Does Tesla report supercharger income on SEC reports? I was referring to Tesla source of increasing revenue with the large number of TM3 without free supercharging.
I have asked the power company what rate Tesla is at and to see a copy of their bill but they have not responded. It is a public utility so I believe a FOI request should be able to get that info. I'm using a published PUD industrial rate. Larger use than this rate will get lower kwh charges.
Industrial rate for power is $0.077/kwh. (Home rate is $0.0816) The demand charge is $6.77 per kW for Secondary Point-of-Delivery. Let's do maths! Assuming 12 stalls = 6 power supplies at 150 kwh = 900 kwh peak load = $6,093. Assume 25% usage (seems high, many nighttime hours empty) = 225 kwh average use X 24 hours/day X 30 days/month= 162,000 kwh/month X $0.077/kwh = $12,474 usage rate.
$12,474 usage rate + $6,093 demand charge = $18,567 monthly total. That makes the average kwh cost $0.115/kwh. The $0.28/kwh is around 2.5 times their cost. As average use increases, the demand charge gets to be a smaller percentage and the cost/kwh drops.
I did not include power loss in the transformers and AC/DC conversion. Make a wild guess that 200kwh in = 150kwh out and you get $0.0153/kwh.
I would imaging kwh and especially demand rates are crazy high in California etc. where huge AC peaks strain the supply. Tesla is not charging California a rate representative of their cost. There used to be rates from $0.32 to $0.015 but now Tesla's website says $0.28 which is subsidizing Ca and overcharging Wa and other low power rate states. Chevron does not have a fixed price across the US.
Obviously, comment if you find a glaring mistake in my maths.
I think the math mainly holds up... but I still don’t think it paints a wonderful picture for Tesla when it comes to a revenue stream.
I’m assuming Tesla is considered a “Large General Service” based on my utility.
[To all nonresidential uses supplied through a single meter, where anticipated monthly maximum demand is greater than 300 kilowatts, but less than or equal to 1,000 kilowatts, and the load is not eligible under other rate schedules.]
Not factoring in any loss, a 8 stall V2 site could see a demand of approx 600kW. (Each stall shares a max of 150kW, assuming all stalls are occupied at the exact same time with new cars with low enough SOC you would expect 75kW from each stall.)
Rates:
Multiphase Service $2.01/day
Energy Charge $0.0428/kWh
Demand Charge $5.58/kW
The cost for just the daily service and the demand charge would be approx ($5.58*600) + ($2.01*30.4) = $3,409. Tesla needs to earn at least that much to break even on the utility hookup and demand.
Tesla charges $0.28/kWh and in this area would be paying $0.0428/kWh. That means Tesla MAKES $0.2372/kWh. For Tesla to cover the above charges they need to deliver (to PAYING cars) 14,372kWh, or approx 192 Model 3 Long Range (75kWh). Now realistically people aren’t charging from 0 to 100%, I would say best case would be 10% to 80%, meaning on a 75kWh battery they are only pulling 52.5kWh. That now means you need 274 cars to drop by. That doesn’t count all the Model S and X that are actually costing Tesla money, possibly ~$3/car (using 70% charge on a 100kWh battery). That also isn’t factoring in any free charging from referral miles.
Let’s say 10% of cars are 100kWh S and X with free supercharging and they cost Tesla approx $3 each.
Let’s say 30% of cars are Model 3 with free referral miles and they are 75kWh LR that cost Tesla $2.25 each.
You would need a little over 500 cars to break even. [50 Model S/X would add $150 and 150 Model 3 with referral miles would add $337. Tesla would have to cover $3,897]
300 Model 3’s paying for 52.5kWh would generate $3,736. I think the actual number is like 512 cars would have to stop with that rationale. That’s approximately 17 cars a day.
This also doesn’t factor in original construction costs (I assume in the $100,000+ range), ongoing maintenance cost, data services, and capital for expansion [these sites have a finite capacity to them])
There are ~18,000 Tesla’s in Washington state. Let’s assume on average 30% of owners need to use a supercharger every week and let’s say they visit twice (I actually think this is a really high number). That means 10,800 charging events by native Tesla’s are happening every week. I think there are about 19 superchargers in Washington, some larger than 8 stall V2, some smaller. This would mean ~2,460 cars average at every supercharger each month. (Washington native cars, who knows how many that are visiting the state)
The possible error on the number of cars that visit a supercharger could be huge. Some could have a daily drive that requires a supercharger visit and others might only visit 10 times or less a year. I figure the majority charge at home though. I also woefully underestimated the number of S/X owners in Washington state. It’s more like 44% of the Tesla’s in the state are S/X that probably have free supercharging.
All and all it’s best guesses off some basic data on published utility rate and Tesla registration data for WA.... but I would guess Tesla is being honest when they say they don’t “make money” off charging. It’s paying for the free charging S/X have, it’s paying for referral miles Model 3 has, and it’s paying for upkeep and expansion of the network. (This also doesn’t factor in the destination chargers cost, there are hundreds if not thousands of them in WA and I believe Tesla supplies the hardware for free [~$500 retail cost a unit] so who knows how much that costs them...)
I know Tesla shows the occupy status of supercharger on the in-car nav... but is there anyway to access that API from the web? If so, it might be possible for someone (smarter than me) to write a script to poll all the WA superchargers every 5 minutes or something for a week, or for a month or something. Than we could know how often a supercharger stall was in use. We could take an informal, but hopefully representative poll here at TMC to figure out at what SOC most people plug in and than depart at. This would improve the accuracy on kWh delivered per car. Then we could poll what percentage is free charging vs paid. Combine all that data and we should have a fairly accurate picture of supercharger usage for the state. We know all the locations and could easily look up rates to calculate the fixed minimum costs (demand and daily connectivity charge) and then use our polled data from TMC for usage costs/revenue.
