^This is why free unlimited Supercharging went away
^
No... if you can charge at home but charge at a SC instead... you're a 'freeloader'.
DISLIKE. The decision to use a SC should not be judged or second-guessed. I am 100% supportive of idle fees, but I can not endorse shaming people for using a feature of the car that they purchased. During pre-sale reservations and throughout the early sales period, the Model S was consistently sold with a "Free, Forever" promise for supercharging.
The specter of local chargers blocking access to people on road trips was raised immediately during the early years. It was addressed adequately with logic by Elon and Tesla. They consistently pointed out that charging at home is cheap & convenient, so most people will chose that method most of the time. They also consistently pointed out that the scalability of the SC network would accommodate rational decision-making on where people chose to charge.
IMO, where a SC is equally convenient or more convenient to home charging, it should be utilized. Free & Convenient > Cheap & Convenient.
If I am at a restaurant adjacent to a SC, it makes sense to plug in. If I know that I will be at that SC every Wednesday for a lunch meeting, it might make sense to show up with a near-empty battery every Wednesday.
Sometimes charging at home is not perfectly convenient. For example, we have three electric vehicles that share one 240v NEMA 14-50 along with standard 110V 15A circuits. Swapping out plugs and slightly inconvenient plug placement for secondary plugs can create a feeling of inconvenience. Where there is a convenient SC at a place I'll be anyway, it makes since to utilize it under the "Free, Forever" terms that were sold with the car.
The point is to trust the rational decision-maker to do what is right for them and then adjust accordingly.
The calculus done by the rational decision-maker is obviously more complicated than "Free & Convenient>Cheap & Convenient." "Convenience" is a range that falls on a circumstantial curve, and "Cheap" is a discreet set of values measured on a relative basis. It is the individual nature of this calculus that is why we should trust the decision-maker without judgment. I'm very curious to see how these decisions change over time as used Model S/X prices fall.
