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Supercharger Price Increase
- Thread starter seattlite2004
- Start date
insaneoctane
Well-Known Member
I'm all for Tesla minimizing their losses on running SC. I love the SC network and think it is one of Tesla's most compelling threads when selecting EVs. That said....
I sure hope Tesla doesn't F*# the SC thing up. Tesla really needs a real communications director that will stop them from doing stupid sh!t like this. In some places they went up 100% on SC. Others, like mine (California), they went up 30%. You have to be more sensitive to how this goes over, particularly when you are trying to win the WORLD over to your side of thinking that EV is the future that everyone ought to be on. Last time I checked, EV sales where still about 1% of auto sales. Do you really want people worried that someone might change the cost of their "fuel" by 30% or 100% overnight? And somehow the statement that "it's still cheaper than gas in most cases" is supposed it help? Look, if gasoline cost me $3.00 per gallon on Sunday and $6.00 per gallon on Monday, you better believe I'd be PISSED OFF. So, why does Tesla do this to themselves? Ironically, whether the price of a kWh is $0.12 or $0.25, how long does it take for a SC to pay itself off or break even? I really don't even know how you'd calculate that since their existence has huge value to Telsa's sales. Even if they charged $1.00/kWh how long to get an ROI for Tesla? My point is, Telsa should be more strategic with these decisions and have a someone talented enough to recognize the need to message this correctly. Maybe you have to raise it $0.05 every six months until you've got it were it needs to be, but 100% overnight? Self-inflicted stupidity.
Again, I don't plan to use SC myself, except when I have to (ie long trips). Especially now,because I'll spend a MAXIMUM of $0.13 per kWh at home (past 10pm with TOU). So, to spend $0.26/kWh in California for me is double what I pay at home. Not interested. @Sonny Daze showed an excellent example that the price of SC isn't even necessarily cheaper than gas at these new levels. Tesla, if you're listening, I'm NOT impressed.
I sure hope Tesla doesn't F*# the SC thing up. Tesla really needs a real communications director that will stop them from doing stupid sh!t like this. In some places they went up 100% on SC. Others, like mine (California), they went up 30%. You have to be more sensitive to how this goes over, particularly when you are trying to win the WORLD over to your side of thinking that EV is the future that everyone ought to be on. Last time I checked, EV sales where still about 1% of auto sales. Do you really want people worried that someone might change the cost of their "fuel" by 30% or 100% overnight? And somehow the statement that "it's still cheaper than gas in most cases" is supposed it help? Look, if gasoline cost me $3.00 per gallon on Sunday and $6.00 per gallon on Monday, you better believe I'd be PISSED OFF. So, why does Tesla do this to themselves? Ironically, whether the price of a kWh is $0.12 or $0.25, how long does it take for a SC to pay itself off or break even? I really don't even know how you'd calculate that since their existence has huge value to Telsa's sales. Even if they charged $1.00/kWh how long to get an ROI for Tesla? My point is, Telsa should be more strategic with these decisions and have a someone talented enough to recognize the need to message this correctly. Maybe you have to raise it $0.05 every six months until you've got it were it needs to be, but 100% overnight? Self-inflicted stupidity.
Again, I don't plan to use SC myself, except when I have to (ie long trips). Especially now,because I'll spend a MAXIMUM of $0.13 per kWh at home (past 10pm with TOU). So, to spend $0.26/kWh in California for me is double what I pay at home. Not interested. @Sonny Daze showed an excellent example that the price of SC isn't even necessarily cheaper than gas at these new levels. Tesla, if you're listening, I'm NOT impressed.
Nonprofit entities also do not have a profit motive, by design, of course. But that doesn’t mean the most successful nonprofits aren’t way in the black.
Tesla Service is also not a profit center but like Superchargers they better still be shooting for large “profits.” Tesla is simply promising any “profits” won’t go into shareholder pockets, not that they won’t generate considerable “profits.”
Would SErvice Center charges and Supercharger rates be even higher if they were profit centers? That, of course, is the question. I do know I’d hate to be out of warranty and paying for Service Center work. They are very expensive and that’s all my pocket cares about. Hopefully private mechanics complete with their profit centers will be an option soon. They’ll likely still be cheaper, even with a profit motive.
It's sickening the amount of ignorance parroted by those who compare residential electrical delivery to their own home vs to a commercial environment, it's permitting, raw material and labor, physical real estate, and demand charges (that commercial entities are subjected to have availability to KW thresholds) that it requires.
It's not just electricity but people seem unable to compare:
-Residential vs Commercial Internet vs Colocation
-Consumer hard drives vs Enterprise hard drives
-Folgers at home vs Starbucks
-Etc etc.
I agree with you that Tesla is just stemming losses not even hoping to reach breaking even but clowns think Tesla going to double their EPS from ripping off SC users.
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One of our electric bills was $9,029.41 for 113,600 kwh. $1388.12 was taxes, $7,641.29 was for energy charges, of that, the demand charge was $1671.32 which registered at 254kW. That single KW usage is what was applied to the entire bill for the location.
There are 10(5) superchargers at the local on so if all were being used that'd come out to 600KW. I'd love to see the electric bill at kettleman.
There are 10(5) superchargers at the local on so if all were being used that'd come out to 600KW. I'd love to see the electric bill at kettleman.
Edited, yes I forgot to include that obvious data point.
Yeah, I regularly pull 600KW from my garage and my utility doesn't care and charges me normal tiering rates.
Tesla might be at 50,000 cars sold right now if inheritance, old money, and gifted funds were prohibited towards their purchase. Lack of understanding cost structures is inane.
No one buys a Tesla to """""save"""" on gas money. (I'm pretty sure this concept would go over a lot of peoples heads here).
For most people whether the cost to SC is free, indexes below or above gasoline, residential rates, etc is going to be a small fraction of TCO.
Unless you run a Taxi, tow boats up and down the coast and make tons of cross country trips, free supercharging isn't worth bunch for a normal use case scenario. I drive the X every single day and plugged in a dozen times in a year if that. The OPTION to supercharge allows 1 vehicle ownership with Tesla. The actual day to day usage is NOT.
Tesla didn't know better at the time but they should have never offered unlimited always free SC. SC credits would be covered the use cases of most non abusers. To be extra generous, they could have had rolling SC credits. Wish they could implement that now.
The top end bursting rate capability is far far far higher at a SC than at a restaurant.
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ℬête Noire
Active Member
It's pretty easy to calculate though, given the number of charging stalls. For traditional SC divide by two (because A & B 'share') multiply by 135kW (the new standard Tesla has been quietly rolling out) and then multiply again by 1.1 (a pessimistic but easy to calculate 10% fudge factor to account for AC-->DC losses).
So an 8 stall Supercharger could theoretically peak at 4 * 135kW * 1.1 = 594kW. A 10 stall SC has about 742kW theoretical peak.
It is possible that Tesla has set a station-wide limiting as well that'll cap it somewhere below that? But that would definitely make for a Bad Day for people trying to charge on the busiest peak days (long weekends).
40 Stall chargers are popping up more frequently.
Yes you are right its not hard to calculate maximum draw (which Semi is going to blow this through the roof if they share locations which they should). Point is a restaurant, even one that mines bitcoin will not require bursting to 742KW.
Here is a rate schedule for PGE with high demand. The demand charges for the meter in addition to the electricity charges can easily exceed $20,000 per month. Do the Math!!
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-20.pdf
https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-20.pdf
NO. It's easier to shove my head in the sand and moan about Musk and Tesla lying to me than understanding why things work the way they do. We can use "Do the math" to any argument about $35,000 ASP Model 3 as well as why Tesla isn't making them in lieu of $54,000 ASP SKUS.
ℬête Noire
Active Member
Yeah those big 40 stall ones will peak near 3MW (!), and my understanding is that those do run full at times. If I'm correctly reading the PG&E pdf Lloyd is linking, in summer that could run towards $60K/month before per kWh charges or taxes. I don't know trying to offset with a PowerPack install would help them much on that, if there's a enough ebb and flow or if they just stay really close to peak for hours at a time?
A PowerPack solution may be able to help more with the Semi Megachargers, since the granularity is different there. Especially the Megachargers where they build out solar.
No, those were the good old days, where they made unsustainable promises but almost delivered on them to make sales (almost because of how difficult it is now to get the super out of a supercharging). We're now well into undeliverable promises.
1) please use the numbers for a BMW 3 series or Audi A4 for a realistic comparison.
2) I have a crying baby on my shoulder so please do the math for me, how do the numbers you highlighted compare when actually calculated out for cost? To me, it looks like the Tesla still gets way better fuel mileage?
Actually, just re-read and figured out what you meant. Gas in Seattle metro is $2.95 a gallon (for regular) so $5.61 in the Prius. $6.50 for supercharging in this state. Interesting. Really though, people should be charging at home for .11 per kWh (roughly half the cost of gas for the Prius- again compare it to the the bmw or Audi and we know it will look better).
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
You can't just post that without an explanation. How??? hahaYeah, I regularly pull 600KW from my garage and my utility doesn't care and charges me normal tiering rates.
ℬête Noire
Active Member
I was going to suggest that him throwing in a bicycle there instead could make for an interesting comparison.
A Camry hybrid would be a somewhat reasonable comparison. It's not in the same performance class, clearly, but it's at least similar sized. The 2017 is about 40mpg and change highway, so it'd be roughly a push with the M3 in $/mile using SC rates (maybe the M3 comes out on top). The 2018 Camry Hybrid is supposed to have a bump up in mpg, I don't know how that pans out in practice?
EDIT: Ok, I'm not going to be lazy. I'll do the math.....
42mpg= 2.38ga/mi
Using AAA's gas price for regular in VA $2.33/ga that's $5.55.
Using the lowballed EPA number of 26kWh/100mi for the Model 3 and $0.21kWh for VA SC = $5.46
Yup, Model 3 is slightly better there...and frankly a push. I dug around and it looks like practical highway use for the 2018 Camry Hybrid is about 44mpg. That works out to $5.30 for 100mi at the above fuel price, so a swing to the other side. Again, functionally a push. EDIT2: Especially when you use the "real" number for M3 with 18" wheels, 24kWh/100mi.
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ℬête Noire
Active Member
My guess:
P.S. My more boring guess is that he slipped a decimal place, meant 60KW?
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I knew I was getting into a no win situation. If I had used an A4 someone would have wanted to use a Prius. Someone will probably claim the EPA numbers understate the Model 3 efficiency and someone will claim they could always find cheaper gas, and on and on. Definitely cheaper charging at home but I didn't even think of the road trip scenario until you mentioned it.
ℬête Noire
Active Member
But dude, a Prius???I knew I was getting into a no win situation. If I had used an A4 someone would have wanted to use a Prius. Someone will probably claim the EPA numbers understate the Model 3 efficiency and someone will claim they could always find cheaper gas, and on and on. Definitely cheaper charging at home but I didn't even think of the road trip scenario until you mentioned it.
P.S. It was some years back but I have test driven one. I can best sum up the experience by drawing on my family farm background, it was so very much like I'd imagine driving a miniature grain truck would be.
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