Supercharging now costs more than gas (one owner's experience)

[JaceLightning]

Moderator note: Edited thread title to reflect that this comparison of the costs of Supercharging vs. gas is one person's experience, and not a universal truth.

Drove 680 miles today. Paid $50 for supercharging--and that's coming home with an empty battery (I have to pay to fill it up now).

Gas was around $3/gallon today plus or minus a few cents. A Prius gets around 45 mpg. That's about 15 gallons of gas for $45.

I thought electric was supposed to SAVE money--not cost more.

 

[Big Earl]

You’re certainly welcome to swap for a Prius. I think it’s pretty great that we get all of the features and performance of the Model 3 while paying equal to (Supercharger) or less (home charging) than gas for a Prius.

 

[nctalkinghead]

And I am sure that the Prius will have even lower gas consumption after the next OTA update is installed

 

[jjrandorin]

Drove 680 miles today. Paid $50 for supercharging--and that's coming home with an empty battery (I have to pay to fill it up now).

Gas was around $3/gallon today plus or minus a few cents. A Prius gets around 45 mpg. That's about 15 gallons of gas for $45.

I thought electric was supposed to SAVE money--not cost more.

Every single time someone whips out this comparison, "magically" the gas car they compare to is one that gets 40-50 MPH. Yet, when they want to complain about features, they start comparing it to a BMW / Lexus /Mercedes.

its always something like "Charging this EV costs more than driving a prius!" along with "I cant believe this 50k luxury car doesnt have <insert feature>".

 

[El joe]

Wow, where is it $3/gallon? It’s about double that here in Northern California. I fully-charged today for about $15 getting about 290 miles. I don’t know of any other car that would get 290 on 2.5 gallons around here.

 

[UncleCreepy]

Did you supercharge up to 100% or with a cold battery or something? It is beyond me how 680 miles can cost $50. At $0.40/minute (just a guess, I don't know how much supercharging costs where you live) that would translate to 125 minutes of supercharging, so you got 326 miles per hour while charging. I can get like 3 times as much from a V3 supercharger.
I for one do NOT want my Prius back.

 

[Red Ryder 3]

Notice: OP joined 5 days ago!
2 messages.
Price of gas in Denver today:

Denver

	Regular	Diesel
Current Avg.	$3.400	$3.393
Yesterday Avg.	$3.398	$3.389

 

[El joe]

Notice: OP joined 5 days ago!
2 messages.
Price of gas in Denver today:

Denver

	Regular	Diesel
Current Avg.	$3.400	$3.393
Yesterday Avg.	$3.398	$3.389

Wow, we may have to move. My wife refuses to get an EV and her van is killing us in gas.

 

[Tam]

I thought electric was supposed to SAVE money--not cost more.

It is cheaper if charged at home. If you supercharge, you can save if the gasoline price is high and not if the gasoline price is low. Tesla has not said that it's cheaper to supercharge for a long time after it discontinued its free program. That's because it wants owners to charge at home and not at Superchargers unless you have to like on a road trip.

 

[Big Earl]

Did you supercharge up to 100% or with a cold battery or something? It is beyond me how 680 miles can cost $50. At $0.40/minute (just a guess, I don't know how much supercharging costs where you live) that would translate to 125 minutes of supercharging, so you got 326 miles per hour while charging. I can get like 3 times as much from a V3 supercharger.
I for one do NOT want my Prius back.

Average in the US right now is (from my best estimate) $0.33/kWh. It ends up costing 8-10 cents per mile on an interstate road trip.

 

[ArchEtech]

Some of the comparisons are unfair; however, the supercharger cost increases are still ridiculous as well as a marketing bait and switch. I have yet to have a trip that’s cost more than gas though, in my area. Not unless the car is a 50+ mile per gallon car and then with gas at $4 maybe not even then.

 

[jjrandorin]

Notice: OP joined 5 days ago!
2 messages.
Price of gas in Denver today:

Denver

	Regular	Diesel
Current Avg.	$3.400	$3.393
Yesterday Avg.	$3.398	$3.389

If Gas average is 3.40 its conceivable that at a costco or some other station close to the OP its closer to $3 than you see there. Not all new people have an agenda, either.

I would, however, be very interested in how they got to $50 supercharging for such relatively "few" miles. Also, "EV cheaper than Gas" doesnt necessarily reflect "I have to use a supercharger 100% of the time". The math can be finagled to make a supercharger more expensive than gas. People do it all the time. They usually start like I said, by only comparing cars that get 40-50MPH which is NOT what most of america is driving, on average.

They then use the most expensive way of charging.. whether thats supercharging, or in someplace like california, peak electricity pricing.

They then intimate that everyone road trips weekly, and then come to the conclusion that EV cost more than Gas. I have seen it done here so much it doesnt faze me any longer, I guess.

 

[SageBrush]

People do it all the time. They usually start like I said, by only comparing cars that get 40-50MPH which is NOT what most of america is driving, on average.

I doubt it is even what they were driving, or the F.E. they were getting.

OP's declaration of $50 to travel 680 miles only makes sense if all of the trip miles are by Supercharger. People who start from a full charge from home or inexpensive L2 destination charging spend way less. And of course for them few days in the year are Supercharger days.

For me, it goes like this: Approaching but still less than ICE level costs for some of my travel miles, almost free miles the rest of the year.

 

[JaceLightning]

> Notice: OP joined 5 days ago!

Yep. Just got my car two months ago! New Tesla owner here!

I drove from Des Moines to Denver yesterday. Gas was about $3/gallon in Iowa and Nebraska:

https://www.gasbuddy.com/gasprices/nebraska

https://www.gasbuddy.com/gasprices/iowa

Here is my charging invoice:

Total of $49.82.

It's a big part of Telsa's marketing scheme is that you save money on gas. They even include it in their trip calculator "estimated gas savings." But it seems like it's actually more expensive to charge on Supercharger than gas.

Tesla really needs to drop Supercharger prices.

 

[JaceLightning]

Every single time someone whips out this comparison, "magically" the gas car they compare to is one that gets 40-50 MPH. Yet, when they want to complain about features, they start comparing it to a BMW / Lexus /Mercedes.

I wanted a Tesla for two reasons: Self-driving and fuel economy. The self-driving has been really hit or miss. Sometimes I think it's useful and sometimes I think it's dangerous. Interstate lane keeping, adaptive cruise control, and automated passing and great. But at least three times in my drive yesterday I experienced phantom braking--one time the car lost 30 mph and displayed a forward collision warning even though there was nothing on the road in a bright, sunny day. The other two phantom brakes were less severe, but still concerning and probably not great on the car to slam on the brakes.

The fuel economy has been mostly miss. Been keeping a record of my drive times, fuel economy, etc. Seems like it would be much cheaper to drive a gas car.

The 2021 Prius L Eco is supposed to get 55 MPG with a 600 mile range and 45 MPG seems standard real-world results from actual fleet data:

Toyota Prius MPG - Actual MPG from 8,926 Toyota Prius owners

The most accurate Toyota Prius MPG estimates based on real world results of 288.1 million miles driven in 8,926 Toyota Prius

www.fuelly.com

 

[ArchEtech]

If you’re exclusively using supercharger stations I don’t think it’s inconceivable at all. Typically am add $12-$15 to top off over 90% had a supercharger station on the rare occasion that I’ve traveled outside of the city. If you have to do that every couple hundred miles it’s going to add up.

 

[STS-134]

Drove 680 miles today. Paid $50 for supercharging--and that's coming home with an empty battery (I have to pay to fill it up now).

Gas was around $3/gallon today plus or minus a few cents. A Prius gets around 45 mpg. That's about 15 gallons of gas for $45.

I thought electric was supposed to SAVE money--not cost more.

1. That Prius goes 0-60 in what amount of time?
2. What about oil changes, spark plugs, etc.?

 

[ArchEtech]

The performance of the car and the overall driving experience certainly is one factor. It’s really the main factor in that there isn’t anything that competes with the model three performance in the performance sedan realm when you factor in cost to drive the car and the performance that you get for the money.

You can concede that point even emphasize it however that still doesn’t downplay the fact that Tesla has grossly increased the cost of superchargers and will most likely continue to do so. This also means that the claim that there is all these fuel savings is really not true anymore and shouldn’t be marketed that way.

Comparing the cost of ownership fuel and maintenance with my last couple of German super sedans yeah the model three performance is going to be a lot cheaper to own overall.

 

[ThomasD]

It's 2.99 to 3.05 a gallon where I live

 

[MY1stEV]

I did an 1,100 mile trip over Thanksgiving and paid $90 in supercharging fees. Some of the states were flat rate, some were tiered plans, but on average I paid about 30 cents per kWh.

Had I taken my other car, a Hyundai Sonata (25 city/32 hwy), I estimate I would have paid about $125 for gas round trip (gas prices along this route were has high as $3.35 and as low as $2.85).

So I paid $35 less for this trip, but I also spent 3+ cumulative hours supercharging, listening to my kids say "this sucks" and "how much longer are we going to have to sit here," and can you really put a price on that?