Should Tesla charge "going rate" for electricity?

[Vern Padgett]

Yeah, this whole comment seems to be unaware that Tesla has already stopped free unlimited Supercharging for life. All of the cars going forward will be paying for it (mostly). They are already rationing that free electricity by only giving a smallish amount per year with no rollover and charging for any use above that.

Sorry yes I did know that. But a lot of discussion here is about abusing existing supercharging stations here in Southern California. So what I was looking for were ideas on how to disincentivise (sp?) freeloaders. Like, maybe, charging the going rate for electricity for that time in that place. Which would be 48c a kW here where we live, weekday afternoons.

 

[Vern Padgett]

I wonder if VernPadgett has some academic exercise up his sleeve with this particular subject.

I am flattered by your comment!
No, I am way past that-- like several decades past that.
I am just honestly wondering how our company could use its resources better than overbuilding SCs to accommodate freeloaders.

 

[Xolt]

Sorry yes I did know that. But a lot of discussion here is about abusing existing supercharging stations here in Southern California. So what I was looking for were ideas on how to disincentivise (sp?) freeloaders. Like, maybe, charging the going rate for electricity for that time in that place. Which would be 48c a kW here where we live, weekday afternoons.

Who does the term "Freeloaders" refer to? Do non Tesla owners some how stealing electric?

 

[Vern Padgett]

That's peak rate though. You might find with 'time of use' meter it's cheaper at night.

Right. We are on the TOU-D-A plan.
We only charge our cars, and our phones, and our Ryobi 40 volt chainsaw and leaf blower lithium-ion batteries, after 10 pm.
I'm going to hook all of them up pretty soon.

 

[Vern Padgett]

I don't think any purchaser of a Tesla should ever be considered a freeloader. Many people may not have convenient access to a suitable place to charge if they live in a condo or townhouse making a supercharger their best option. They may have purchased the car with the idea of only using the supercharging network and after purchasing a Free Supercharging for life car are entitled to what they paid for. The price of that benefit was clearly bundled in the price of the car and paid for with the purchase.

You are right in the legal sense. It was in my contract that I am entitled to "free" power forever with the Model Ss I bought.
But on this site we read dozens or scores or hundreds of posts about "locals" using SCs inappropriately, and about owners parking and charging to 100% while others wait, when they could have charged to 80% and moved on, opening a space for those waiting.
So what are your thoughts about how to effect that-- how to motivate us to move our cars away so that others can receive their charges?

 

[Vern Padgett]

I don't think any purchaser of a Tesla should ever be considered a freeloader. Many people may not have convenient access to a suitable place to charge if they live in a condo or townhouse making a supercharger their best option. They may have purchased the car with the idea of only using the supercharging network and after purchasing a Free Supercharging for life car are entitled to what they paid for. The price of that benefit was clearly bundled in the price of the car and paid for with the purchase.

You are correct.
My daughter will receive the Model 3 I reserved on 31 March of last year. She lives in an apartment and her landlord owns the wiring in the garage, and he's not interested in installing a Nema 14-50, even if I pay for it.
So, I'm talking about my own daughter.
What I'm working toward is how Tesla might reduce SC congestion by charging a fair price for electricity.
How might they do that?
What is fair?

 

[Ulmo]

Simple - whatever fair market value for the car is at the time. Other cars with unlimited supercharging that are for sale will effectively set the price as unlimited supercharging will be included in those cars.

Shouldn't be any separate value, the value of the free supercharging for life is included in the resale value of the of the car.

Keeping the free SuperCharging for life feature with the car in resale makes all of this much much much much much simpler to figure out. I'm really glad Tesla went that way; it totally closed a bunch of cans of worms. They were probably legally bound to do it, but it wouldn't be the first time they tried to wiggle out of something.

So, by the way, when setting price of the car during insurance claims, you have to make certain the insurance carrier knows that your car has the free supercharging feature, which they will probably try to wiggle out of, by intentionally (and lying) "not knowing", and "not understanding".

 

[Vern Padgett]

Who does the term "Freeloaders" refer to? Do non Tesla owners some how stealing electric?

Tough question.
Everyone wants free stuff.
I in particular want free stuff.
But my wanting free stuff gets in the way of you wanting your free stuff.
We arrive at a Tesla supercharging station, at the same time. There are X spaces, and there are Y cars. Everyone feels entitled to infinite hours of "free" electricity. You do. I do. We paid for it, right?
So here's the rub. There is not an infinite number of free spaces for everyone to receive "free" electricity.
Even though we have already paid for it.
So what is fair? Who is to be first for the "free" electricity?
It's a philosophical question. I do not know what the answer is. I am looking to the educated, dedicated, experienced, Tesla owners here, like you, for your thoughts.

I've proposed:

Tesla charges going rate for electricity, if you charge within X miles of your home (like, really close to your home), and they charge you the going rate for charging over 80%, if there are other supercharging stations on all major routes within your 80% range.

The going rate is whatever Tesla pays to the providing utility. Were that here where we live, it would be 48c a kW during peak periods, like, afternoons on weekdays.

These are not punishment rates-- just charge the going rate to recoup for Tesla what we are taking from them.

 

[Xolt]

You are correct.
My daughter will receive the Model 3 I reserved on 31 March of last year. She lives in an apartment and her landlord owns the wiring in the garage, and he's not interested in installing a Nema 14-50, even if I pay for it.
So, I'm talking about my own daughter.
What I'm working toward is how Tesla might reduce SC congestion by charging a fair price for electricity.
How might they do that?
What is fair?

I understand your dilemma but it's a only a problem with the Free for life charging vehicles because as the system expands the percentage of those cars will decline in relation to number of chargers. It would be a massive problem if the model 3 cars were offered with Free charging as that percent wouldn't decrease. The real problem isn't motivating people to give up what they paid for but motivating Tesla to expand what they were paid for.

 

[Vern Padgett]

I understand your dilemma but it's a only a problem with the Free for life charging vehicles because as the system expands the percentage of those cars will decline in relation to number of chargers. It would be a massive problem if the model 3 cars were offered with Free charging as that percent wouldn't decrease. The real problem isn't motivating people to give up what they paid for but motivating Tesla to expand what they were paid for.

Thanks for your thoughts Xolt.
I see your point about the declining share of us Model S owners, given the onslaught of Model 3s coming.
I'm still not seeing how Tesla can encourage me to not abuse my "free" rights to charge whenever I want and as much as I want at any of their superchargers.

 

[Xolt]

Tough question.
Everyone wants free stuff.
I in particular want free stuff.
But my wanting free stuff gets in the way of you wanting your free stuff.
We arrive at a Tesla supercharging station, at the same time. There are X spaces, and there are Y cars. Everyone feels entitled to infinite hours of "free" electricity. You do. I do. We paid for it, right?
So here's the rub. There is not an infinite number of free spaces for everyone to receive "free" electricity.
Even though we have already paid for it.
So what is fair? Who is to be first for the "free" electricity?
It's a philosophical question. I do not know what the answer is. I am looking to the educated, dedicated, experienced, Tesla owners here, like you, for your thoughts.

I've proposed:

Tesla charges going rate for electricity, if you charge within X miles of your home (like, really close to your home), and they charge you the going rate for charging over 80%, if there are other supercharging stations on all major routes within your 80% range.

The going rate is whatever Tesla pays to the providing utility. Were that here where we live, it would be 48c a kW during peak periods, like, afternoons on weekdays.

These are not punishment rates-- just charge the going rate to recoup for Tesla what we are taking from them.

Your reference to people wanting free stuff makes sense but unfortunately the comparison of FFL to utilizing a purchased prepaid benefit doesn't. Free For Life is a prepaid benefit. FFL was a strange concept that they used to incentivize the purchase of vehicles priced much higher than many buyers had ever purchased. Maybe the right answer is the one they have come up with. I imagine Tesla invested careful consideration before coming to the decision to increase the charger numbers and not the number of cars with prepaid charging. It will only be a temporary problem unless they fail to follow through with the promise of the increased network. When we purchased our X I thought that the days of open stalls would be numbered but that made sense, to my surprise the ending of the FFL cars only means things will probably get better.

 

[whttiger25]

Hi Whittiger,
48c a kW is what we pay here in Whittier, California, from morning until 6 pm every weekday.
We are with Southern California Edison.
So if I drive over to Hawthorne between morning and 6 pm on a weekday for "free" electricity, since I'm therefore entitled, having bought a Model S a year ago, is not Tesla spending 48c a kW to give me my entitled "free" electricity?

Hi Vern, I think you should look at potentially other rate plans offered by your utility. First, you wouldn't charge during peak rates, you would charge during the lowest rates overnight. Plus, they may offer a special EV rate as well. Not sure what social edison charges but suspect their offerings aren't too different from PGE. My rate plan has peak rates in summer that high, but they drop into the 14 cent range overnight. Plus, what Tesla pays, even during peak times, is likely very different, and less, than what residential consumers pay.

If you are charging your car directly from your meter I would think you could always do better than 20c in california if you time the charging correctly. I pay 27 cents because I live in a condo and need to pay a third party (Evercharge) to take their cut.

 

[Xolt]

Tesla can see every car at every charger on their system and knows the utilization rate. I would have thought that Tesla should have had the insight to realize that if they sold a product that people would utilized it. The word "abusing" can be looked at in different ways. Another point of view might be rather than thinking that the buyers are abusing the system but rather utilizing what they purchased in good faith. Another point of view might be that Tesla is abusing the purchasers by not investing their resources in the areas where they know the system is stretched. Long wait times are due to under built areas, insufficient numbers of charge stalls didn't just happen over night. Just another way to look at the situation.

 

[cruiserlarry]

@Vern Padgett IMHO, it takes a disconnect from rational thinking to state someone who pays for a feature is a freeloader for using it.

You might have somehow confused a retail purchase contract for some sort of unwritten social contract. I did not purchase my Tesla primarily to further Elon Musk's vision - I purchased it because, to me, it was a vehicle with fantastic styling, incredible performance, state of the art technology, and great economy, as well as the convenience of HOV access and comfort for my 6'7" frame.

I do support Mr. Musk's vision for the future, in the sense that his obsession with populating Mars to save Earth is providing the rest of us with technological knowledge, scientific advances, and game-changing consumer products at a speed only possible when a person with his intellectual virtuosity and financial wizardry chooses to pursue his dreams.

But as a mere mortal, I have worked very hard to earn the money I spent to purchase my Tesla, and I expect Tesla, the corporation, and Mr. Musk, it's CEO, to do whatever is necessary to fulfill all the obligations of the contract they made to me regarding the features my purchase included. If that requires Tesla to allocate additional resources towards the construction of more superchargers to accomplish that task, so be it. Tesla, and more specifically Mr. Musk, have never had any issue securing additional funding for Tesla projects when needed to complete the task, whether financing the incredible cash-burn of the Model 3 intro, the Gigafactory build-out, or initially getting the Model X out the door. So, I don't see an issue IF Tesla decides it's in their best interest to honor their obligations to the soon to be relatively small number of owners with Free Unlimited Lifetime Supercharging. It would be a short-term investment with potentially huge long-term benefits to the survival of Tesla, and by default, Elon's goals for our future.

Of course, if you feel strongly enough that you should be paying for the electricity you (or others) avail themselves of, please feel free to start a go fund me account where you can contribute your money to pay for the additional required infrastructure, and help relieve Tesla of the financial burden to customers they willingly created for themselves. Mr Musk and I will both thank you for it

 

[TexLaw]

I'm still not seeing how Tesla can encourage me to not abuse my "free" rights to charge whenever I want and as much as I want at any of their superchargers.

Well, that's just it. They can't. At least, they can't without breaking their contract with you. That's the thing about "unlimited." There are no limits. Tesla does not get to come back after the fact and put limits on "unlimited" once the customer bought the "unlimited." Likewise, they don't get to start imposing disincentives on use, as such disincentives effectively would serve as limits. To make something of a silly example, it would be like charging a "mug rental fee" for a second refill of a bottomless cup of coffee because they really only want to give me one refill. If Tesla has a problem with what they've done, they just have to work on it going forward.

And, that's exactly what they've done and continue to do. "Unlimited" is over for new vehicles. Tesla is imposing idle fees. Unlike many TMC members, Tesla has dropped the philosophy that supercharging is only for long distance travel, as they realize that expanding the network for local use is really what you need, and they are expanding that network accordingly (there is no way that the current plans are the end of it). Very soon, a great many more Tesla drivers will be paying for their supercharging.

As far as Tesla furthering its mission, expanding supercharging to meet demand is completely consistent with it's stated mission "to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy."

 

[brkaus]

Thanks for your thoughts Xolt.
I see your point about the declining share of us Model S owners, given the onslaught of Model 3s coming.
I'm still not seeing how Tesla can encourage me to not abuse my "free" rights to charge whenever I want and as much as I want at any of their superchargers.

Tesla has decided to take the high road here, at least for now. Early adopters have free for life charging promised and Tesla is attempting to deliver. Given this is the direction they are going and honoring the commitment, there is little they can do to encourage.

Yes, it may be tight. But numbers will eventually win as more new cars hit the market and the effect of the free for life cars is diluted.

They have adjusted going forward with the 400kWh free. Their pricing is on par with home charging. Even if it was just a little less, I personally would opt for home due to convenience.

They could have created "citi-chargers" that are not called superchargers and excluded free for life cars.

As far as I'm concerned, it's solved with the 400kWh policy.

I do see the next argument being around what is "for life". For the life of what? The VIN? The battery/powertrain? We are probably a few years from that.

And yes, charging locals was an option likely on the table. But, as I said, Tesla has gone a different direction and I don't see that being revisited.

 

[ddimit]

You cant compare rates that you pay as home owners as those paid by commercial entities which are higher due the the fact the they require 3 phase 480 volt service. This also does not include "Demand" charges that Tesla is most likely paying for higher than avg power consumption. That peak 120KW per pair spread across a supercharger site quickly dwarfs what a normal commercial building draws.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

You cant compare rates that you pay as home owners as those paid by commercial entities which are higher due the the fact the they require 3 phase 480 volt service. This also does not include "Demand" charges that Tesla is most likely paying for higher than avg power consumption. That peak 120KW per pair spread across a supercharger site quickly dwarfs what a normal commercial building draws.

The 3 phase wouldn't really make much difference. High power users would be expected to be 3-phase.

The rates paid by commercial entities are not necessarily higher, they may just be _different_. They pay demand charges, but less per kWh, so the overall cost per kWh decrease with increased use.

For example, in the area in which I live, if a company peaks at 500kW and uses 12h x 500kW per day, it would work out to an average monthly delivery price of $0.05067/kWh July/August and $0.04826/kWh the rest of the year.

Small general service (limit 20kW) is $0.059564/kWh.

Corollary: Tesla is OK with Superchargers being busy.
Corollary: up front fee or subscription plus per-kWh pricing is the most logical payment system
Corollary: if you want PAYG for charging, don't complain about high prices.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Well, that's just it. They can't. At least, they can't without breaking their contract with you. That's the thing about "unlimited." There are no limits. Tesla does not get to come back after the fact and put limits on "unlimited" once the customer bought the "unlimited." Likewise, they don't get to start imposing disincentives on use, as such disincentives effectively would serve as limits. To make something of a silly example, it would be like charging a "mug rental fee" for a second refill of a bottomless cup of coffee because they really only want to give me one refill. If Tesla has a problem with what they've done, they just have to work on it going forward.

And, that's exactly what they've done and continue to do. "Unlimited" is over for new vehicles. Tesla is imposing idle fees. Unlike many TMC members, Tesla has dropped the philosophy that supercharging is only for long distance travel, as they realize that expanding the network for local use is really what you need, and they are expanding that network accordingly (there is no way that the current plans are the end of it). Very soon, a great many more Tesla drivers will be paying for their supercharging.

As far as Tesla furthering its mission, expanding supercharging to meet demand is completely consistent with it's stated mission "to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy."

I keep seeing this bit about a "contract" for unlimited supercharging. There's no contract for unlimited supercharging. You can look through all the paperwork, Tesla has never signed a service contract with anyone to provide unlimited charging on the supercharger network. So legally they are free to set whatever limitations they want on local supercharging.

But in terms of PR and consumer relations, Tesla just decided to grandfather those people and not deal with coming up with a complicated scheme to deal with local charging (which from the reaction to their local charging letter a while back would not be taken well by the customers). Eventually those cars will be removed from the fleet and become history (the CPO program accelerates that conversion).

I don't see Tesla going back and changing this policy as the OP suggests. I think it makes sense to move on.

 

[Vern Padgett]

Well, that's just it. They can't. At least, they can't without breaking their contract with you. That's the thing about "unlimited." There are no limits. Tesla does not get to come back after the fact and put limits on "unlimited" once the customer bought the "unlimited." Likewise, they don't get to start imposing disincentives on use, as such disincentives effectively would serve as limits. To make something of a silly example, it would be like charging a "mug rental fee" for a second refill of a bottomless cup of coffee because they really only want to give me one refill. If Tesla has a problem with what they've done, they just have to work on it going forward.

And, that's exactly what they've done and continue to do. "Unlimited" is over for new vehicles. Tesla is imposing idle fees. Unlike many TMC members, Tesla has dropped the philosophy that supercharging is only for long distance travel, as they realize that expanding the network for local use is really what you need, and they are expanding that network accordingly (there is no way that the current plans are the end of it). Very soon, a great many more Tesla drivers will be paying for their supercharging.

As far as Tesla furthering its mission, expanding supercharging to meet demand is completely consistent with it's stated mission "to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy."

Thank you Tex Law.
Very well stated.
Vern