I've been playing around with trying to work out a valuation for the Supercharger network, now and in the future.
When trying to compare it to a major oil company's retail fuel station network (I am comparing with Shell) an issue I have hit is what is the actual capacity utilisation of the Tesla network, as opposed to the theoretical capacity utilisation.
Can anyone point me to any online references as to what fraction of the time a typical Supercharger connector is in use, versus not in use ? Alternatively can anyone give me their own estimate based on their own observations ?
regards, dspp
(you can find some of the calcs we were playing around with at
Musk endeavours - Page 242 - The Lemon Fool if that is helpful)
(I am more interested in Supercharger utilisation than Destination charger utilisation)
REPASTING that TLF post
As much as anything here are some notes for myself using Shell as the comparator. All the numbers are on a global basis.
Shell data
Oil sales and retail sites - Shell Investors’ Handbook 2015-2019
Divestments; Downstream CCS earnings and ROACE [A] ; Downstream cash capital expenditure; In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, we completed
reports.shell.com
Shell has (2019) 44,669 branded retail sites worldwide
Shell sells (2019) 2,207 thousand barrels/day of gasoline worldwide and 1,907 kbp pf diesel oil. Add in the kerosene and fuel oils etc and it is 6,561 k bpd.
(to put that in perspective Shell produced 2,743 thousand barrels/day, i.e. Shell downstream buys crude oil fro non-Shell companies to make up the shortfall)
So 4,114 kbpd of vehicle fuel from 44,669 sites, so 92 barrels per day per site. So 14,626 litres vehicle fuels per site per day.
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Tesla has (Q2 2020) 2,035 Supercharger stations with 18,100 connectors. There are slightly more destination charger connectors out there but things are a little murkier with those.
So Tesla will have to grow the number of Supercharger stations by a factor of 20 if it were to have as many as Shell has retail sites.
However reports from users suggest that approximately 95% of Tesla charging takes place at home, or perhaps at work, so one could argue that the existing 2,000 Tesla sites already is equivalent to the 40,000 Shell sites in terms of enabling vehicle usage as a network.
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Thinking about it from a vehicle-miles perspective and site capacity perspectives:
- Let's say that the average Shell customer vehicle puts in 50-litres. So 14,626 / 50 = 292 vehicles per site per day. And if each vehicle is 40 miles per gallon (UK) then that is 8.8 miles/litre. So each Shell retail site enables 1,662 miles per day of vehicle use. Let's say that site use is trivial between 10pm and 6am, so it is in use for only 16 hours/day. So during the usable day a site 'fills' an average of 16h/292v = 0.05h/v = 3.3 minutes per vehicle per site.
- The average Tesla site has 18,100/2035 = 8.8 connectors per site. Let's say that the typical Tesla is a model 3 then per
https://www.drivingelectric.com/tesla/m ... 12%20hours. we get "Find one of those Tesla-only Superchargers in a Model 3 Long Range and you can charge from 10% to 80% in a little over 20 minutes,". Let's assume 25-minutes. That means that the site is doing one Tesla every 25/8.8 = 2.8 minutes per vehicle per site.
Now we need two put those two numbers together :
- Shell site = 3.3 minutes per vehicle
- Tesla site = 2.8 minutes per vehicle
and then into an apples-apples basis since the Shell site is fuelling them up to do 50-litres at 8.8 miles/litre = 440 miles, whereas the Tesla 3 is being charged from 10% to 80%. The (
Model 3 | Tesla) Tesla 3 has a 348 mile range, so let's be pretty crude and say that 70% of that is being recharged, so = 243 miles. That gives us:
- Shell site = 3.3 minutes per vehicle per 440-miles of travel
- Tesla site = 2.8 minutes per vehicle per 243 miles = 5.1 minutes per vehicle per 440 miles of travel
So from a site perspective these really are comparable. I'd say the average Tesla site will need to grow to become 16 connectors/site in order to process vehicles as fast as a typical Shell site, provided there are no further technology advances in that respect.
The growth in Tesla sites is at quite a rate - it was 1,587 in Q2 2019 and became 2,035 in Q2 2020. That's 448 sites per year, or 28% yoy growth rate. At that growth rate it will be 24,025 sites in 2030, i.e. 10x growth. So not the 20x to get to be the same as the Shell footprint, but if the 95% home charging is a reliable prognostic (and I think it is not) then that would be enough to charge all the world's vehicles. In reality I am expecting charging locations to be a much more complex mix but directionally it gives a good insight.
From a contention ratio perspective it is currently 56 vehicles/connector. That has slipped from the mid 30s, so they will need to increase the roll-out rate a little bit in order to keep the contention ratio in the right place as the installed base increases.
About 25% of oil goes into transport (
Transport Uses 25 Percent of World Energy) . At this rate one can make a plausible argument that Tesla is going to become 'worth' a fair chunk of the valuation of a fairly large oil company as well as that of a vehicle manufacturer at some point in the next decade. And of course this is a network that is currently only available to Tesla owners, now that is what I call marketing advantage. Real marketing, not advertising.
Shell mkt cap = $120 bn
Tesla mkt cap = $375 bn
