Been awhile since I've used a Supercharger Station and was kind of shocked at how much the prices have gone up, even all over the country. What is fueling this increase? Granted, even if the prices were the same as gas I'd still drive a Tesla because they are just so much fun and safe.
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Supercharger Station Price Increases
- Thread starter Resist
- Start date
I just took a couple road trips and noticed the same thing. 2 years ago, I took my supercharging cost for the trip and compared it to what it would have cost me to make the same trip using gas and I was at the equivalent of 90-95 mpg. The same trip this summer put me at ~47 mpg (and gas is similarly expensive).
Tesla originally said Superchargers were for long distance highway driving primarily and sited them in rural areas. Then they softened up by adding lower power urban chargers for the garage-challenged. Now they are placing the fastset Superchargers everywhere including central cities. If they don’t make the central city Superchargers even more expensive, cheapskate locals who have garages will fill up the sites -- and do so anyway in many cities. And now Elon has added to the clogging issue by again saying Superchargers will soon be open to other cars.
I wish they would cut Supercharging prices in half for rural sites to serve travelers and double the prices for city commuters. In my limited travels with Supercharging it seems that rural sites are a little cheaper than central city sites but certainly not significantly cheaper.
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What I find is the advertised state price is not the same as what is being charged per minute and here around South Texas the prices are a few cents different at locations.
I wish they would tier the prices around 72kw not 60. Anytime you are sharing you are so slow but in the most expensive tier.
The tiers are broken at 60 kW because that's where the price per minute is equal to the price per kWh. So if the rate is $0.30/minute at a location that charges by time connected, then when charging at 60 kW the effective cost on a volumetric basis is also $0.30/kWh. It's not about sizing the tiers in a way that is respective of charging experience or expected charging powers.
I've noticed that many Superchargers on the map say they are 250kWh chargers, yet when you get to them they have signs on them saying they are only 150kWh chargers. What the heck Tesla?!
Since the supercharger knows your car when you plug in, it seems they could implement a tiered strategy where it was more expensive if you were charging within, say, 100 miles of your home address. But perhaps there are legal reasons they couldn't do that, or perhaps there is no way to prove an address.
I understand the need to alleviate congestion, but limiting to 80% charging is frustrating. I was in Knoxville, heading west to Crossville TN and then north. If you look at the supercharger map, that's a whole lot of nothing (though they are putting one in at Crossville). The extra 20% (or even 10%) would have been greatly appreciated. I couldn't make it to Lexington, so had to cut over to London, KY (where the supercharger then malfunctioned part way through charging so I stopped in Lexington as well!).
I suppose you didn't realize that limit is not enforced? It does automatically set it down to 80% to try to "encourage" people to move along quicker, but you can go ahead and move it back up to 100% and charge to full anyway.
I see the logic in the 60kw pricing tier. I'm looking at a realistic event where pulling into most SC around here, it's hard to not be sharing. This starts off your charging session at 70 kW or so sometimes around around 72 kW. So all this time your charging the car at similar speeds to the 60 kW fee you're being charged double.
Another tidbit:
If you find yourself navigating to a supercharger and the battery is being preconditioned, you can always tap on the screen and the preconditioning will stop if you don't want to waist the power.
Is this true?
I always assumed that tapping on the preconditioning message simply minimized the message so it wasn’t taking up valuable real estate on the screen, and that preconditioning would continue unaffected.
I tried searching the owners manual for any mention of this and found nothing.
I would believe there are a few other things not in the manual. I approach this as if think of it, you can do it. You can also swipe any notifications that come up on the screen. You will still see the small icon on the left but the words go away.
Texas Flood
Member
I just repeated a trip I did two months ago, leaving from home in Clear Lake City (Texas) at 100%, stopping at the exact same charger in San Marcos, and charging to the same level (78%). Tesla has changed their pricing model in Texas from $ per minute to $ per kWh. In August, the charge cost $4.29; this weekend it was $10.92. That’s over 150% higher and really knocks down the travel cost advantage over ICE cars. In our hybrid car, the same trip would cost about $12.00.
Yes, it's no longer fun. Often hear about how there's to be no profit but doubling in price is ridiculous. Where about in Clear Lake? I'm near the end of Hickory Knoll usually cleaning one of the Teslas
Any supercharger that had been getting billed by the minute was massively under priced for a long time. No one likes paying more for something they used to get cheap, but the correct way to look at this is that the super deal you once had is no longer available, not that Tesla is raising the price on you. The switch from per minute billing to per kWh billing accounts for the significant majority of the experienced cost increase. Where Tesla has also raised the actual price, i.e. the $/kWh has gone up, you should feel free to legitimately complain about rising prices to that extent.
This is very true. The effective average $/kWh cost at per-minute Superchargers is uniformly lower than even the cheapest per-kWh Supercharger for the vast majority of charging sessions.
I really don’t understand why Tesla doesn’t just charge more per minute at per-minute Superchargers so that there’s more parity between the two types.
Yeah, per-minute superchargers should definitely have had higher prices. Another thing that was needed for getting closer to parity with per-kWh locations would have been to include additional pricing tiers for power levels every 30 kW going above 60 kW as well, i.e. at 90, 120, 150, etc. That would have limited the massive underbilling as superchargers got more powerful and as the cars could charge at power levels over 60kW for more time in a charging session. But having so many price tiers would seem very/overly complex to many.
As more EV's hit the roads, electric rates will go up at charging stations. Then the cost to fill up an EV compared to an ICE will be the same. But you'd still have less maintenance, better torque and cleaner vehicle. Even as more homes get solar, no doubt state electric rates will increase because the power companies don't want to lose money.
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