Superchargers in Iceland

[KarenRei]

Hurray, it's a start. I agree that Reykjavik is the last place in Iceland that needs a SC. Are the 50kw DCFCs strewn around the ring road truly unreliable? I see no bad reports on PlugShare (though not everyone checks in on PlugShare). @KarenRei you once whimsically mentioned on some other forum the idea of starting a business to rent Model 3s; do you know if any of the car rental companies in Iceland plan to have Teslas? (My wife would love to rent the Cybertruck for a trip around Iceland )

I've heard some rumblings about rental companies. As for reliability, this comes from our local FB EV group. I don't know if any of them use Plugshare.

 

[KarenRei]

This is a temporary supercharger pallet, however I suspect that it might be a fairly permanent installation. With such a small population, it's hard to justify the construction of a full supercharger. I suspect shipping one of these and hooking it up is much cheaper than constructing a full supercharger. I also suspect the primary purpose is for use of the service center, but since there are currently so few Teslas in the country, the demand for the supercharger should be low enough that they would happily allow owners to drive up and use it as well.

It should be noted that Puerto Rico just got a 2-stall temporary supercharger pallet as well. It's possible that this is a new strategy to get basic supercharger coverage in far-flung places with low Tesla population. There has been some precedent for this in the US. The original supercharger in Wausau, WI and one other in the Chicago area were 2-stall temporary pallet superchargers. Eventually they built larger permanent superchargers elsewhere in the same city and then decommissioned the pallet superchargers.

If they were to build out the network in Iceland, I would guess they would put about 8 superchargers total on the ring road around the country and at least at first, they would probably be something like this 2-stall temporary variety. Of course there are places that are not on the ring road, but I would suspect they would expect you to find destination chargers for those trips. Possibly way down the line, they might need to build up to full superchargers with more stalls, but they would need to have a huge market share in such a small country to justify the expense, something like 5-10% of all cars would have to be Teslas.

Local owners have extensively gamed out Supercharger locations (Tesla even invited our assistance! ) The Ring realistically should have 7-ish Superchargers, not counting Reykjavík (the as-noted lowest priority). But then there's a lot of places off the Ring. You don't really need one in Reykjanes (the airport peninsula - it needs destination charging), but Snæfellsnes def. needs at least one, and Vestfirðir needs at least 3, for example. The south has a lot of "inland" area, including the heavily trafficked Golden Circle; you definitely need one at either Geysir or Gullfoss. And on and on. Really, a "full network" would involve something like two dozen stations. But obviously we have no delusions that we'll see that any time soon!

We don't need a lot of chargers per stations. What we need is geographic coverage - many small stations. We're roughly tied with Australia for being the second least densely populated country in the world (Australia slightly beats is out, although Mongolia clobbers us both ). And while our low speed limit reduces energy consumption, our winter storms definitely don't! Neither does our terrain. People like to tow here, too.

The only place I'd expect to see more than 4 stalls would be 1 station near the middle of Reykjavík for apartment dwellers (that's a problem here, the city has really lagged with public charging access relative to public interest and our ambitious goals... because they've been obsessed with trying to force everyone to walk, bike, or take the bus, but nobody wants to). The current location doesn't work for that - too remote from everything and nothing to do. Higher-traffic parts of the Ring Road (e.g. generally those closer to Reykjavík) would probably be best served with 4-stall stations for now. All other locations (incl. the far side of the Ring Road), two stalls should be just fine for now.

 

[AudubonB]

Serious Q:
Are you familiar with vehicle rental possibilities at the ferry terminal in the east? Looking it up, it's.....Seydisfjordur. Whether or not that's correct, can you suggest the viability of a Tesla rental fleet there rather than in Rjkvk?

We're trying to coordinate a trip from the Faeroes......

 

[ccdisce]

Or you could’ve done this: @MarcoRP , plain and simple

Supercharge Info has been updated.


As a side-note, the country of Iceland doesn’t appear on the countries list for Supercharge Info, (while Uzbekistan is on that list for whatever reason) so I have put the location as being in Ireland. I know, that’s not where it’s located, but think about it, The names are only 1 letter apart!

Denmark is more politically correct, if Karen approves.

 

[KarenRei]

Serious Q:
Are you familiar with vehicle rental possibilities at the ferry terminal in the east? Looking it up, it's.....Seydisfjordur. Whether or not that's correct, can you suggest the viability of a Tesla rental fleet there rather than in Rjkvk?

We're trying to coordinate a trip from the Faeroes......

Sorry, I don't live anywhere near there.

Denmark is more politically correct, if Karen approves.

Ugh, no, I don't want to give them any notion that we're still under their thumb.

 

[Chuq]

Denmark is more politically correct, if Karen approves.

It's OK, Blueshift has added the country to the list of options

 

[AudubonB]

As of morning, 28 December, supercharge.info has this as OPEN!, although it is not yet showing up on tesla.com

 

[KarenRei]

It opened on Monday. Lots of photos of people charging on the Icelandic Tesla Facebook group. Definitely not V3; people still haven't shown close to 145kW yet (though most were charging at high SoCs, and it's a smattering of mostly older cars because new deliveries haven't started yet)

 

[PLUS EV]

As of morning, 28 December, supercharge.info has this as OPEN!, although it is not yet showing up on tesla.com

If it's primarily intended for service center use, it may never show up in the Nav or on the website.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

2544 *without Tesla*, and with plenty of people waiting on Tesla. Tesla reservations have been going gangbusters here (overwhelmingly LR AWD - also, we reportedly have the highest per-capita rate of Cybertruck reservations on Earth).

Cheap electricity isn't the big incentive, nor the fact that we're right near the top of the list on most expensive gasoline, nor the fact that we have clean power and an environmentally-conscious populace, or that we're pretty high on the list of per-capita incomes, alongside relatively low income inequality. It's that we have Norway style incentives, and even more things on the horizon (such as potential congestion charges with EV exemptions).

The "existing network of CCS chargers" is awful. 50kW, poorly maintained, really expensive, generally a single charger per location.

Reykjavík is the place that needs superchargers the *least*. That's where you start and end your trips.

People are fully expecting Tesla to at least circle the Ring Road (which FYI really isn't enough, but it'll be a start). If they don't, sales will drop heavily after the initial burst.

The reason that PHEVs are 2x BEVs is because existing (non-Tesla) BEVs, and our existing CCS network, simply aren't up to the task of getting around the island. For that, we must have Teslas and a Supercharger network. Without high power road-trippable EVs and an appropriate charging network, we fail at our goals of banning new ICE sales by 2030.

(Also, re: PHEVs - as they get ready to renew our Norway-style VAT exemption (which should pass without problems), they're not going to renew it for PHEVs. So PHEV sales should crash a year from now).

How many reservations? If we say 7 x 4 stalls, and call it 3.5 Superchargers then that's, resaonably conservatively, $750k needed, which might only need about 1500 sales. So, given strong incentives, maybe no problem.

But they also need to maintain the network. So a cost question is, how much use would the Superchargers around the island actually get?

I figured that there'd be at least some Icelanders who don't have home charging who'd want a Tesla, hence starting with a Supercharger in Reykjavik and going from there.

 

[PLUS EV]

How many reservations? If we say 7 x 4 stalls, and call it 3.5 Superchargers then that's, resaonably conservatively, $750k needed, which might only need about 1500 sales. So, given strong incentives, maybe no problem.

But they also need to maintain the network. So a cost question is, how much use would the Superchargers around the island actually get?

I figured that there'd be at least some Icelanders who don't have home charging who'd want a Tesla, hence starting with a Supercharger in Reykjavik and going from there.

Keep in mind, this is a country that purchases ~15,000 new vehicles per year. So it might take Tesla a while to sell 1500 cars.

 

[KarenRei]

Keep in mind, this is a country that purchases ~15,000 new vehicles per year. So it might take Tesla a while to sell 1500 cars.

It really won't I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Model 3 spends much of the next year at the top of the sales list. Only threatened by the Model Y.

Nobody expects full coverage of the island instantaneously. But total sales numbers accumulates over time.

 

[KarenRei]

Pricing is 40 ISK/kWh ($0,33/kWh, €0,29/kWh, 2,90 NOK/kWh). Annoyingly and inexplicably high. Part of that is taxes (24% VAT), but even the pre-tax rate is high (32,25 ISK/kWh pretax - $0,27/kWh, €0,24/kWh, 2,34 NOK/kWh). For example, Norway's rates (post-tax) are 1,70 NOK/kWh (23 ISK/kWh, $0,19/kWh, €0,17/kWh), so even if Norway has a tax exemption on EV charging and we don't (I don't know whether that's the case), that wouldn't explain it. And our base raw electricity prices are cheaper than Norway's. Electricity is produced so cheaply here that companies run alumium smelters here, despite there being no alumium ore in the country - they ship in the bauxite and ship out the refined product, basically using the energy-intensive alumium refining process to export our cheap electricity.

I have no explanation for this pricing. Maybe Tesla has their Supercharger station on the wrong electricity rate plan or something. Hopefully this rate changes, because it's not a good look charging us so much when our power is so cheap. Our Supercharging costs are nearly as high as in Germany (€0,33/kWh after tax), which has the highest electricity costs in Europe.

Note that in the above they're talking about household rates. But industrial rates are much cheaper; half our household bills are distribution costs. Industrial consumers in Reykjavík can get power for a little over half the price of residential consumers, and it's even cheaper for large consumers in the countryside closer to direct feeds from the power plants.

(Superchargers have to pay (significant) demand charges since they're surge consumers rather than being a steady load... but that applies to Tesla in every market, not just Iceland)

 

[KarenRei]

I kind of wonder if the answer is simply "because they can get away with it". The only "competition" is ON, which isn't any competition at all (overpriced, frequently unreliable or overoccupied "50kW" stations).

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I kind of wonder if the answer is simply "because they can get away with it". The only "competition" is ON, which isn't any competition at all (overpriced, frequently unreliable or overoccupied "50kW" stations).

Maybe demand charges v energy used?

Look at it as a positive sign: high pricing increases the chance that Tesla will be able to have more Superchargers.

 

[mongo]

I have no explanation for this pricing.

Perhaps because the equipment (Tesla's and the power provider) itself has both an installation and maintenance cost that they need to recoup? It also serves as an incentive to install home charging which frees Supercharger capacity for longer distance travelers.

Just so I'm clear, it looks like a 0.10 Euro surcharge pre tax over the electric rate in the graph. So on a 50 kWh charge, Tesla recoups 5.00, and Iceland pockets 2.50 in VAT on a total charge cost of 14.50.

There is also the potential for a difference between a demand rate versus household rate. From one link, the rate goes down the more you use, so this may just be an interim issue.

 

[KarenRei]

Any answer given that applies equally or worse to other countries (such as demand charges or paying for the equipment) is not an answer. Demand charges here are not abnormally expensive (I've actually worked with industrial rate figures here before, for an unrelated project).

VAT is 24% on electricity here.

I'm hoping for the "they're charging more in order to justify a larger buildout relative to the number of sales here" theory. I'd find that to be a price worth paying.

 

[mongo]

@Beltsbear

Iceland having among the most expensive Supercharging in Europe despite having among the cheapest residential prices in western/northern Europe, and among the cheapest industrial rates in the world, is not "within the expected range". Nor are demand charges unique to, nor abnormally expensive in, Iceland.

Iceland is only now becoming an officially supported Tesla zone. Starting out high on charging costs is a reasonable course of action to encourage the adoption of home charging and destination charging at businesses. If they started low, then other charge methods would not be cost competitive (in the near term).

It also allows Tesla to adjust price downward to match demand/ usage as opposed to starting low and getting complaints if they needed to increase the rate to cover equipment and wear.

Any answer given that applies equally or worse to other countries (such as demand charges or paying for the equipment) is not an answer. Demand charges here are not abnormally expensive (I've actually worked with industrial rate figures here before, for an unrelated project).

VAT is 24% on electricity here.

I'm hoping for the "they're charging more in order to justify a larger buildout relative to the number of sales here" theory. I'd find that to be a price worth paying.

I think to use comparative data, you would need to limit scope either to countries when Tesla is newly introduced, or wait for Iceland to have a large number of on the road Teslas. Also need to adjust based on previously established EVs in that region.

 

[Matt L]

Well, if they are charging too much, it would seem the market would be ripe for someone to build out a competitive alternative. If nobody does, I guess they aren’t charging too much.

 

[samppa]

Also if you compare that to price of gasoline, it's still cheap.. And iceland is a very small market.

Suc should be priced so that you only use it when traveling, so that it's not blocked by local cars.

They've been lately installing those dual units here too (Finland). Makes sense, this is still also a small market, and at first they installed superchargers that have 8-10 stalls.. these are pretty much almost always empty.