It always surprises me at how much people expect things to be free these days. Downtown San Diego parking spaces are NOT cheap. This is being built in a car park, so there is no “extra” revenue that is going to accrue to the car park owner. This is probably the best that Tesla could do without paying a huge amount of rent per stall. And it has the bonus effect of ensuring that only people that need the charge will use it. Otherwise, it’d be San Juan Capistrano all over again with locals hanging out in their cars all the time.
*probably* the best Tesla could do, yes. The Southwest Region buildout has been one of the worst in the country and you can't blame the cost of real estate for all of it. Not even most of it.
To wit, San Juan Capistrano was exacerbated first and foremost by Tesla having only one SC in the most owner-dense county on the continent for YEARS. The bottleneck is still not adequately addressed, and won't be until North (San Diego) County and addtional OC SCs are brought online.
And Superchargers are really, really expensive. Comparing them to a Wifi hotspot is ridiculous. They are at least 100 times as expensive!
Gosh - good thing those SCs are subsidized by $75K - $175K car sales and, up until recently, ZEV credits for the ENTIRE cost.
Oh, and the Dieselgate money due California *alone* dwarfs Tesla's global SC network cost, btw. At $250K/SC, $800M buys 2400 SCs. Tesla has only 500-ish on the entire continent. While not penny one of Dieselgate proceeds will go toward an SC, all of it will go toward charging and maintenance and that's a boatload of L2 and L3 chargers. So, again, the point is that ALL Model 3s will pay for charging - they will charge where it is cheapest and not necessarily where it is fastest. Parking fees will reduce demand, sure - but it's a limited end game, and Tesla knows this.
I am personally glad that Tesla is continuing to take Supercharger build outs seriously. It would have been so easy for them to slow down construction and let the sites get overcrowded.
Not so easy or even remotely good business sense at all, actually. It would be foolish to fritter away their highest and best competitive advantage after working for years to establish it - that being their global infrastructure and almost insurmountable lead therewith - for at least a few more years if not *much* longer.
The urban infill is the next logical step, especially given how far behind municipal buildouts and MDU retrofits are. Can't put a Kettleman in the Marina District. Although a floating SC plaza somewhere? Hey, it could happen. Probably in Dubai before San Diego Bay, but still.
