similar lower cost models by insisting that access to reliable nationwide supercharging MUST be pre-paid.

 

[MissAutobahn]

I would actually prefer that SC were 'pay-per-minute' with different rate scales depending on time, day of the week etc. I think doing so would value and manage SC resources better.

that would probably lead to complaining.... people who charge up from 5% would get more kWh as others that start from 50%...

 

[pinski]

I prefer the pay-per-use (PPU) model, but largely because our Model 3 will be used as a commuter vehicle the vast majority of the time. If unlimited Supercharging is a reasonably-priced option, I may consider it, but at the $2000 cost it was on the Model S, I very strongly doubt I'd check that box.

While I don't have the best understanding of how the Supercharger network functions, I cannot wrap my head around why some think a PPU system couldn't be installed. The Supercharger somehow has to differentiate between cars with unlimited and those without, otherwise everybody could charge, correct? Each PPU Model 3 would simply need a credit card linked to the car and when that car plugs in, the card gets charged for the amount of electricity it consumes.

Though this model wouldn't bring in an immediate increased cash flow to build more Superchargers, it would end up as a continual source of revenue. For someone like me who may use a Supercharger twice a month on average, it would be perfect.

 

[Garlan Garner]

I can't imagine the overhead that would have to accompany Pay Per Use. Tesla would need to hire at least 50 folks to man the phones and hear from people about how their bills are wrong and they didn't use the SC on November 27 because that's the day their pet alligator died - and they didn't want to put it in the Tesla because they just used their last coupon at the local Wash-N-Save out there on Randle and State road...right of I76...where they had a flat last year and hit a deer square on.......

I use to be a telemarketer a long time ago.......

 

[LCTRC]

This was found by others in other Model 3 and Model S threads (Az_Rael and jmsurpri, namely), but I think it's important for everyone to see: Tesla updated the wording on their Model 3 page for the Supercharger feature from "Supercharging" to "Supercharging capable". So... don't expect to get Supercharging without a fee (either up front or per use).

Elon Musk stated in his keynote for the Model 3 reveal:
"All Model 3s will come with Supercharging as Standard."

This is clear - Standard means no charge. He didn't say Supercharging Capable.

If he goes back on his word, I may end up canceling both of my Model 3 orders.

He said that "the reason Supercharging is important is that it gives you freedom to travel."
He also said he is going to double the Superchargers by the end of next year.

People who ordered the Model 3 have an argument that they were defrauded into ordering the Model 3 by saying Supercharging is standard and then being charged for it.

Supercharging is important. I would not buy a Tesla unless it came with Supercharging as standard.

We'll see if they go back on what they promised.

 

[lklundin]

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.

Considering the amount of sensor data that the Tesla's have been shown to log lately, I would be very surprised if each car cannot phone home about how much it has supercharged when and where.

That said, I would be curious to know how much the superchargers are networked. Imagine for example that a wireless network used for updates OTA became unavailable. Or what about a nasty software vulnerability that compromises both the network and the cars? In such a case the superchargers could act as trusted, alternative distribution points for software updates, without the dreaded recall. Having their own distribution channel would fit well with Tesla's strategy of vertical integration.