[Rant] locals clogging the Highland Park, IL supercharger

[ThosEM]

Tesla funds the sc costs from the price of the car. That was the point.

That may be true but it was not the point. The point, as described in your sales documents, is that the $2000 pays to "Enable Supercharging" for your car, which means it pays for the hardware and software to manage the battery while supercharging. Tesla is not obligated legally in any way to provide supercharging or to pay for the electricity it delivers.

 

[jgs]

The point, as described in your sales documents, is that the $2000 pays to "Enable Supercharging" for your car, which means it pays for the hardware and software to manage the battery while supercharging. Tesla is not obligated legally in any way to provide supercharging or to pay for the electricity it delivers.

There's a line item ($0, not $2000) for "Supercharger Enabled" on my Motor Vehicle Purchase Agreement. That doesn't prove much of anything about Tesla's obligations, though. There is nothing on my MVPA that says the car has to be drivable at speeds above 30 mph, for example, but I'm pretty sure in the unlikely event that were to be litigated, a court would find there was an implicit contract. I also bet it would give a lot more weight to what Tesla had published as actual sales and marketing collateral at the time of purchase, than it would to things "everyone knew" or Elon Musk's tweets or interview comments or whatever. But I guess what makes this such a fun parlor game is that nobody knows for certain unless it gets litigated, and I don't think anyone wants that to happen. (Well, almost nobody anyway, never say never.)

 

[kort677]

Tesla is not obligated legally in any way to provide supercharging or to pay for the electricity it delivers.

I don't know how factual that comment is, there is an implied promise by tesla in their marketing to provide the ability for supercharging and that it would unlimited and no addition costs.

 

[TexasEV]

"Generally speaking, Superchargers located on more frequently traveled routes with eight or more charging stations were those that we estimated would have a higher utilization rate and are recorded to cost of automotive sales. Supercharger stations expected to have low utilization rates serve more as a marketing function for Tesla and we recorded these costs to selling, general and administrative. As of December 31, 2013, we allocated 40% of our Supercharger network costs to cost of automotive sales and the remaining 60% to selling, general and administrative."

@stopcrazypp, thank you for providing this clarification. So I'm 60% right

 

[stopcrazypp]

There's a line item ($0, not $2000) for "Supercharger Enabled" on my Motor Vehicle Purchase Agreement. That doesn't prove much of anything about Tesla's obligations, though. There is nothing on my MVPA that says the car has to be drivable at speeds above 30 mph, for example, but I'm pretty sure in the unlikely event that were to be litigated, a court would find there was an implicit contract. I also bet it would give a lot more weight to what Tesla had published as actual sales and marketing collateral at the time of purchase, than it would to things "everyone knew" or Elon Musk's tweets or interview comments or whatever. But I guess what makes this such a fun parlor game is that nobody knows for certain unless it gets litigated, and I don't think anyone wants that to happen. (Well, almost nobody anyway, never say never.)

That is not an implied contract, but a general characteristic of a federally approved vehicle and not meeting that would also violate lemon laws.

There is no implicit contract here, only a a possible false advertising claim (if Tesla decides to charge fees for "superchargers", not if they use schemes that limit or throttle usage, or if they rebrand some chargers for example into "urbanchargers" or "citychargers").

 

[jgs]

That is not an implied contract, but a general characteristic of a federally approved vehicle and not meeting that would also violate lemon laws.

There is no implicit contract here, only a a possible false advertising claim (if Tesla decides to charge fees for "superchargers", not if they use schemes that limit or throttle usage, or if they rebrand some chargers for example into "urbanchargers" or "citychargers").

I'll take your word for it, this is certainly not my area of expertise. I will quibble however that there wouldn't be any recourse if they decided to limit usage, given that in the past they published that "Customers are free to use the network as much as they like." (Supercharging | Tesla Motors) (I suppose it depends on exactly what you meant by "limit or throttle usage", I was assuming the most obvious interpretation.)

Point taken that there's almost always wiggle room, as with your rebranding example. That's why I think this is mostly a parlor game – we are still very much at the stage where buying a Tesla involves a leap of faith that the company is basically trying to do the right thing and not screw the customer. (However, almost everyone, no matter how well-intentioned, occasionally needs to be reminded of this, I've found.)

 

[Az_Rael]

Tesla has walked back advertising promises in the past. Remember this?

"If you're interested in having a Tesla Ranger come to your home or office to provide service, there will be an additional flat fee of $100 per visit. We’ve had Tesla Rangers on the road since we first started delivering Roadsters and the response from customers has been incredibly positive. We’ve revised our pricing such that Ranger Service for Model S and Roadster is now a $100 flat fee per visit, regardless of how far away you live from a Tesla Service Center"
Transforming Automotive Service

Change of Policy on Tesla Ranger Service
removing the $100 flat fee for the ranger service was a huge financial blow to folks who bought the car with this promise in place and were far from a service center. You could argue that those people never should have bought the car in the first place, but when they did buy it, they were assured that Tesla would take care of them.

So I don't think it is that crazy to think Tesla might do something similar with the supercharger network if unlimited use becomes a liability.

 

[stopcrazypp]

I'll take your word for it, this is certainly not my area of expertise. I will quibble however that there wouldn't be any recourse if they decided to limit usage, given that in the past they published that "Customers are free to use the network as much as they like." (Supercharging | Tesla Motors) (I suppose it depends on exactly what you meant by "limit or throttle usage", I was assuming the most obvious interpretation.)

Point taken that there's almost always wiggle room, as with your rebranding example. That's why I think this is mostly a parlor game – we are still very much at the stage where buying a Tesla involves a leap of faith that the company is basically trying to do the right thing and not screw the customer. (However, almost everyone, no matter how well-intentioned, occasionally needs to be reminded of this, I've found.)

The "as much as you like" was in context of the vehicle warranty. People like to quote it out of context, but it is very clear if you quote the whole answer: " Supercharging does not alter the new vehicle warranty. Customers are free to use the network as much as they like."

The Ranger fee example from Az_Rael is a good one that shows there is no contract here. The only people who were able to still get $100 Ranger were those that had an actual service contract that specified this or had goodwill from a service manager.

 

[jgs]

The "as much as you like" was in context of the vehicle warranty. People like to quote it out of context, but it is very clear if you quote the whole answer: " Supercharging does not alter the new vehicle warranty. Customers are free to use the network as much as they like."

I disagree that the quote is limited to the warranty. The clauses look severable to me and besides, the warranty reference is in the answer part, not the question part, and appears to be a way for Tesla to duck out of directly answering the "is it bad for my battery" question. FWIW here's the whole quote including question part, for those who don't feel like clicking through:

How often can I Supercharge? Is it bad for my battery?
Supercharging does not alter the new vehicle warranty. Customers are free to use the network as much as they like.​

If I were you and wanted to continue to argue your position, I'd move on to point out that it says "can" and not "may". But I'm happy to agree to disagree on this point, it's not like it has any practical effect at present.

 

[bhzmark]

That may be true but it was not the point. The point, as described in your sales documents, is that the $2000 pays to "Enable Supercharging" for your car, which means it pays for the hardware and software to manage the battery while supercharging. Tesla is not obligated legally in any way to provide supercharging or to pay for the electricity it delivers.

No. The original point was a response to this post:

The mass adoption of EVs does not jibe with free charging. For Model 3 I don't see how Telsa can avoid doing what ChargePoint does - calculate the juice used and charge for it. That's the only way Tesla gets the revenue to keep rolling out more charger capacity - which it will need to do to cover costs and stay in business (to say nothing of making a profit)....

The response was this:

no. they are funded by the one time charge in the price of each car sale. As an option the charge is $2500. Think of it like an annuity that pays during the life of the car for its portion of the SC network capital costs and its portion of electricity used. We all pay for our portion with each car we buy. As long as Tesla gets the actuarial math right they don't need to meter the electric usage.

Tesla doesn't need to do what Chargepoint does -- calculate the elec used and charge for it.

That's the point.

 

[bhzmark]

Tesla actually had to explain the supercharger accounting to SEC in early 2015.

Ongoing expenses like electricity, depreciation, lease, maintenance related to the supercharger network are counted as deferred revenue (this was the calculated $500 per vehicle from previous SEC filings).


About the infrastructure cost model for superchargers, the less popular stations are a marketing expense, the popular stations are cost of sales.


Letter to the SEC

Tesla no longer breaks any of this down in recent SEC filings (no more mention of amount of deferred revenue for superchargers).

That letter is very interesting.

Roughly the distinction between marketing and cost of good sold is that marketing doesn't improve a product, or provide a consumer benefit. Marketing simply makes buyers aware of the product and thus increases demand by increasing consumer awareness and preference. Being generally supply constrained, Tesla makes the intelligent choice to not spend much on advertising or other true marketing expenses to increase demand.

But this SEC letter explains, roughly that some of the supercharger don't actually provide much benefit to buyers because they are in the middle of nowhere and no one uses them and they are really only there to fill in the map and put lots of flags across the country. Thus because those SCs are not really used, they are more marketing than a good that actually benefits a customer.

This allows Tesla to record the cost of those useless SCs as a marketing expense. An interesting accounting tactic.

But it still doesn't follow that Tesla needs to meter and charge the elec to pay for it.

 

[stopcrazypp]

But it still doesn't follow that Tesla needs to meter and charge the elec to pay for it.

The deferred revenue is the part related to electricity (and other ongoing costs). If their estimate of $500 per vehicle over the lifetime of that vehicle is wrong, they may have to charge for it. This $500 is related to the $2000 option cost for S60. At some point, the prepaid amount would be too high to make sense to keep it as prepaid.

 

[bhzmark]

Yes. "If their estimate is wrong". Same point I made in the original post "As long as Tesla gets the actuarial math right they don't need to meter the electric usage."

Edit to add:
Btw "actuarial"= calculations that estimate future costs based on projected longevity, usage and other risk variables.

 

[TaoJones]

The deferred revenue is the part related to electricity (and other ongoing costs). If their estimate of $500 per vehicle over the lifetime of that vehicle is wrong, they may have to charge for it. This $500 is related to the $2000 option cost for S60. At some point, the prepaid amount would be too high to make sense to keep it as prepaid.

Again, according to Dr. Straubel, the time to revisit the business model is at 1,000,000 cars. Also, it may have been that he meant 1,000,000 cars domestically (US), in which case that's an even longer timeframe. Left unsaid is that as range increases, SC visits decrease. As charging times decrease, pressure upon existing infrastructure decreases.

Why the rush to charge the non-garaged and/or those who happen to live in greater metropolitan areas served by Tesla's 2014 commitment to DENSITY as well as to DISTANCE? I live in a county with 4 SCs. Soon there will be 3 if not 4 SCs (finally) in an adjacent county.

ICEing by our own, avoidable pairing, and ICEing by the Great Unwashed remain the 3 largest problems facing SC usage today. I'll type that again, as evidently there have been too many Donald Trump quotes on CNN lately (he compulsively repeats himself for emphasis): ICEing by our own, avoidable pairing, and ICEing by the Great Unwashed remain the 3 largest problems facing SC usage today.

Livery in a very few areas (Schiphol, LAX, Orange County, and possibly Newark) are also a mitigable concern.

Those darned locals don't even register as a blip, let alone as a concern of any statistical significance network-wide. Further, locals are largely self-leveling. As as example, when I charge, I tend to do so at off-peak times. Why? Because there's TRAFFIC at peak times, and only an eeeeeediot drives in LA traffic when one doesn't have to . Same reason you'll rarely see me at the Barstow SC or that last SC in Washington State on the way to Canada on a Friday evening, or at the SJC SC on Sunday evenings coming back from San Diego.

Anyway, pay per use is the last thing Tesla wants or needs, ever, and don't even get me started about geofencing.

 

[ThosEM]

IMHO, free energy distorts reality in several undesirable ways:
1. It leads people to think that energy can be wasted without consequences or even cost.
2. It leads Tesla to block use of our car batteries as backup energy supplies to the home. [This is actually my main peeve]
3. It leads people to drive miles out of their way to "pick up some juice" instead of charging at home.
4. It thus causes congestion at SC sites with a lot of local Tesla owners
5. Did I forget anything?

 

[AZ Desert Driver]

IMHO, free energy distorts reality in several undesirable ways:
1. It leads people to think that energy can be wasted without consequences or even cost.
2. It leads Tesla to block use of our car batteries as backup energy supplies to the home. [This is actually my main peeve]
3. It leads people to drive miles out of their way to "pick up some juice" instead of charging at home.
4. It thus causes congestion at SC sites with a lot of local Tesla owners
5. Did I forget anything?

Please expand on #2...Did you say there (could) be a way to use the battery pack in the car to act like a power wall? If one got the DC=>AC hardware, what else would be needed? [permission form utility? ]

 

[ThosEM]

I'd be glad to. Tesla makes the hardware to connect their PowerWall battery to a home electrical system, for this very same purpose. I haven't studied that in detail because I'm so miffed that they aren't offering a way to do the same thing with the huge battery I already bought from them in my Model S. But presumably it consists of an inverter that converts DC into 60 cycle at some useful voltage, to be switched into one's home the way one would a gasoline powered emergency generator.

I've been waiting for the capability to use a car battery for this ever since I first read about the Tesla Roadster back in 2007 or so. At that time this was very prominent among the advantages of electric cars and large batteries, but it has never materialized. I would really like to sell my 7kW generator and feel that I have options to cover the same thing with my car. When I've brought this up here, others have pointed out that Tesla *most likely* would not do that because I might then drive to my nearest SC (75 km away now but soon to be 50 km) and load up with power to use at my home instead of on the road. That isn't very likely, but the closer the SC, the more tempting it would get.

So, it seems to me that Tesla is blocking us from doing this quite deliberately, with rationales ranging from "we'd rather you bought another battery from us" to "we can't let you use our free juice for that". Bottom line for me: I would cheerfully pay a few bucks for supercharger use if it would allow me to unload my need for a gasoline generator.

 

[jgs]

I'd be glad to. Tesla makes the hardware to connect their PowerWall battery to a home electrical system, for this very same purpose. I haven't studied that in detail because I'm so miffed that they aren't offering a way to do the same thing with the huge battery I already bought from them in my Model S. But presumably it consists of an inverter that converts DC into 60 cycle at some useful voltage, to be switched into one's home the way one would a gasoline powered emergency generator.

I've been waiting for the capability to use a car battery for this ever since I first read about the Tesla Roadster back in 2007 or so. At that time this was very prominent among the advantages of electric cars and large batteries, but it has never materialized. I would really like to sell my 7kW generator and feel that I have options to cover the same thing with my car. When I've brought this up here, others have pointed out that Tesla *most likely* would not do that because I might then drive to my nearest SC (75 km away now but soon to be 50 km) and load up with power to use at my home instead of on the road. That isn't very likely, but the closer the SC, the more tempting it would get.

So, it seems to me that Tesla is blocking us from doing this quite deliberately, with rationales ranging from "we'd rather you bought another battery from us" to "we can't let you use our free juice for that". Bottom line for me: I would cheerfully pay a few bucks for supercharger use if it would allow me to unload my need for a gasoline generator.

I've gone through roughly the same line of thinking in the past, but where I concluded is I don't think Tesla is "blocking" anything. They're clearly constrained in many aspects of their business, and making the nontrivial additional investment in hardware, software and business model to enable v2g features in our cars doesn't make the cut. It doesn't help them sell cars, ship Model 3, etc.

If the cars actually had the hardware in them and it was spitefully disabled by software, I'd be ticked. As it is, I'm a little wistful but I would probably make the same business decision. I suppose if I really wanted to supply my house with power from my car, I could go buy a Mirai.

 

[bhzmark]

I think that Tesla have decided that to make roadtrips acceptable in an EV, the downside of the longer refueling time is best offset by the perceived free (but actually prepaid) cost of refueling. By providing that benefit in the car it balances the product defect of the slower refueling time.

I agree that a low friction ability to charge my credit card based, for instance by just sensing my car, would be better to discourage free riding on the subsidy. And perhaps allow the house backup use of the car battery. But their main mission is to promote wider adoption of BEV transport.

 

[AZ Desert Driver]

I'd be glad to. Tesla makes the hardware to connect their PowerWall battery to a home electrical system, for this very same purpose. I haven't studied that in detail because I'm so miffed that they aren't offering a way to do the same thing with the huge battery I already bought from them in my Model S. But presumably it consists of an inverter that converts DC into 60 cycle at some useful voltage, to be switched into one's home the way one would a gasoline powered emergency generator.

I've been waiting for the capability to use a car battery for this ever since I first read about the Tesla Roadster back in 2007 or so. At that time this was very prominent among the advantages of electric cars and large batteries, but it has never materialized. I would really like to sell my 7kW generator and feel that I have options to cover the same thing with my car. When I've brought this up here, others have pointed out that Tesla *most likely* would not do that because I might then drive to my nearest SC (75 km away now but soon to be 50 km) and load up with power to use at my home instead of on the road. That isn't very likely, but the closer the SC, the more tempting it would get.

So, it seems to me that Tesla is blocking us from doing this quite deliberately, with rationales ranging from "we'd rather you bought another battery from us" to "we can't let you use our free juice for that". Bottom line for me: I would cheerfully pay a few bucks for supercharger use if it would allow me to unload my need for a gasoline generator.

hmmm - lets leave the business decisions aside for now and focus on the "what do I need". 1) If one simply plugged in a cable to the charging post - would that cable tap into the stored energy? or would one need to install a new tap location? 2) That cable would see DC voltage (?) which could then feed the inverter mounted on the garage wall (just like a 7 kwh Tesla Powerwall). The powerwall has an inverter now and circuits to feed the house. I would just be increasing the battery size from 7 kw to 90 kw.

[I understand why Tesla would not want to get distracted with this battery use - sell more walls, focus on existing business, theft of community juice. But what if one bought a small powerwall and a cable....could this be done?]